‘Purple Rain’ With Bill Simmons and Wesley Morris
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find all the Rewatchables episodes that we record on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel. You can read Wesley Morris on the New York Times. This is a podcast I would not have done without him. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get to this thing called life. Oh my God, Purple Rain is next. Prince in his first motion picture. So loud.

Before he created the music, he lived every bit of it. He risked too much for the one thing that meant everything. His music. Prince. The story. The struggle. The movie. Purple Rain. Purple Rain.

All right, Wesley Morris is here. This movie came out 40 years ago, summer of 1984. Jesus Christ. I remember when I saw it in the movie theater. I made my dad take me in Cape Cod. It was just, it was the two of us, little father-son movie, and then Apollonia, and it got a little awkward with me sitting next to him. But I don't even know where to start with this, but maybe we start here.

Eddie Murphy, 1982, Michael Jackson, 1983. Perfect way to start. Prince, 1984. We go from the '81 era where Richard Pryor is basically the only big market movie star, where the Jeffersons and Different Strokes are the only TV shows that have black stars in the top 40. Music's fine, but then all of a sudden these three comments come in one year after the other.

And not to be this person, but you also have to spare a thought for the Cosby show starting. Yeah, you're right. To the extent that that matters. That could be 1985, because even though it launched in 84, 85 was when it really blew up. So yeah, there you go. And so on all, like basically the only reason to sort of say that is that there are all these prongs happening, right? All these entertainment prongs. And suddenly there are black men occupying

Most of them, right? TV, movies, music. And they're all, except for Bill Cosby, Prince, Eddie Murphy, and Michael Jackson, there's something about their demeanors that isn't standard. Eddie might be a little confused about why we would be classifying him with Michael Jackson and Prince, but...

Well, he's a, but Eddie's doing, he's on still the biggest sketch comedy show, but then he's got movies coming out and there's, he's just occupying this piece of turf as a 21 year old guy where we're like, holy shit, what's happening here? I think with all three cases, cause Michael and Prince had been around, Prince had released albums. Michael had been around since he was a kid, but in all three cases, there was a holy shit moment.

where it just felt like each person was about to be the biggest star of the decade. And it happened year after year after year. And, you know, it's funny because we're going to talk about Purple Rain, but Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis are not in it. Right, because he bumped them out of the time. And while this movie's being made, well, maybe not while the movie's being made, but while Purple Rain Mania is happening,

Jimmy and Terry are making control with Janet Jackson. Whitney Houston's debut album comes out a year later. It's a really fascinating time. And there's an inflection point that's different from the 70s and Black people where...

it was everything was still being classified as soul music or funk. And what happened in the eighties is all of the so-called niches that black music was being stuffed into exploded into mainstream popular culture. And so, you know, all of the seventies priorities are present in Prince and in aspects of Michael Jackson. And, you know,

The criticism against Whitney was that they were non-existent in her music, although she's bringing some other older traditions.

And then you've got like, but the thing about Prince that is so exciting is, and it's hard to remember this now because everything he embodied in 1984 and 83 and, you know, the late 70s is kind of normalized now. Nobody was calling him queer back then and meaning it in a positive way. Right. Yeah.

And so his ideas of gender, his ideas of race, his ideas of self-presentation, it was kind of standard in the 80s for people to look like Prince, but it wasn't by any means normal for what he was doing at all. You know, I was thinking about 84 and I remember writing about it for Page Two a million years ago, like just how, what a crazy year that was in all these different ways, with sports and movies and music. I mean, that's the year Michael Jordan died.

goes to the NBA. That's the year Whitney starts taking off in the Cosby show. There's like a hundred things that happen, but Prince following Michael Jackson, because Thriller comes out near the end 82, but 83 is the Michael Jackson year, right? That's when the Motown special happens. That's when it just seems like he is the biggest music star we've had maybe since the Beatles.

Then Prince shows up a year later, even though he'd been there, but shows up with this music movie, which usually don't work. We grew up with Elvis movies and Beatles movies. This was a format that usually if you put a star at the front of a music movie, it's probably going to be bad. The acting was going to be bad. Maybe there's a couple of good songs. Instead, it goes the other way. The album's amazing.

The movie's amazing. The movie actually does well. You have MTV happening at the same time. Then Purple Rain became this... I think it was on HBO for like three years straight. I think it was just on Tuesday at 10 o'clock for like five years in a row. That's how I watched it. I mean, I didn't experience it any other way. But I don't know if there's ever been a better movie vehicle for a music star. I can't think of one. Because even...

Like blues brothers, Greece, Travolta is not really a movie star, right? Chicago. That's a musical with actors walk the line. That's Phoenix playing Johnny cash stars born has Christofferson and Bradley Cooper, maybe lady Gaga and a star is born, but it's nothing like Prince. It's a different thing. If the, the closest, the closest thing that I can come up with is like a hard day's night, right? Like it's, it's before Prince it's the Beatles basically. Um,

Um, the Beatles are the only band I, and maybe the monkeys, right? Because the monkeys, but the monkeys sort of lived in this enclosed television universe. Yeah. And the songs were the engine for a lot of the episodes.

But this is different because the Beatles were already famous. They were already globally famous when those movies come out. And they're trying to figure out how to take a thing that was electrifying on the records and especially in the concerts and to put it in movies. But they never did that, right? Those movies were never about...

trying to capture the live experience of the Beatles. Well, and they also, they didn't last 40 years later where you could watch Purple Rain tomorrow

And there's five or six scenes where you're just like, holy shit, is this the most talented person who has ever been on a stage? Right, right, right. And, you know, in the case of Hard Day's Night, you're giving yourself over to Richard Lester. Yeah. And you get a sense of like how fun the Beatles are to be with. But Prince and Purple Rain, then, you know, to just like close this complete loop.

Desperately Seeking Susan comes out a year later. And that's a movie that's just about Madonna as a vibe, not Madonna as one of the biggest artists in the world. Right. The thing that makes Purple Rain so extraordinary is there had never been successfully been, because Dylan made, you know, Dylan's got a movie, Bob Dylan, and

There are like David Bowie and Mick Jagger in the 70s acting in movies. But Purple Rain is the first thing that is from start to finish the album that you were already listening to presented to you in movie form. With a plot that actually made sense with the songs. Yeah.

I mean, as well as we're going to do. Like when he's playing Beautiful Ones, he's playing Beautiful Ones and it actually intersects with the plot. Same for Darling Nikki, which I can't wait to talk about. So when we're talking about it compared to the other, I'm not calling this a musical, obviously, but music movies. No. Yes. And you have like the Chicago type of movie. You have the Blues Brothers type of movie, right? Then you have like Grease.

Then you have Walk the Line, which is like a biography or the Ray Charles movie that Jamie Foxx made. This movie isn't really like any of those. And I don't even really know how to categorize it.

And I think it kind of lives alone in its own space where it's like, I'm not sure this ever happens again, where you catch the right artist at the exact perfect point of his career, making the best album he's ever going to make. That's going to be about to become this phenomenon for nine months. And somehow they're just making a movie during all of this. I think the odds are like a hundred to one that this ever happens again.

8 Mile is the only thing I can think of that is doing... I mean, 8 Mile is Purple Rain. Right. But Eminem, right? But...

The thing about it is it's a lie. You know, it's, it's a, I mean, purple rain is lying too, but it's mythologized. The myth, the myths between Eminem and Prince are different and the priorities are different. Yeah. But it is about the myth of Eminem is being this particular kind of rapper, not the guy who would be slim shady, right? Like a serious, you know, I worked my ass off to win these rap battles and life was hard for me.

And also, I'm not crazy. I'm not this. I don't. You would never have any idea that Eminem was the other kind of great rapper he is based on 8 Mile. Prince, there's no secrets here. Like every inch of his artistry is on full, active, thrilling display in Purple Rain. And

All you're thinking when you're leaving this movie is like, what is 1985 going to look like for this guy? Right. I was going to say, you could almost make a case that Apex Mountain is purple because that's how Apex Mountain-y is.

Prince was in Purple Rain. You know what else I wrote down? 2024 is the era of the hagiography, right? Like all the documentaries are produced by the people that made them. We have these movies like the Elton John movie and the Bob Marley movie. And that's just kind of where we're going. Like these sanitized- We're fully there. We're fully there. 1984, 40 years ago, Prince was like,

fuck it. I'm going to play this complex, abusive, fucked up, narcissistic diva who not that many people in the movie even really like him. And he's fucked up and he might be a waste of talent. And Prince is like, sign me up. That sounds great. Can I just absolutely crush like six scenes? Do I get to act? And can the last 15 minutes of the movie be one of the best concert films ever filmed?

And then that's in. Then we're off and we're ready to go. Questlove had this quote about how he thinks Purple Rain started hip-hop culture, whether historians want to admit it or not. I thought it was ambitious. I thought it was a take, but he was basically saying you had the beef between Prince and the time. You had...

Just this is basically hip hop, even though we didn't know what hip hop was yet. And just all the pieces would eventually come. I don't know. I don't know if you have a take on that one. I hear I hear that. Also, I mean, it's important to mention that in the background of all this happening is the like the the simmering of, you know, the most important musical piece.

format in the genre in the last 50 years, right? Hip hop is becoming important. And it's already extremely present in the lives of lots of people. And it's eventually during this period making its way onto the pop charts. So there's this other thing happening in the background.

um this other other major thing happening in the background but i don't know i feel like i hear i hear what i'd be curious to know when questlove said that um as opposed to i'm not i'm inclined to agree with an i like an aspect of it but it's not like there weren't it's not like cool modee or not cool modee that's a little bit later it's not like like the queens and brooklyn rappers weren't already fighting over who invented the art form right right

But I hear what he's saying in terms of localizing the battle to a case of personality disagreements, right? Different styles of self-presentation, sexuality, stage presence. Well, let's talk about that because you have Prince who's basically...

James Brown and Jimi Hendrix have a kid who also becomes the best stage performer of his entire generation. And by the way, it's a generation with Michael Jackson in it. But I still think Prince is, you know, I think anybody who's ever seen Prince in person on stage when he actually gave a shit that night would probably put him first or in the top. Which was a lot of nights. Top two or three. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's no, there's no question. I saw Prince.

Nine months before he died at some bar in New York City, he came in three hours late. Before that, there was a DJ who played for three hours and I danced. If I never dance again, I will dance. I will have danced all my dancing waiting for Prince to show up because that woman killed us all.

And then he shows up and I remember this is, this is a moment in time, the cast of Hamilton and the cast of the color purple, uh,

It's like he was waiting for their shows to break or something. And they come into this bar and they're waiting. He makes them wait. So Jennifer Hudson is standing there when she was still with David Otunga. Yeah. And, you know, Leslie Odom, I believe Leslie Odom was there. Like a lot of the Hamilton cast is there and we're all just waiting for Prince who comes, plays for 20 minutes. Yeah.

disappears, goes to eat. There's a rumor that he's going to come back after he has his dinner. By the way, it's one o'clock in the morning. Yeah.

comes back and plays for like another 20 minutes. It just was, this is what people will do for this man is not sleep because he might play 40 minutes of like semi-committed music. Yeah, that happened at NBA All-Star Weekend, I think in 2014. And I was there with Rembert and Julia and a couple others and was like, Prince is playing at this party. It's like, no way. It's like, no, he's doing it. And everybody's just kind of, and then all of a sudden he came out and just did Prince stuff

And it ended with him just dropping his guitar and walking off. And we're like, is he coming back? It's like, no, not coming back. I just want to say really quick. I just want people listening to us talk to understand something about you, Bill, which is I was looking for like, I feel like we've been poised to have this conversation for a long time. The purple rain? I actually thought, yes. I thought we had had it. And so I looked.

Through my phone. And like, did we do it? I don't remember, but I'm not sure. You have been talking about doing this for three years. Every once in a while, I would watch either a scene or the entire movie, and I would just text you, and I would be like... Yeah. Yeah.

Because I think, well, we'll talk about some of the rewatchable scenes, but he has a couple scenes in there that are just like nothing that's ever been captured on film. We should also mention when we started working together at Grantland and we formed a podcast network that eventually became, we had nine of the 10 biggest podcasts at ESPN. You formed a podcast called Do You Like Prince Movies?

Not one of the nine. I think it might have been one of the nine. There weren't a lot of pods back then. Yeah, Alex and I had called our show... That was the title of your podcast. Yeah, yeah. Because you liked more than Purple Rain. There were other Prince movies that you defended. I think Graffiti Bridge is a totally good, weird movie. And Under the Cherry Moon, another... That is just bad. But it's bad in...

I mean, we'll get to like apex mountain and all that stuff and all the things you can do with the power that you have. And it clearly on under the cherry moon went to his head. Yeah. Well, that's it. That's your classic. I flew too close to the sun creative endeavor and nobody's telling him no at that point. Right. Nobody's nobody's like, I'm going to zag. I know everybody loved purple rain, but I just was on concert for a year and a half.

playing basically this really elaborate, crazy show that was the movie every night over and over and over again. And now I need a zag. And that became Under the Cherry Moon. And I think Sign of the Times is also good. I really like that. Well, that's like a really, I mean, that's, if you're talking best concert films, that has to be at least mentioned. Yeah. This album sold 15 million US copies, 25 million worldwide. They released When Doves Cry in May 2019.

It hit number one. The album was released before the movie. That became number one. There was real buzz everywhere.

Before the movie came out and Prince isn't doing anything. Like there's no like, Oh, Prince went on Letterman. He's like, I'm out. I will do no promotion at all. But the album is a phenomenon. And right at a point when Thriller was kind of starting to die down because Thriller, they got 18 months out of, you know, that's just, they're just pulling like the seventh best song from Thriller and releasing it. It's top five. Prince, this album stayed number one for 24 weeks. When Doves Cry and Let's Go Crazy were number one.

And then the album comes out and it crush. I mean, the movie comes out and it crushes and it all leads to, he wins an Academy award for best original rock score, which by the way, they eliminated the category of the next year. They were like, fuck this. He wins two Grammys. There's two spinoff albums from the time in Apollonia six. I can't believe they were able to get 10 Apollonia six songs.

I don't know if you listen to it, but what you're saying is barely even true. Well, the funniest thing about all these offshoot

albums that weren't Prince albums, but all the songs sounded like rejected Prince songs. But even in this movie, the, I want to be a modern day. Like that easily just could have been a rejected Purple Rain song. And he just gave it to Des. What a hero. So then the years pass and this album still lives in the stratosphere. Like Rolling Stone did their 500 greatest albums ever and Purple Rain was eighth.

And then you Apple, Apple did theirs and it was number five. Yeah. And then you actually look at the album and it's like, yeah, that was a great album. But then you see it all laid out like on Wikipedia or Spotify or wherever. And it's like, holy shit. That, that had the highest batting average of any, uh, any album in the last 40 years. There's just hits everywhere. And then even the cameos from the other stuff, uh, it had a really weird effect on Prince though.

which everybody who loves Prince, he was just never the same after this came out. It fucked him up. Later, he called it my albatross. It'll be hanging around my neck as long as I'm making music. Another time he said in some ways more detrimental than good, it pigeonholed me. And if you read the stuff, like there's a really good oral history they did about Purple Rain with a bunch of the people. He just was so famous. Part of what made him Prince was he was really collaborative with all these different people.

And within a couple of years, he's riding in his own bus. He's staying in these giant hotel suites where they're moving the special piano in from city to city. And he was just levitating too high above to actually collaborate that way. And some of the quotes from people like Wendy and Lisa, they were just kind of bummed out about it. Not even really mad at him. It was just like, this is just the outcome of what happened. He became too famous. Yeah.

I think it's deeper than that. Right. Like there's so much, this movie is such a rich text for all the princes, both his genius and his problems, right? His inability, the understanding that he has about what his musical intelligence and like innate talent can do, the effect it has on people and like,

And there's a sense that I think he thinks that he could have done it without those people. He could have done Purple Rain without the revolution, right? Right. And the beautiful thing about this movie that I always forget is that Purple Rain starts...

as Purple Rain is the reconciliation track, right? Yeah. It's the thing that Wendy and Lisa are writing that they want Prince to pay attention to. Yeah. And that's the song that sounds the most like it came entirely from Prince, but is in turn, like in the movie, the only collaboration among at least the three of them.

where you know, the audience knows they wrote it. He performs it and tells the audience before he does it that it's their song. Well, and then there's that great moment at the end when they're playing it near the end and he walks over to Wendy. Oh, with Wendy. And she's kind of watching him

make an eye contact with him like trying to have a moment with him and he and he sees it and then he leans over and kisses her and she almost starts crying and i say i and i don't think that was like in the script or anything i think they just had a moment it is real that is real and the thing about that relationship is they were so connected to each other as a band

And he didn't, he thought of like the James Brown thing is real, right? James Brown, notorious band leader, notoriously abusive band leader. Um, he Prince absorbed all of those lessons from James Brown, but also, you know, he grew up in a, in a tough house. Um, his dad used to be in a musician, used to be a musician, um, held his music, musical failures, uh,

He blamed the two kids, two of his kids for not having a music career. Yeah. Because he had to be a dad. He had to raise a family. And there's so, there's so many lessons being practiced here. And you think of, I mean, it's clearly, it's a work of fiction, but it's not a work of fiction in the way that a movie typically is. Yeah. Because Prince always says how like, this is a movie. I was playing a part and it's like, okay, there, come on.

There's some pieces of you in that part. Just admit it. Yeah. But I was going to say, like, it's mythology, right? Like, he is... I mean, first of all, I mean...

He's not called Prince in the movie. He's called the kid. We don't know what this kid's name is. He's just the kid. So that's a myth. There's a mythology or a fairy tale or a fable in and of itself. We know the initial of his last name is L. That's the only information we have. He's the kid. Yeah. It's an L. His name's like Bob Lawton. That would be deep.

Francis Gum is his birth name. Wait, so 1999 blows up the album. Yes. That's from 82, right? Yeah. Prince tells his manager, Robert Covello, I want to star in a big studio movie. And if you don't find me when I'm firing you, he's like, fine. Couldn't figure it out. Talks to a famed screenwriter, the movie fame, William Blinn.

Prince has hammered out the plot points of the movie. So there's some notepad that has Prince's thoughts of how Purple Rain should go. Give it to this William Blinn guy. He takes a stab at it. Then Albert Magnoli, who was just a music editor or music video editor at that point, he joins his director, rewrites it. And somehow it's coherent enough on top of the fact that Prince tells him,

"Hey, I have 100 produced songs, so let me know which ones you need." He was like, "100 that nobody's heard?" He's like, "Yeah, we'll just dip into a lot of those." And the rest is history. $7.2 million budget made $70 million. It's the 11th biggest movie in 1984. In 1984, how many movies in the top 40 do you think had non-white stars? - Top 40, isn't 48 Hours 84? - Beverly Hills Cop. But there's an Eddie Murphy.

Purple Rain. And there's one other. There's three total. 84. I'll tell you the answer. DC Cab? Breaking. Breaking. Okay. All right. That's it. That's all we had. That sounds right. That sounds right. That sounds great. Our guy Raj loved this movie. Him and Cisco both had it. Top 10, 1984. Raj eventually called it one of the great rock movies of all time. He gave it three and a half stars when it came out.

He said, "Purple Rain has an interesting solution to the problem of trying to combine a dramatic story with a lot of musical footage, long passages, brief, sharp, highly emotional dramatic scenes, dramas condensed into intense emotional exchanges. The result is one of the best combinations I've seen of music and drama. Prince and Apollonia come across with really exciting romantic chemistry. I like the movie."

That's from Raj. And then Prince said a few days before the premiere, he had a nightmare that Siskel and Ebert hated the film and Ebert ripped it apart. And he said, I dreamed those two guys on the TV reviewed the movie and that fat guy was tearing me up. The opposite happened. So there you go. Prince intersecting with Siskel and Ebert. We're going to do most rewatchable scene. It's brought to you by Nissan. Find your path in the Nissan Pathfinder app.

Creek. This is really hard, Wesley. The first 11 minutes of this movie, holy fucking hell. Oh my God. Holy hell. Yeah. We just start with...

You can always see the sun, day or night. So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know the one. It's like, what's going on? And then all of a sudden we go into Let's Go Crazy, but we're also following Apollonia, jumping out of a cab. We get to see Prince get ready. We get to see Morris get ready. This is the opening of Cabaret. Cabaret opens exactly the same way. Oh, interesting.

It's the, it's, you know, you're at the Kit Kat club and Joel Gray's doing his, you know, welcome and benvenue, welcome. And Michael York is arriving in Berlin at that very moment.

And you, I don't, you're not seeing Liza Minnelli quite yet. She doesn't come for like 12 minutes into the movie. And she's got that great number where she's got a purple, purple sash in her hat. This movie is definitely a wear cabaret. Like purple is, is, is part of Sally Bowles is signature color situation. Prince has a great guitar solo. Yeah.

So Apollonia debuts a bunch of different great looks that I got to give her credit for of just her watching Prince play. And sometimes her face is like, I can't wait to jump that guy's bones. Other times it's like, this guy's reaching a part of my soul I didn't know existed. Then it's the- I don't think she really didn't know she had a soul. I mean, this is that kind of acting. Right. Well, yeah. And then there's the, this guy's hurting my feelings. Yeah.

um just some great faces for burn and then we get the waitress jill that she bumps into and uh jill jones jill jones who i really liked um oh i love jill jones jill jones is one of the princess protégés right like yeah that's a sad story that we don't have to get into that but like basically you know she's made up to look like a jane mansfield you know i guess nancy nancy allen i guess is the closest thing to 1984 that she looks like little melanie griffith-ish

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So let's go crazy. And it's like, man, I need a cigarette. That was great. Nope. We're bringing out more stay in the time. It's time. It's time for jungle love. Let's go. Yeah. I think I was thinking in person, this would have been like one of the top three greatest moments of my life. If you were just there that day when they were like, we're going to film these back to back, let's go. Like, can you imagine being there for that? Let's go crazy right into jungle love.

No, I mean, I think the triumph of the movie, I mean, this seems might be obvious. We don't need to say it, but I mean, this is just one of the best cases ever.

One of the greatest cases ever made for, I'm putting in quote, live performance, right? Because it's not live, live. But there's just something electric about Morris and Jerome on stage. The way that those, because this is the MTV era. We have to keep, I don't know if you need to keep hammering this, but

The way that these sequences work are just completely different from how they worked in a musical. Right. And even two years earlier, they're different. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Fosse, like I bring up Fosse again, just to say that part of what he was a pioneer at is the sort of the, the,

I guess the psychological explication of a musical experience where there can be choreography on stage, but also in the house. Right. And so the great thing about that opening 12 minute sequence is not just what's happening on stage. It's the, the,

The stylization of the audience, right? Everybody in the crowd has a look. Yeah. And they're framed, that look is being framed numerous times and then intercut with what's going on with Prince and the revolution on stage. Yeah, the club just seems amazing. I mean, the club is a character and they shut down the club for 25 days and gave them 100 grand. They're just like, we're filming here. And every piece of it, even like the little balcony,

There's just like the five dancers just on call, ready to do shit. That is my favorite moment. I mean, I've got a lot of favorite moments in this movie, but that moment during Jungle Love where one guy starts doing the, you know, starts dancing. Yeah. And then the guy to his- And they do the arm thing? Left? Yeah. Yes. And then there's three guys just all,

synchronized doing the same move so far away from the stage and so far away from the audience. It's just for the camera. It's just for us. So we don't get to give out this award a lot, but it's one of my favorite rewatchables awards, and I'm just going to give it right now before we move to the rest of the rewatchable scenes. The Tom Sizemore, for me, the action is the juice award for best toe-to-toe moment for a non-star with a major star.

The time just being like, oh, thanks for playing. Let's go crazy. We're going to follow that with Jungle Love is absolutely the action is to choose because they're like 97% as good and as fun to watch. And I have a lot of thoughts on them for later. All right. So there's a world, Bill, in which like I take my grandmother or my grandmother takes me to this movie because I would have been too little to go by myself. Like my grandmother takes me and she's like Morris Day, right?

I need his phone number right now. Like there's just a world in which people who don't know what's going on are like, sign me up for the time. I'm taking all the stock right now. I got to say, I lost a lot of stock on the time. I mean, I was a teenager. I didn't have a lot of money on it, but you know, I just, I did put some stuff down on the time. Didn't go great. All right. Next one. Take me with you. Uh,

It's the bike ride. We get a bike ride. We get Prince unveiling the first of 28. What would you call the smile?

that, that I don't want to show my teeth, but I'm, I want to show some sign. It's a simper. The Prince simper. He's simper. Which then, uh, you know, we made, we, we teased cause we love Prince. We use that was when you tease this movie, you would make that face. And then Chappelle was like 20 years later, Chappelle's like, hold my beer. I'm going to do the best version of Prince ever.

The thing about that look, right, is, I mean, he is dressed, we should say, he spends the... We don't see this dude in a t-shirt and jeans. Yeah, he's dressed like Siegfried and Roy for the entire movie. He's dressed like he's about to tame a lion.

He looks like the prince in a Renaissance painting. Yeah. Right? Like he's dressed for oil paint in the 15th century. Well, thank God he's dressed for a motorcycle ride. And fortunately for us, Apollonia was also dressed for the motorcycle ride. And then he takes her to- So she's undressed, right? Right. He takes her to, this actually is in Lake Minnetonka, and they have some bad dialogue. Will you help me? Nope. Pardon me? Nope.

i want to know why nope because you wouldn't pass the initiation what initiation well for starters you have to purify yourself in the waters of like minnetonka what you have to purify yourself in lake minnetonka i think the bad dialogue exchanges are actually one of the reasons i love this movie but then uh he tells her she has to purify herself in the waters of lake minnetonka and

You know, Phoebe Cates, Fast Times is still number one, but Apollonia for the teenage boys of the 80s, this was one of the scenes. I just want to be clear about this moment because I'd always remembered it as his telling her she has to do it. He doesn't tell her, I remember the punchline, which is that it's not like me and Ataka, but I remember it as being like,

He didn't say purify. He's like, you've got to take your clothes off and get in there and baptize yourself. Yeah. Like all he says is you got to purify, like part of this initiation for love with me is you got to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka, which she receives as I have to take my clothes off and get in this water right now because that's what I'm being asked to do. So I think this woman has had some experiences that she needs to deal with.

And being in a relationship with this man is not helping. Right. Cause even she goes in, in real life, she almost gets hypothermia, um, comes out. That's all legit. Cause the water's freezing. But then he does the thing where he pretends to drive away and he's got the Prince smile. And then she has the reverse Apollonia smile. Like I'm enjoying the flirting here. Like I know he's not actually going to drive away and I'll, I'm happy to play this cat and mouse game with him. But, uh,

That whole scene, memorable to say the least. That leads to our next one. And there's a lot of great moments in there, but I'm just trying to play the hits. We have a Morris Apollonia date that the kid notices. And he's like, oh, you know what? You know what's going to be perfect here? Beautiful ones. So we get the dialogue of your lips would make a lollipop happy. And Morris is just hitting on her and doing stuff. And then Prince comes out.

I mean, I think this is his greatest performance in the movie. And I think it's one of the great performances ever. It's unbelievable. Nobody was doing shit like this in 1984. That is really insightful, Bill. I mean, I say it's insightful because, I mean, I know...

I know that the band thinks that this movie is a documentary basically, and that Prince essentially, he was really going through something and I don't, he, he's so invested in that moment. Like, like the, there's, there are parts where he's, he's not acting anywhere in this movie, honestly, except maybe the scenes with the, with the parents.

But that moment is so clearly intense and angry. Well, how about the part when he's really... There's some point where he's like Steph Curry just hitting threes from 35 feet, where he's prancing around. He does like the...

He pulls the jacket at one point, and he's just pulling the energy out of everyone in the crowd. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be there. And then they do that great slow zoom on her because he's basically like, hey, are we doing this or not? And Morris is in the zoom for the first part, and Morris is like, Jesus Christ. This guy's like, how am I going to bounce back from this? Can I get some more champagne? And it just goes in, and she's just like, this guy is singing this song to me, and I'm losing my mind right now.

He's just so on fire in that scene. And I don't know, there's been other moments with him. He's had a couple famous award show moments when he would just pop in. He was great at the AMAs in 1985. He had that one Rock and Roll Hall of Fame one. There's good video of him, but it's hard to imagine a better five minutes from him than that performance. The other thing is, I think it's like a borderline lip sync because they made all of these songs in concert.

And he's, then they sang over the tracks, right? So they're singing, but they're also performing at the same time. And you wouldn't know, you would think he's doing it live. You wouldn't know. I mean, the commitment from everybody is so hard. Just the choreography, just the choreography of the band, right? Yeah. There's a moment in Let's Go Crazy that is, I mean, there are a lot of erotic moments in this movie that have nothing to do with sex per se, although this movie is extremely sexual.

And I find that moment during Let's Go Crazy, there's the moment where he kind of masturbates the guitar. Which moment? There's five guitar masturbations. There's the first ejaculatory guitar moment. The guitar shit's a cum shot at the end of the movie. Right. Yes. That's awesome. We didn't get... Talk about premature. Okay. But there's a moment where he and Wendy are so locked in with each other

And their moves are so synced. And she is so hot to me. I totally agree. I thought Wendy was an icon. She's so sexy. Also, good actress. Yeah. Everyone's kind of a bad to mediocre actor in this. And she's actually like, I had that written down. I just think she's electric in this movie. Anyway, that's a great one. The next one would be the When Doves Cry montage leading into Prince and His Dad, which is basically like a

top line top latch 1984 music video and it's funny the in the research magnolia says the prince they're in post-production they haven't filmed this part they filmed a lot of stuff but they don't have it and uh he's like i need like a song for a montage do you have anything and the next day prince is like here's when doves cry and that was then they crafted along there and uh

And it kind of does some heavy lifting because we get one more dad scene and then we go right into Wendy. Yes, Lisa. And we go into computer blue. But the wind of crime music video, that's not a music video. It's a scene is really good. Wait, where do you stand on Clarence Williams in this movie?

I mean, you know, that man has had a lot of bites of the apple and this was, this, he gets better as the movie goes. It's not a huge part. Yeah. But the interesting thing about this film is that it is doing the same thing that the all black musicals of the forties did, you know, the Vincent Minnelli, you know, cabin in the sky and stormy weather, which is, you know, light skin, black people, great,

Dark skinned black people, not so great. The only major dark skinned character after Jerome is the dad. Yeah. Who beats up his white wife and smacks around his in the movie biracial son. Prince is not biracial. This is a whole fantasy that he had about, you know, being neither nor both and, you

But I don't know. I mean, Clarence Thomas. Clarence Williams. Clarence Williams III. He's fine. He's doing his job. He looks rough. And anybody... Do you know Link was my first favorite TV character ever? I was just about to say. The Mod Squad? Anybody who was watching this movie, probably even kids might have known that this guy was Link on the Mod Squad. Yeah. My dad found these...

preschool stuff where I would write my name down as Link, which I don't remember. Stop it. I swear to God. Really? It was like three or four. I love Link. I love the Mod Squad. That was my first favorite show. I mean, Peggy lifted. Next one, Darling Nikki. Insane isn't a strong enough word for this scene. No. I can't imagine being there when he played this. The song itself is pretty great. And also the lyrics are

By 1984 standards, we're like, she's doing what? She's masturbating in the magazine? What? What's going on? The performance itself, how he's trying to mind fuck Apollonia is just like, this is the scene where you're like, is this guy kind of evil? What's going on with him?

This is the scene for you? This is when it hammers home. And then we get Billy Sparks' big scene as the club manager coming off this. This stage is no place for your personal business. Nobody digs your business but yourself. I love that Billy is really close reading the songs. Billy is more engaged than anybody except for Prince and the Revolution in this music.

Right. Like he, he knows, I mean, this is going to go in the, in the, in the nitpicking realm later, but has Billy heard this music before? Like, like I have a lot, a lot of questions, but we'll get to that later. Basically a tipper gore proxy. Cause he doesn't want the club to be that raunchy. So the scene before, or that like the song before computer blue, that's when Wendy kind of goes to her knees and,

And she's like fake blowing, fake blowing the kid. Yeah. As he's like having like his guitar orgasm and Billy's like, what the hell is it? And then we go to darling Nikki. So it's not the kind of club Billy wants to run. He wants first Avenue to be a family business. I just want to tip the scale a little bit while we're like laying out these most rewatchable scenes and just say that this, this sequence is extraordinary because it's,

The movie itself is extraordinary for how faithful to the album it is. Right. But going from Computer Blue to Darling Nikki is as it happens on the album. And there is something about the transition here, the movie's faithfulness in the...

all of the action being balanced at the same time. Yeah. Um, it, it's just, it's a great musical. It's a great moment for the band. Um, and it's just like him with no shirt, uh,

Totally sweaty. Well, in computer blue, he's got that mask thing on. Like he's got eyes wide shut. Yes. The lingerie over the eyes is, but he can see, right? Yeah. That's the thing. He's just wearing like lingerie on his face. Right. Like a superhero, which I want to come back to, by the way. Oh, the superhero thing. All right. We got to keep moving. Let's go. I mean, there's really two more scenes. This is a short one, but

Prince figuring out Purple Rain on the piano, I just love. It's short, but we go right into from that. He's finally like his dad is in the hospital. He finds the papers. So his dad lied to him. His dad actually did write music down. Starts playing the Purple Rain on the piano. And then it goes right into time performing again and then mocking him after.

Let's go crazy. I want to say just about the writing down of the music, how deep and historical and Black that is. And this idea that a real musician among a certain class of Black musician doesn't need to write it down because it comes from your soul. And to record it is basically to take a snapshot of it and to lock it in time and lock it in place.

But there's something about the dad's awareness of how illegitimate of a certain kind of musician it would be to write this stuff down. But also, on the other hand, as a matter of melodrama and sentimentality, Prince needs something to discover and remember his father's glory days. Yeah. But it also proves that his father is...

probably we don't know an intuitive musician but also like a classical musician right a jazz musician and a classicist so there's that yeah i had that in unanswered roles i guess we do it out francis l what was his career looking like probably late 60s early 70s probably a jazz pianist um possibly a couple bands blue computer blue in this movie is his riff right yeah

And that's something he had come up with. I don't know what format it would go in, but I mean, if he's writing this stuff down, he's probably a jazz musician.

How's the family for Morris is one of the worst digs. It just cuts so deep when he says that. It's like, oh my God, that's like the meanest thing anyone's ever said. Morris, I want to like you. Why do you have to do that? I'm coming around to Questlove the more that we get into this. It actually is. It is. This is a hip hop beef. Last one. The last, it's the last like 16 minutes of movie. Ladies and gentlemen, The Revolution. Does the Francis L dedication. Mm-hmm.

I'd like to dedicate this to my father, Francis L. It's a song the girls in the band wrote, Lisa and Wendy. Wendy does the look like, holy shit, we're playing it. This song has to be great for how this movie has built up toward it. And it's great. Yeah. It actually matches the moment in all these different ways. It's the title of the movie. It has to be an A plus and it's an A plus. But interestingly enough,

let me make sure I'm a hundred percent sure about this, but I'm actually curious about like, do you think the movie should have ended there? No, no. Um, you could make the case, but now you're in my head. It actually could have ended there, but then we don't get, I would die for you and baby, I'm a star. And we don't get like Prince just, we don't get him running backstage. Um,

We don't get him sitting there hearing the applause. We don't get the incredible Jill cameo with the, hi, and she just tears come down her face. Then he sees everybody. Then he comes back on and he's like, that's it. He's finally connected with the audience in the right way. So I think we need it. Right. Because I just think that this is the one out of sequence portion of the movie, right?

Well, that's not true. It goes in and out of sequence, basically. But the album, of course, ends with Purple Rain. That's the last song on there. Oh, you're saying like from a, yeah, I got you. From a song sequence, it's out of sequence. Right. But I'm wondering, I mean, that moment is so effective, but I always forget that there are two more numbers left.

And they're part of this sequence, this last performance, basically. Well, if we don't get the last song, we don't get the guitar cum shot. No, we don't. Really, the movie's not building up to Purple Rain. It's building up to a guitar ejaculation. But the movie and the album are arguing two different things also, right? The movie is making a case for Prince as...

as the biggest star in the world, right? Like he is, he is claiming, you know, he's, there are these odes to thriller, these like callbacks to thriller, Michael Jackson's thriller video where he, you know, takes all the Ray out and then turns into a werewolf. He tries to scare Apollonia at some point in his lair. Um, I, I, I think that the movies, the movie's point is that I am a bigger star than Michael Jackson. I'm a better star than Michael Jackson.

I can do things on this stage with my instrument, metaphorically and literally, that Michael Jackson isn't even trying to do and couldn't do even if he did try. And I'm sexier and more realistic companion to the ladies than Michael Jackson is the other piece of this. I was hotter as a kid from Michael Jackson than I was for Prince. Nobody was like, oh my God, Michael's laying some pipe this week.

Look out ladies. Michael, Michael Jackson's feeling horny today. Well, what's, you know, it's funny though, bill along those lines, there's that moment where he takes before you get, um, before we get, I think we are not at when doves cry yet. Was this right before when doves cry, he takes Apollonia to his, to his basement. Yeah. It is weird. Basement. He's living in mom's basement. He's writing a twins blog.

Nightmare on Elm Street territory down there. Yeah, it is pretty creepy. I mean, even the music is going dark. It knows that it's kind of in horror movie land and it understands that there's a danger in that nether region of his life. But there's a moment where she touches him and he says, she touches him and she says, King Kong. And he goes, stop. And then he touches her

And she says, no, there's just some weird, I don't know. It's like, it's, it's not S and M right. But it's like kids trying to figure out how to initiate sex. Right. Cause after that they're off to the races. It's like, they can't stop. Oh yeah. We got a little, yeah. Like King Kong. King Kong is deep. What do you got for most rewatchable scene? You have to pick one. Oh, the end, the end, the end.

The end, the end. It is so exciting and also unnecessary. I'm actually, I find I'm perfectly comfortable arguing that this movie should have ended at purple rain. It should have ended. You can get the same slow motion shot. You can find a way to send this band off in a blaze of glory. At that point, Apollonia is an afterthought anyway. Right. Um,

there's no romantic tension to settle because all of the tension romance wise is between him and the music and him and the band, right? That's the resolution that needs to happen here, not things with her. So I think it's, I think it's those last three songs.

It's 20 minutes. I vote for Beautiful Ones and the Apollonia Morris date happening into Beautiful Ones is my favorite part of the movie and one of my favorite sections of any 80s movie. That was today's most rewatchable scene brought to you by Nissan. Take on those big bad trails of the 2024 Nissan Pathfinder Rock Creek's big bad tires.

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This episode is brought to you by McDonald's. Sometimes classics, they get a twin. Like Goodfellas, Casino isn't the same type of movie, but you know, they're like fraternal twins. Scorsese did it, De Niro's in it, Pesci's in it. That's what happens. Well, another classic is getting a twin. Introducing the Chicken Big Mac. Oh my God, that sounds delicious. Two chicken patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, and pickles.

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All right. New category. What's the most 1984 thing about this movie? That's not Prince. The boom boxes playing, playing cassettes in a boom box. I'll give you that as a choice. I'll give you the haircuts. I'll give you Morris having a brass waterbed. I'll giving, should I, or should I not engage in domestic violence as a plot device for the 11th biggest movie of 1984? Yeah.

And I'll give you, in real life, the female lead of this movie, Apollonia, was dating David Lee Roth. Doesn't it figure? What do you have for the most 1984 thing about this movie? I mean, I like yours. I think the boom boxes are important. I also think that the most 1984 thing about this movie is its form, right? It's the way it's been edited. There are cuts. Good call. Yeah.

Like, in those concert sequences that go from audience to stage to somewhere in the club, and then that obligatory... I don't even know what we call this shot. I bet you Sean Fennessey knows. Like, it's... Or Chris Ryan, actually. Like, there's that...

It's like an action shot, but there's nothing in it, but like were, it's just like a worrying shot of a camera of something being panned to the left or to the right. And it's just there to connote, to literalize action, but there's no action in it. It's just a camera panning across who knows what. And it just looks like it's connecting two disparate fields of energy with just the swoop of, of camera stuff that it's,

shot happens a handful of times in this movie and it is such a it is such an 80s way of literalizing the figurative and of like creating an energy uh that does not we don't use that doesn't get used at all anymore the single frame montage in let's go crazy is very 1984 too when it's just like all those collage of people all right what's age the best god damn i love wendy and lisa

First of all, Wendy's Meryl Streep in this movie. Even Meryl Streep's like, that lady can act. I'm not going that far, but I hear you. I love when they mock him when he's like, what are you guys doing here? And they play the synth and she's like, I'm here to tell you there's something else. Our music. And they're just like so catty with him. There's some really crazy real life shit that's in there that actually just mirrors what happened. He fires them at the end of 1986 and

Also, I don't think I knew this forever, but I just thought they were friends, but they were like one of the first great lesbian celebrity couples, but they... Oh, Wendy and Lisa were in a relationship. Super...

you know, confidential about it. But I didn't know that in the eighties, but they were together for like 20 years and they, it was, became a pretty well-known thing. Wasn't something, there was no way to know that in 1984, but I didn't know such a style. Lisa at one point there have that one scene and she's just got like two thirds of her boob is just hanging out. Like they're just so comfortable with, with their, how they look and how they're just hanging and how they're like battling Prince. It's there. I just love them.

Yeah. I think I, every time I watch this, I re I remember how much they were my favorite part of the Prince experience. They have a solo album. They did a bunch of albums, but the way Wendy, you mentioned this earlier, the way Wendy, Wendy clicked with Prince, it would, there was like a little Jordan Pippen with it, with the way they moved together on stage. It was just really special. It's

Prince wasn't, I guess, meant to be with a band long-term with anybody, but it's too bad. But he kept forming them and breaking up. He kept trying to recreate these family scenarios. And then...

become, he becomes disappointed anytime he realizes that a family is a collective unit and not like a dictatorship that the daddy was. Right. Basically. He's just too famous to be in a family. Yeah. I just, I just want to say that the, the first Wendy and Lisa album is fantastic. That's it. That's called Wendy and Lisa. That's it. I just love it. It's one of my favorite. It's one of my favorite low level, like B plus albums. Hmm.

more would stage the best Prince's live performances. And this seems like he's actually singing, but as far as I could tell, they, they weren't recording any of this stuff live. They were just singing over it. Uh, I really liked the modern heirs who somehow didn't end up on the purple rain album. Yeah. I don't know what happened. Des Dickerson, man. He, he was, he's just a wonderful like person to like, there's so much. I don't think he knows what happened.

Right now, I think he was in the, he was in the revolution. Then he was out and around. I don't, I don't really know what the, I want to be a modern air, modern air, modern air. I don't really know what's going on in that song, but that was very 1984. Um, he made up a word and it's, it's too bad that, or a concept even, right? Like it's just too bad. It didn't catch on. What is a modern air?

I mean, I think it's, I think, you know, to be this person, I think it's a flaneur. It's like a person who in one sense is it's Prince, right? Yeah. It's Prince. Prince would be a modern era. So a modern era is like, I want to have a lot of oil in my hair and very heavy jackets. And I want to be fucking cool as hell.

Yeah, basically, essentially. Morris and Jerome's mayor gimmick, I don't know if it's the number one gimmick of all time for me, but it's in the conversation. I don't know why I love it so much. 40 years later, I still love it. I don't know what makes it work the way it does. I can understand Jerome eventually felt like he didn't have enough to do in the band and

And left. And we know Morris had a bunch of problems, but it's just so funny to watch those two together on stage. It's such a, I mean, the thing that works with the mirror is it's kind of timeless. Yeah. Right. I mean, for all the, I mean, every person in this movie is,

has a Renaissance era corollary, right? And there's something, I mean, basically Morris, I mean, basically Jerome is a lady in waiting, right? Like he is, he is the person holding mirrors for Queens and princesses.

Um, and there's such a fascinating collapse of, of masculinity and femininity in this movie that feels also very black to me. Um, you know, in order to get your hair to look like that, you gotta, you gotta wrap it up every day. And the first time we see Morris, his hair, you know, he's got his hair wrapped. Yeah. Um, yeah.

It's just, this movie is simultaneously revealing and concealing at the same time. And that mirror gimmick is like the epitome of that revelation and concealment. Because at the same time that Morris is looking, Jerome can't see anything. Right. He's holding the mirror sideways. Morwen staged the best.

Should have mentioned this earlier, but I mean, especially by cable purposes in the 80s, like just, this was a movie you could jump in at any time. You'd be like, oh, we're about to have beautiful ones? Great. Oh, the Darlie Nikki scene's coming up. Awesome. Oh, it's the start of the movie. Oh, it's the last 20 minutes. Like, it really didn't matter. Prince's scene with Jill the waitress, when he comes in and she's like, Wendy and Lisa left something for you. And he's like,

What is it? A subpoena? Like the acting in that is like, it's just mid eighties porn level acting. I love it. Um, mentioned the fake blowjob with Wendy during computer blue. Yeah. Uh,

Prince is wearing Seinfeld's puffy shirt for the last 15 minutes of the movie and other parts. And I don't know if, did Seinfeld get the puffy shirt from this movie? Didn't we all think that that puffy shirt was Prince basically? I mean, they got, they called it a pirate shirt. Yeah. The pirate shirt. I don't know, but I only ever received it as a Prince shirt. Like, I don't know what everybody else is talking about. That was Prince to me.

I'm a sex shooter. Come in my direction. I like it. I'm in. In-movie music rivalries always work for me just in general. Dave Chappelle as Prince. That's been a What's Aged the Best for the last 20 years. The 1980s Minnesota?

which was not just like a Minnesota funk scene, but there's a whole bunch of other alternative bands. And I mean, it was like, I had no idea. I was in the Northeast. I didn't know Minnesota was this burgeoning school empire. Yeah. Husker dude. Terry Prince. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Bob mold. I mean, there's so much happening.

In Minnesota at that time. And it was, I mean, as a Philadelphian, when it would trickle over, when it made its way over as something from Minnesota, right? That's how I found Husker Du is like this band from Minneapolis.

I don't remember if it was from... It was like the Minnesota era, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I just say one thing about Sex Shooter, though? One of my favorite things about this movie is that somebody in the editing room was like, we got to make sure we keep the scene. We got to keep the whole song so that when...

The blonde lady, she's got a line, right? We need to see them. We need to see who's saying the line. Come on, have some fun, and come and kiss the gun, right? We need to see the person saying that line. It's just such an authentic touch. Yeah. And this movie is full of little things like that. And apparently Apollonia-

was an actress. She wasn't a singer. So they really had to like work with her on the performance. They dubbed her lyrics and she, she's been done a bunch of interviews about this movie since, but she was like, I was terrified. I never sang anything. They went, they went more for the look with her. Um, well, that's the other thing about 1984. Right. So Magnoli said, uh,

He said, it's August 3rd, I guess 1983. I'm in the mezzanine at First Avenue. One of the songs Prince played that night, as soon as the concert over, I ran downstairs. I said, what's that song? It sounds like a Bob Dylan anthem. He said, it's called Purple Rain. I said, that's the song I'm missing. He said, that's great. Can we call the movie that? And that's how fast the title came into being. I love, you know, we've done 353 rewatchables.

Just how simple and stupid some of this stuff is. Like, hey, what's that song called? Purple Rain. Can we call the movie that? Yeah, sure. And then all of a sudden we have Purple Rain for 40 years. Any other what stage is the best for you? The obvious. I mean, I think the time, right? I think the time as a band, I think they remain underrated. Let's fucking do this now. I had it later, but let's go right now.

I mean, I just feel like you watch them in this movie and there is just a world in which, so I've got Pauline Kael's review. I just want to read you something about what she says about Morris. She kind of liked the movie. Fine. I think she felt like she was too old to really get it. So she writes about how the kids are into it. Always a bad sign. Yeah. Tough stage of her career too, at this point, but she's still killing it. She's still killing it. This is from, this is from state of the art. Um, and here's what she says about Morris.

And when he and his handsome sidekick, Jerome Benton, who looks like a dark Douglas Fairbanks senior, dance to the Times music, they have a loose, floppy grace. Morris Day suggests a Richard Pryor without the genius and the complications.

Part of the pleasure of watching him is that his musical numbers are shaped. So is his performance. He uses distance and tension. This is certainly a contrast to Prince, who doesn't want us to react to a performance. He wants us to react to him, to his greatness. I disagree, but that's a...

I see where she's going. Yeah. She's right. I mean, he is, he is so put together and the band is so put together in this movie and the songs just sound great. And in a different way than, than purple rain, than the, than the songs of purple rain sound performed in a club. The, the, the time was a club band. They made club music and jungle love and, um,

Oh my God, I can't even remember the other song. Jungle Love and... The Bird Song. I never really knew what the title of that song was. I just knew I loved it. I can't believe I forgot it. I love that song. But you know, the thing about the time is they never went anywhere after this movie. I mean, they never disappeared after this movie. I think there might've been some substance stuff with the band. This was the height of the Coke era.

I don't mean they didn't go anywhere like success wise. They, they became very successful. Like they came back in the nineties. They had, um, they had fishnet. The nostalgia re the nostalgia Renaissance was really good for them. They popped up. Like they even were in Jane by Jay and silent Bob strike back. They were the last four minutes of that movie. Like they were always kind of around.

And they just were good at their job. I agree. Morris is really, really charismatic. Not a great singer, but a great presence. And that always comes through in the music. His laugh. He's got one of the great laughs. Yeah.

All right, some quickie categories. This is a new one, suggested by Kyle Brandt last week. We're in Test Drive at Fortune from Rudy, the Charles S. Dutton character. The Fortune 3 Clap Award for most gif-able moment. So the most gif-able moment of this movie is pick 20 creepy, weird Prince smiles that any of those side shots of him where he's thinking and then his face turns into like a

I would vote for that unless she would come up. Is there another Giffable moment? The swoop on Apollonia? I think that there is the look that she, there's an early, there's an early,

I guess it's a, you're panning into Apollonian when she gets to that apartment for the first time and she looks around it and she, this is the best look she gives in the movie to me. It's not the prince. It's that dingy ass apartment they move her into. And there's just, I'm like, I always get tricked into thinking this is going to be a great performance just by the look that she gives when she sees how bad that apartment is. That can be used for all kinds of shit.

Great shot Gordor Award, most cinematic shot was that slow swoop in on Apollonia during the beautiful ones. I like how that looks. I would vote for that. Yeah, yeah. Den of Thieves, Benihana Award, First Avenue, The Nightclub.

The Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award for best needle drop. I think the whole movie wins. I'm not picking a moment. You can't? I guess. No. Maybe it's When Doves Cry, just kicking it out of nowhere at the montage, just because that's like an official needle drop, but you can't pick one. Well, I think Take Me With You is a great needle drop because it doesn't happen on stage, basically. Right. And it's a transition. Yeah, maybe that's the answer. Okay. Big Kool and a Burger Award, best use of food and drink.

probably the champagne order. Get my change back. Will you? All right. What's aged the worst? Some pretty bad acting in this movie. Um, I enjoy it, but not great. Um, I mean, this is one of the legacies of this movie is, uh, not a great movie for the treatment of women. And as, as the years have passed, uh, it has become part of the legacy of the movie. We got Jerome puts a girl in a dumpster, the kid's dad, every scene with him, he's an absolute awful disaster. Uh,

The Revolution Bandmates Joke About Wendy's Period.

The star of the movie hits a woman. We almost hits her again. It's almost like when we had Macho Man Randy Savage in the mid 80s, where part of the gimmick was like, please don't hit Miss Elizabeth, please don't. And we kind of get that for the last half hour. And it's just very strange to watch. I'll be interested in producer Craig's thoughts on that later. But on the other hand, Prince defended it over the years after like, hey, it's a movie. We're playing somebody who is really damaged by abuse.

And you know that this it's a character. Here it makes psychological sense, right? It's not just there for the sake of being there the way it was throughout the decade. Like,

It wasn't pleasant and it doesn't actually tarnish the movie to me because it comes from a place. And what's interesting, I mean, Morris, I mean, sorry, Jerome throwing that woman who's coming after Morris in the dumpster, not great. But it's in the spirit of what assholes Morris and Jerome already are, right? Like they're a particular kind of cartoonish asshole. Prince is like a psychological asshole.

And so a lot of the ways in which that psychology manifests itself is through the treatment of women, unfortunately. But that doesn't feel far-fetched to me. That feels very much within the logic of the pathology, if that makes sense. Yeah, we've come through with this problem a few times. Not a problem, but this...

thing with the rewatchables where it's like, Hey, it's a movie. This is art. These are characters. Like sometimes not every story can be palatable. Um, Prince. Yeah. When you get enough of these 350 something movies, right. You're going to have a couple of them. Prince with the puppet is weird. I've never really a hundred percent understood it. Uh, Oh, I love that moment.

Well, is he actually do, it doesn't seem, it seems like they're dubbing in his voice. I know that's why I'm like, why, why do this? If he can't actually do ventriloquist stuff, but it's so dark. I mean, I don't know. It does get weird. I mean, I don't know. It's just really, really dark and instructive too. What stage of where's Des Dickerson in the modern heiress. This was sadly the peak and then he didn't make the album.

I love Des' headband. That's my favorite thing about Des. I hate the cutaway in the last song to Morris and Jerome dancing in the crowd. It's like, you've just set up this amazing beef between these guys for two hours. Now they're just in the crowd like, yeah, go get them, kid. He just said the meanest thing ever 15 minutes ago. I know. Yeah. This is professional wrestling to me. It's like, I'm, oh, right. I forgot. These guys don't really hate each other. Right. It's,

Well, when you say that, how's the family line? That's pretty rough. Prince and Apollonia, the chemistry... We don't know what order it was filmed. Right, true. The chemistry of Prince and Apollonia, the looks at each other is good, but when they actually have to act, I mean, there's an incredible cast in What If, so I'm going to plant the flag on that, and we're going to come back to it. And then Prince's movie career, which you're on the pro side of, but to call Purple Rain... I'm not...

I'm not on the pro- Well, you like Graffiti Bridge, which puts you in a minority. But he did Under the Cherry Moon, he did Graffiti Bridge, which...

There's part of Graffiti Bridge, because I haven't seen it since it came out, but it was in Wikipedia. It said, making matters more interesting is the arrival of Aura, an angel sent from heaven to sway both Morris and the kid into leading more righteous lives while dealing with their attraction to her. And I was like, no wonder I blocked that movie out of my mind. That sounds awful. But it was like, it's basically the unofficial sequel to this movie. So Prince did say this about Graffiti Bridge in 91. One of the most purest,

More than purest, most spiritual, uplifting things I've ever done. Nonviolent, positive, had no blatant sex scenes. Maybe it will take people 30 years to get it. They trash Wizard of the Oz first too. We're 33 years in. I still don't get it. So there you go. What's aged the worst? I love it. This is really for you and five other people who will 100% get this. But my most...

My two most upsetting 80s funk band, why didn't this go even better than it did are The Time and The Busboys. Ooh. I just don't, why, why did The Busboys just have to peak at Vromance with those two songs? Those songs were great. Anyway.

I don't know what happened, but this is a great question. I haven't thought about the bus boys since it happened. Go watch 48. They have two songs in a row in 48 hours, and they crush it. Yeah, yeah. And then Morris Day apparently was a problem on the set. Unclear why. Rivalry with Prince. Maybe some off-the-set stuff. But yeah. He seems difficult. I mean, like young Morris just, I mean, young Morris is cute.

He's a light-skinned black man, which is, you know, I mean, it is a real magic carpet ride for some of those guys. And he's got those great freckles.

And it's true. Like the movie sort of builds him as a part, like an object of lust in the public, right? Like women coming up to him being like, you didn't call me last week. And him being like, I don't care. Right. All right. Some quickie categories. The Miley Rubin Award. Did this movie need a better sex scene? We don't get to give this out that often. We get Prince from behind. Really good.

Taking some liberties with Apollonia. Like it's, it's kind of shocking that this was the 11th biggest movie that it's like, he's kind of got her hand on her pants, but then it doesn't really go further. And then we see them in the barn for a split second. But the rumors have always been that there was a pretty heated sex scene that got left on the cutting room floor in the barn. I think we're good. I believe it. I also think that, I mean, this is some of the best kissing scenes.

That you're going to see in a movie, you know, like, I mean, you know, one of my big pet peeves with all, with so many movies is the people kissing can't kiss or they're like, they don't like kissing the person they are kissing. Right. And it just is like, if you're really hot for this person, you are trying to eat their face.

And he is trying to eat her face. Purple rain. That is real to me. We don't get to give this one out too often too. The Jamie Lee Curtis Unnecessary Neutrity Award. The Lake Minnetonka scene. Yes, yes, yes. The Vincent Chase Award for are we sure this character was actually good at his job. I got to go with Billy the club owner who has Prince in his prime and he's like,

I don't know, man. You might have to step it up. The modern airs have one song. You might get bumped. But I have... Now, this might go in nitpicks, but it's too big a nit to pick. This is the single greatest... This movie is the single biggest indictment of rock journalism maybe in the history of recorded sound. How on earth could...

These, this band, let's just say the before you and I and the rest of the audience. I had this in the unanswerables. To Billy's club. How do they not have a record deal and a 5,000 word Rolling Stone profile by now? But Bill, let's just say that like the thing that, like the thing they were doing two years ago was the songs from, were the songs from 1999. Yeah. Like,

There's no world in which these people with a band this tight with these songs isn't the biggest band in the world three years ago. Right. And what is Billy doing by not telling anybody that the band exists?

Like, it's just, there's so much dereliction of duty here that I don't know what to say. Like, is there nobody in Minnesota with a connection to Jan Wenner who's off making perfect at this point? This is just total rock criticism and rock journalism malpractice on full display here. Couldn't agree more. Ruffalo Hannah, rib-neck partridge over acting word. The girl who gets thrown into a dumpster

Is also the worst actress. I don't know. Somebody owed her a favor or something. Like, worse, how dare you? She couldn't be worse. It is film criticism happening on site, which is what I also love. I love it when a movie is its own critic in some ways. Was there a better title for this movie? I'm going to say no. No. Can you dig it a word for most memorable quote? You have to purify yourself in Lake Minnetonka. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Okay. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest take award. You probably don't have one prepared, but I do. Here we go. Prince was better than Michael Jackson. Oh no. Prince was a better performer than Michael Jackson. Okay. Purple Rain was better than Thriller. The Purple Rain movie was better than anything Michael Jackson did creatively. I just have Prince over Michael Jackson as great as Michael Jackson was. I think his peak was higher. I don't even know if that's a hot take.

I don't think it's a hot take. I mean, I think it like to, to a person who hasn't really thought about this, it sounds blasphemous, but when you, it's an easy case to make, right? Um, he's just more talented. He like, he could also play the guitar as well as anybody in the last 60 years on top of all the other shit. And I think as a stage performer, yes.

if you're going to say like, like Michael was an amazing stage performer, but I, if I had to, my choice of Michael at his peak or Prince at his peak, who would I have rather seen for two hours? I'm taking Prince. I think the difference, I think the thing that you are sort of alluding to, um, and I've never seen Michael Jackson live. I never got to see him. Um,

I have heard from people who really know that those shows in those giant arenas were some of the best hours of their lives. The Michael Jackson. Yes. Yeah. I can imagine there being a world, having seen Prince live a few times, where the thing that makes Michael Jackson an extraordinary live entertainer gets tiresome.

Because it is built around an old entertainment model, right? An old showbiz model. But at the end of the day with Michael, you just have these songs. And he felt, and Prince didn't have this, but Michael did. Michael would speed up the tempo of the songs live so that they just were different. The thing, the groove is doing a different thing in concert than it is in the studios.

Um, I think I would rather watch a movie with Prince and Michael Jackson in some way. Um, but I don't really know that because Michael didn't make enough. You can see in the music videos. But I don't think Michael could have made a movie like this. No, no, no, no. Because Michael was really, Michael was really about concealment. And so the, like the thriller music video is more where Michael was going to go creatively, which is that ended up being his creative choice.

Apex, right? Right, right, right, right. But to think if you, this is a really interesting thing to think about. And there's a thing, you know, it's funny that you're saying this because this is a thing that we have been talking about for more than 40 years, right? Like who of the two of them is the better XYZ thing? I would rather listen to Michael sing than

for longer than I'd rather listen to Prince sing. Prince has got a great voice. He's in the top 50. Michael's in the top 10. I think that you're right about the guitar. I think the way Prince thinks about rearrangement, mixing and matching songs, how a band works,

What a band even is, despite the number of bands he's taken apart and put back together and scrapped and built from scratch. I don't know. This is a really deep question. I don't really... I don't have a comfortable answer. I definitely will say...

I will say that just from the standpoint of the albums, Prince is the winner, right? Like Prince, I love Dangerous is my favorite Michael album. Thriller is the best Michael album. But like for 10 years, 10 years, Bill, Prince was doing masterpieces after masterpieces after masterpieces.

And the idea that like the thing that so allegedly breaks the streak is the Batman soundtrack. I'm sorry. He was throwing, he was doing us a favor with that music. That was the most exciting movie of 1999. And they had the music by the most exciting musician in the world for it. It just, it's just crazy to me. Take a break. Come back with casting. What ifs?

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It's a Camry vibe. Learn more at toyota.com slash Camry. All right, come back. Two really good casting what-ifs for this. After they have everything set up, Warner Brothers in the first mini is like, what if we replace Prince with John Travolta? They were like, no. So that happened. And then Prince wanted Gina Gershon to be the girlfriend. Wow. This was after Vanity...

Vanity left. Vanity was in Vanity 6 right before filming. Nobody really knows what happens. She went to potentially do Last Temptation of Christ, but the movie got delayed. That's a little flimsy. Her and Prince had a blowout because they were dating. That's a little flimsy. There might have been drug stuff. She had drug stuff her whole life. Whatever happened, she pops out. She's supposed to be the Apollonian character.

Then it goes to Gina Gershon. She's a freshman at NYU. Prince flies her out to Minnesota, plays the soundtrack for her, and she doesn't want to do it because of the sex scene. Ironic. Then they offer to Jennifer Beals, who's like, I'm going to Yale. I can't. And now we're in the scrap heap looking for anybody, and everybody liked Apollonia's look. Wait, isn't... So Flashdance has already happened. Flashdance has happened, and she's like, I'm going to Yale. I'm done. No thanks. So there you go. Best That Guy Award...

It's probably Billy, the club owner, right? He has one IMDB credit. Nobody. I didn't know what his last name was till I did the research for the movie. It's Billy Sparks. So he's winning that kind of likable. I thought he was good. I liked him. Plus he had brought out the track suit.

Yeah, he's got a timeless look. You sent me a picture, you sent me a screenshot of Billy, and I was like, this could be from belly. This could be from two weeks ago. He could be at a basketball, he could be at a links game. DM Waiters Award. I have Billy the club owner. I have Jerome, because I think he's not in it quite enough, so he qualifies. Morris is in it too much. Jill the waitress.

Wendy and Lisa are in this movie a lot. I don't know if they qualify either. And then I have the club announcer, the weird guy that comes in and just goes, Oh, I love him. Ladies and gentlemen, the time. He's not a cabaret. That guy is straight up out of cabaret. I think the answer is Billy. Yeah, it's Billy. Okay. Recasting couch director city. I would not touch any of this. I would. What would you change? I had a really interesting thought about

Like, just like work with me here. How different a movie is this if Apollonia can actually give a performance, right? I mean, I, cause I think the thing that makes the movie great is that ultimately the great performances all happen on stage, even hers, right?

She comes alive on stage. Yeah. Not as alive as Morris Day and The Time and Prince. I would argue she comes alive on Lake Minnetonka. That's not actually Lake Minnetonka. That's your 13-year-old self talking. That's not reality. Whatever. What happens if Eliza Minnelli gets this part? What happens if you don't give it to...

like just some beautiful woman, you give it to an actress. Well, what happens if Vanity gets it? She could actually act. And it was one of the most beautiful women of the eighties. Yeah. I just wonder what happens to this because the part is clearly been written to stand independent of Prince, right? We are watching Prince from her point of view, but we're also experiencing her life without him sometimes. Yeah.

And I don't know. I just wonder if it's probably- I just don't know who the actress was in 1984 who could have done it. Unless she wanted to go Madonna, which would have probably broken the universe. It just would have brought in fire and crows. They did wind up working together for one song on-

Like a Prayer, one of my favorite Madonna songs. What sports announcer would you want doing the director's commentary? Tony Romo, Chris Collins, or somebody else? I'm going to give you, this is clearly Tony Romo. Oh, yeah. It's clearly the Darlene Nikki scene. Uh-oh, Jim, the kid isn't happy. Oh, he's breaking out Darlene Nikki. She's in a hotel lobby masturbating with a magazine, Jim. This is going to get ugly. She's ready to grind.

I will listen to Tony Romo. Yeah, well, it's football season. We got to bring Tony back. Yeah, he's going to do a lot of my turn. Half-assed inner research. The movie was originally much darker and they had deleted scenes like the sex in a barn. They had Prince going to Apollonia Six's rehearsal and actually fighting with members of the time. Like a fist fight. That sounds...

That sounds out of Prince's behavior book. They had Prince's mother talking to him. They had a whole scene about his relationship with the father. They cut all of it and kept it going. Prince in real life dated Wendy's twin sister, Susanna, for like a year. Not a good situation there either. The kid never said a word to Morris in the whole movie.

Morris says 18 words to the kid. Yeah. It's all Steve McQueen, no dialogue shit. It's a real flex. That's a real, real flex. Darling. I'm not even. Yeah. I'm not even saying dialogue to you. Darling, Nikki.

started the whole tipper gore um sexually explicit lyrics thing literally was ground zero for it her 11 year old daughter was listening to darling nikki tipper gore freaked out al gore's wife and we were off and and it eventually led to warning labels on music because she was masturbating with the magazine jim

So there you go. Can we talk for a second about how good that song is though? It's fucking amazing. It's a great song. And I don't, everybody who, who listens to it multiple times in their life has a, probably has a different moment when it hits them. What, what musically is happening here. And for me, there's the kick drum sequence where like, I didn't understand what was going on there until like,

I was maybe 28. You were 35? Okay. I was definitely an adult. I was driving in a car with my friend Donnan and we were listening to the soundtrack and we both like, he almost crashed the car because it hit us at the same moment that like,

holy shit, this kick drum is exactly what it sounds like it is. This rapid fire kick drum, it just, I don't know. I did mention when we did that scene, Prince athletically on stage was pretty great. He throws the mic down at one point and then jump falls down and then sings it into the microphone and it's like,

I don't know, he was like a magician. - Of course he was on "Painkillers." I mean, you watch this movie and you totally understand what toll it took on his body to be that athletic. - He's jumping two feet down wearing like five inch heels. "Apex Mountain," Prince is maybe the all time example of "Apex Mountain" for this 'cause the album's already out, the movie becomes a huge hit. This is about as apexy as it gets. "Apollonia," no question. "The Time," no question.

Minnesota sound? No question. Well... No, come on. Okay. All right. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. I'm just thinking about Jimmy and Terry and Janet, but that's fine. Minneapolis and Minnesota just as a city and a state? It's conceivable. I don't know if people go 87 Twins. Yeah.

I was going to ask, what is happening? Sports-wise, not awesome. It's basically more music movies. Kirby Puckett's coming. I think they win the 87 World Series. They're about to get a team. Shit's happening. Magazine masturbating, unquestionably Apex Mountain. The First Avenue Nightclub, still kicking, doing great. Clarence Williams III, no. Riding a motorcycle with five-inch lifts, absolutely Apex Mountain. Lake Minnetonka,

Which wasn't actually Lake Minnetonka, but I still feel like it's Apex Mountain. Prince's customized Honda Matic Honda CM400A motorcycle. Yeah. Which changes, kind of changes during the movie, becomes a different motorcycle, I noticed. Oh, does it? Yeah. And that's about it. We hit everything. Is that a motorcycle that we see in movies very often? No, it's from 1981. Okay. Yeah.

Cruz or Hanks for the lead role, Cruz?

Hanks as the kid would be the weirdest fucking movie of all time. Cruise could at least give it a whirl. It'd be crazy. He would have... I mean, he would have really... I mean, the thing about this movie is how would you even... How dare you even think about recasting it? Because one of the greatest physical performances anybody's ever given in a movie. I'm saying, gun to your head. It's like you... Well, you have to. It's got to be Cruise. Sure, you'd pick Tom Cruise, but...

Racehorse Rock Band wrestler or fantasy team name. It's either Lake Minnetonka or the Modern Heirs. The Modern Heirs is a pretty good fantasy team name. I think that's a really good professional wrestling. 80s professional wrestling. The Modern Heirs. Here they are. The Modern Heirs. They're dressed like this. They become the Rock and Roll Express, but they start as the Modern Heirs. Pick a nits. Why did the kid live at home? He's fucking crushing it at First Avenue. He can't get a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Minnesota? Yeah.

Um, that is some real Carrie business. I mean, I think there's so many movie references happening here. Um, I think having him live in the house with the parents, it helps dramatically, but it's ridiculous. Yes. Yes. Why would Apollonia leave new Orleans to go to Minnesota for music? What was she hoping for? She was just like, I'm in on the funk sound.

New Orleans isn't a lively enough musical place to start my career. I need to. I'm telling you, she is running from something and we, the movie just doesn't ask why. It's a great call. Yes. Well, we know she didn't steal money from anyone because she only $37. I think jumping into the lake and then getting out of motorcycle is like, you'd get something worse than 2020 COVID. I don't even know what kind of level of pneumonia you would get from that. Yeah.

You get some level of pneumonia that hasn't been invented yet.

We should just try it. So somehow she survived that. I think the pneumonia is called Morris Day in this movie. Maybe. Apollonia lives in the cheapest hotel possible, but then somehow has enough money to buy Prince a guitar. That's like in the window. Like, I don't know how that happened. I don't know. The dad, the gunshot to the head, and he clearly in the script and in the movie was supposed to die, but the studio threw themselves in front of that one.

But there's a chalk outline like he died. Wait, Warner Brothers stopped to save the life of a black man? Well, apparently... 80s Warner Brothers. You'll love this. This is some deep, boring movie history. But star 80 the year before, which did not perform well. And they were like, one of the reasons it didn't perform well was it was too gruesome at the end. So you can't have the dad kill himself. So he's in the hospital and he's kind of like alive. We have the montage. Prince goes...

And there's a chalk outline on the floor. Yeah. Like he's dead, but he's not dead. It's so bizarre. It's so bizarre. It makes no sense. By the way, they did that brief shot of Prince hanging. So they put him up there and they put him on a harness and they had somebody sway him to make it seem like he was hanging. And Prince freaked out. It was like his worst nightmare. He had like had a panic attack. That whole sequence is so...

dark it really is there is so much going on there his brief flash of seeing himself hanging from the rafters of his rope i mean it's just all right here's the big one wesley unless do you i have one giant one if unless you have any more nitpicks so how did they play purple rain without rehearsing it

This is an interesting thing to get hung up on. Go on. He's like, this is a song from Wendy and Lisa. They're like, "Whoa, he's playing our song." They'd never heard the song. They'd never heard lyrics with the song. They'd never arranged it. They just break into one of the great rock anthems of the '80s that gets a seven-minute standing ovation.

He doesn't turn, talk to the synth person, the drummer, nothing. They don't know what the song is. So I assume we're supposed to think maybe they've rehearsed this one or two times, but they didn't know he was going to play it and that scene got cut. Otherwise, this is impossible. I mean, I love, I mean, I know that it's funny because we haven't really worked. We haven't articulated our philosophy of what constitutes a musical.

I think you can't be a musical if all the music performed in a movie occurs on a stage. And yet so many musicals where that is true involve rehearsals. Yeah. We only see one rehearsal of this movie. Right. And I think there's something about, to like answer the question that you're asking, I think that that movie musical and for 1984 music video magic,

is partially responsible for the suspension. The disbelief, some of the disbelief we're supposed to suspend, it involves how prepared these people are to go out here night after night and do this work.

It seems to just come from- It's a big leap. Listen, my job is to pick nits. It's a big leap. That's all I'm saying. Did I love it? Did I have appreciated it for 40 years? I have. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast are untouchable. This movie is obviously untouchable. Untouchable. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Sam Jackson, JT Walsh, Byron Mayo, Harling Mays, evil laughing Ramon Raymond, or Philip Baker Hall?

Can I give you Sam Jackson as Billy the Club owner? I was just about to say a young Sam Jackson as Billy the Club owner. Wendy and Lisa, I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing! The stage is no place for your personal business! Say what again? Say what again?

I think Sam might be the answer every time, though. I mean, he could have been a good Jerome, too. I mean, I don't know. Sam could have been in this movie. Like, he could have been a bunch of different parts. Just one Oscar who gets it, the soundtrack. Okay. Probably unanswerable questions. How would you describe Jerome's actual job? Valet? Yeah. I mean, classically speaking, he's the valet. Okay. I mean, that's... But, you know, I mean, it's funny because in a movie like this...

There's so much insecurity and desperation and sadness. And they don't all, all the desperate people don't know that they are desperate. Morris is so pathetic and so tiny. Yeah. And in his, in his like self-presentation, like in, in the meaning of his self-presentation that it's just so crazy to me that Jerome could be even smaller. Right. Jerome's like, I'm going to attach, attach myself to this dude. It's really fascinating.

Do you think the kid had a thing with Jill the waitress? Yeah, of course. 100%. I think that there's just something about... Well, I mean, first of all... Because when she's crying at the end, is she crying because... Those might be real tears, Bill. I mean, I think that... She's crying because she wasn't playing the Apollonia part? I think she's crying because Prince...

didn't treat her that great. Yeah. Um, I think, yeah, I did. They, they, I think those two characters in the world of that movie definitely had a relationship. It's an unspoken one. Yeah. And she's kind of hanging around. Um, what does it really sound like when doves cry? Is that what it sounds like? Guitarifica. Yeah. Did Billy eventually kick out the modern airs or Apollonia six? If you had to guess, he only had spot for three bands.

The kid grabbed his spot back. I feel like some modern errors, but Apollonia six, just coming out, playing the same two songs for a year. I mean, Des could kick it. I would have kept the modern errors. You keep, you keep the modern errors. Can you really masturbate in a hotel lobby with a magazine or would you get kicked out? I feel like you'd get removed. Um,

Have you seen the hotels that were- The hotels in New York City? Depends on the hotel, Bill. Sometimes that's not enough to get a room. All right, I have one more big one, unless you have any unanswerables. You're going to love this last one. Was Darling Nikki the first diss track? So I went back and I researched all the diss tracks before we hit the mid-80s.

Sweet Home Alabama was Leonard Skinner's diss track of Neil Young. Neil Young, yeah. How Do You Sleep was the Harrison diss track of John Lennon. But then you have to go all the way back. The first diss track ever, there's actually an answer. It's Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Oh, sure. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. That created the diss track. I don't think a lot of people realize that. And I know I didn't realize that for this weekend. Yeah. Stephen Foster invented the diss track. That's right. It led to, some say it led to the Drake Kendrick battle this summer. Best double feature choice. Would you go eight mile or would you go graffiti bridge?

I think for fun to be had in an evening, I'd go Graffiti Bridge. I think for on-the-nose accuracy, you do 8 Mile. If I'm going to a movie theater for a double feature...

I need to go Purple Rain than 8 Mile. And especially because you're going to watch 8 Mile and go, wow, they really ripped off Purple Rain. Wow. They're pretty shameless. 8 Mile would have to go first, obviously. Oh, you think? I mean, oh, yes. You can't. How can you end? You can't end. Yeah, you can't. Purple Rain, you're right. Purple Rain can't go first. No, no. The Indian Red's Zewantaneo Award for what happened the next day. I'm going to guess the kid became a massive star.

And Apollonia was probably back in New Orleans in like nine months. You're a fool. There is no way. Like if it hasn't already happened, Bill, why is it going to happen tomorrow? Like, did you see all the people lined up backstage? They were like agents. And I don't know. There was a lot. I think it happens. I just think it was a belated thing.

Come on. I don't know. I'd like to think. I'd like to think. But it's crazy because his next stint at that club would be the music for Around the World in a Day, which is not doing any of what Purple Rain is doing. But that was a self-sabotage album, though.

I mean, I love that. It's got raspberry beret. It's got tambourine, which is good live. It's got around the world in a day. I really like that album. The latter. Anyway, go on. You just made a face. That face was like, I don't know what you're talking about. Purple Rain was the album before it. What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie?

I can give you the bike. I'll give you the guitar. I give you the jacket from the purple rain scene. I give you the guitar from the purple rain scene. Probably the jacket from purple rain scene, right? It'd be a little tiny jacket. I want the hair, the hair. I want Prince's hair. That's what like, wow.

That is just some of the greatest impossible hair, impossible Negro hair that you're ever going to see in a movie. And people were trying. They were really trying to get that look. You just couldn't do it. Coach Finstock Award, Best Life Lesson. The movie wants it to be Never Get Married. That was the most profound scene in the movie. You really thought he was going to say something really deep? Yeah, he's just like, never get married. Right.

Or just keep following your dreams. And then who won the movie Prince in an absolute unequivocal landslide? Okay, the big moment is here. Craig Koroback's going to come in. He's not seen this movie, I'm pretty sure. He's like 10 years younger than the movie. And what'd you think? So I understand why this movie is important. I'm not sure it's good. We're not arguing that. Are we arguing that it's good?

No. We're arguing that we loved watching it. I think Bill is. I'm arguing that we loved it. Great. Okay. All right. Outside of the musical performances, I just, I don't know. I struggled. I think part of the reason why I'm watching this, like you said, for the first time in 2024 as a 30 year old. And I think the cards are a little bit stacked against me. I also think it's because I don't think Prince has really resonated with my generation.

As well as others from the 80s have. Craig is right, and that's one of the most upsetting things about... That's why we had to spend two hours doing this podcast.

It's weird. His music has not resurfaced in a way that others from the 80s, Michael Jackson, Madonna, whoever else, like later ABBA, and all the one-off big hits from the 80s. Some of the disco stuff. Those songs are all, yes, that's all back in a huge way at bars and stuff like that. And maybe I'm missing it, but there's just not a lot of Prince. I had never even really seen Prince perform in his heyday. I had never gone back to look at that. So when I saw the opening scene of this movie,

I was like, wow, I kind of get it. I get Prince now. Yeah. Um, and, but I don't know how many people my age have really, have really played darling Nikki at your wedding. I had never heard of that song. Yeah. My, uh, I don't know. I think I sent like a screenshot, uh, to my boyfriend who was, who was like in your age area, Greg, Craig. And, uh,

I don't think he, he responded in like with a, with a little bit of surprise. I mean, he, we, we listened to a lot of Prince. He's listened to plenty of Prince, but I don't think Prince is as central. I mean, I think what you're saying is, is true. I think he is a surprise waiting for people to discover. Right. Like I think one of the reasons we're doing this one, I mean, this is an absolutely beloved, beloved, beloved, beloved movie.

in a certain age range and i think under 30 probably not would be my guess yeah i it's it's a movie where when i watch him perform on stage and i listen to the songs live as he's performing them i i i find them to be extremely compelling and entertaining but i don't want to go put it on and listen on spotify like wow i'm not going to take these songs with me they don't they don't stick to me i don't know if it's the specific style of that of that version of pop

in the 80s. But yeah, and then outside of this, I mean, this movie kind of feels like a 90-minute or 100-minute music video where it has all this ambiguity and Prince's acting and there's more close-ups of Prince than there are close-ups of any actor in the history of movies. Yeah, and thank God. I mean, like 20% of this movie is just tight on his face and he's not speaking. Yeah, that's fair. Sign me up. I watched it with Liz and it didn't go over well. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that stands to reason. I am not surprised. Like, look, I think this movie is more interesting to talk about than it is to actually watch outside of the performances. That is definitely fair. And I also think that because there is a document...

called the purple rain album. It, it doesn't, but it's funny because there's weird, as Bill and I are talking, like, I really don't think that the one thing obviates the, the pleasure of the experience of listening to or watching the other, right? Like the movie to me is,

stands as its own document of Prince's virtuosity and ingenuity and just actual genius. And the album is doing that, but it's sort of showcasing what he can do in a studio. And there's like, these are these two extreme representations of what he's good at

um, ultimately serve a similar function, which is just to say like, he is the best. Uh, but, but Michael Jackson was going to age better. There's no question. I think making this movie, it's, I mean, making this movie, just making it is commendable. Nobody is putting this being the 11th biggest movie of 1984, but I don't think, but I think what Craig is getting at is interesting too, because I think that,

This is a movie about a persona, right? This is a movie about the construction of a sort of public identity based on private experience. So he is taking things that have happened to him and is building a mythology around them. And he was right. That movie did sort of overwhelm our ability to understand who this guy is as an artist. I just don't think there's anybody making music right now

under the age of 30. Prince was 26 when this movie came out. Yeah. I don't think there's anybody under the age of 30 who could introduce himself to the world with this much risk and virtuosity in the same way that Prince does here. First of all, nobody would give him the money. That's correct. But I also don't think anybody could. There's nobody making music right now who...

Who can do that?

as far as I can tell. I think that's right. I don't think there's any interest for many young artists to do that. The risk is too high. The upside's not there. Possibly. And in that sense, this movie is a cautionary tale, right? It's like, you could do that, but then you would have made your own Purple Rain and you'd spend the rest of your career trying to get past it. But it's not as though- Can you imagine Taylor Swift making her version of this? She would never do it in a million years. She's going to play a really super flawed character and-

write all this music for it. She's also a different point in her career, I guess. Also, Bill, she's just doing what you just said in the music. I don't think there needs to be an explicit visual component. All right, we got to go. Wesley Morris, a pleasure as always. Great to see you. Craig Horlbeck produced this podcast. Great to see you as well. You can watch us on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel as soon as this goes up and we will see you next week on The Rewatchables.