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r/Movies Recommends: The King of Comedy (1982) · Fumbling Through Film

• 0:00
  Gather together from the cosmic reaches of the universe. Here in this great screening room with comfortable recliners are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled.
• 0:10
  Keith. The evil in the hole in the middle.
• 0:12
  Terry.
• 0:13
  To me, I don't want to believe a world would just embrace the crazy guy, you know? I want to— I want him to not—
• 0:18
  Derek.
• 0:19
  We have no delusions of grandeur. We know exactly who we are and what we're doing. We are the number one genre-defining podcast of 3 dudes talking about movies.
• 0:26
  And the power twins, Zap and Jordan, with their magical lemur snort, dedicated to fumbling their way through movies one forgotten gem at a time.
• 0:35
  This week we watch the 1982 Martin Scorsese classic, The King of Comedy.
• 0:39
  This is Fumbling Through Film.
• 0:42
  What'd you say your name was?
• 0:43
  Rupert. My name is Rupert Puffkin.
• 0:44
  All right, look, pal. I gotta tell ya, this is a crazy business, but it's not unlike any other business. There are ground rules, see? And you don't just walk onto a network show without experience. Now, I know it's an old hackneyed expression, but it happens to be the truth. You've got to start at the bottom.
• 1:01
  I know, that's where I am, at the bottom.
• 1:03
  That's a perfect place to start.
• 1:05
  I know that, but I'm not certain. There's gotta be a—
• 1:08
  What looks so simple to the viewer at home, those things that come so easily, that are so relaxed and look like it's a matter of just taking another breath, it takes years and years and years of honing that and working it.
• 1:21
  There's only one problem, though, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but there's only one problem. I'm 34 years old. That's why I'm asking you if you just listen to— I'm asking you if you listen to my act. That's all. If you listen to my act, then tell me what you think about it.
• 1:31
  I'll tell you what. Why don't you call my office? All right, okay. I could do that. Ask for Kathy Long.
• 1:36
  Terrific.
• 1:37
  She's my secretary. Okay. And we'll make time to listen to what you're talking about.
• 1:40
  Uh, you know how many times I had this conversation in my head? This is beautiful.
• 1:44
  Did it always turn out this way?
• 1:45
  Yeah, it did.
• 1:47
  Hello and welcome to another one-of-a-kind, shatterifying, brand new episode of Fumbling Through Film, the only show I guarantee that dares to bring together 3 dudes to talk about movies. But these aren't just any movies. These are the ones we missed, overlooked, or feel are simply worth revisiting.
• 2:09
  Exactly.
• 2:10
  Seems like any.
• 2:11
  It is. It feels like any. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. We'll find out later. But what we will find out now is my name is Derek and I'm a fumbler. Derek, oh, you've piqued my interest. Really?
• 2:25
  Is that true? First we've heard about this.
• 2:28
  I finally learned his name. Here at the Fumbledome as we reveal facts never before known to others. is the world's only Prime Minister of Fumbling and Film, Keith.
• 2:37
  Hey, hey, what's up, KG? Fumbler extraordinaire. Um, the king.
• 2:45
  The king. Down with the king. He is
• 2:51
  king of fumbling.
• 2:53
  The king of fumbling
• 2:54
  and film.
• 2:55
  God damn it.
• 2:55
  And film. The clown prince of fumbling and film. This is Dr. Dre of Kansas, and here he is. He's Terry.
• 3:02
  I'm the clown prince?
• 3:03
  Yes, you're like that guy from Bull Durham.
• 3:06
  Yes, give me my water bottle. I'm gonna go spit it up in the air, do some juggling.
• 3:10
  That's— you're, you're such a delight to have around, Terry. You're the clown prince of fumbling in film.
• 3:16
  Yeah, I pull pranks on people. I like release anacondas into train cars. This is all in good fun, of course.
• 3:23
  All in good fun.
• 3:25
  Vigilantes are always trying to stop my schemes.
• 3:27
  That they are.
• 3:28
  Yeah, that's fine. It's— let them try. That's what I say. Let them try.
• 3:32
  Also, you're also the clown prince of fumbling in film, the clown prince of baseball,
• 3:38
  and crime,
• 3:38
  and the clown prince of crime.
• 3:40
  Yeah,
• 3:40
  you're all of those things wrapped up in one.
• 3:42
  I tell you, once you're a clown prince of one thing, it's pretty easy to become clown prince of a lot
• 3:47
  of other things.
• 3:48
  You're right, you just kind of assume the role. Yeah, it's a void that needs to be filled.
• 3:52
  Yeah, there's not a lot of—
• 3:54
  seriously, one time that you just start throwing it, you know, in front of all of it.
• 3:58
  Yeah,
• 3:58
  that's true.
• 3:59
  Call yourself the Clown Prince of Kansas too while you're at it.
• 4:01
  Oh, I like that. Yeah.
• 4:04
  One, one thing I discovered when I used to work like in retail or sales and stuff like that is that if you look like you know what you're doing and you belong, no one will ever question you.
• 4:15
  Yes.
• 4:16
  So just look like you belong as the Clown Prince of fill in the blank, and no one will ever say— oh, no one will ever doubt you unless they're the true Clown Prince of whatever.
• 4:25
  Oh God, yeah.
• 4:26
  And then you have a duel of like, yeah, Clown Prince of
• 4:30
  Clown v Clown for the title. Yeah, that's
• 4:35
  one's a real clown. Oh, that makes it even tougher.
• 4:37
  Yeah, that's dangerous. I'm gonna get like a pie slapped in my face. They're gonna honk my nose.
• 4:44
  You want to wear those big red shoes? You gotta be the gotta be able you know fill them.
• 4:49
  Yep, that's true. That's true. It's good. That's good advice.
• 4:53
  You know us. We have to fill about an hour, about an hour,
• 4:57
  hour
• 4:57
  and a
• 4:58
  half.
• 4:59
  Oh. Podcast.
• 5:01
  So what we should do is we should tell people what it is we do here. Yes, we watch movies, but not just any movie. I thought you said they were. But wait, Keith, there's more. Every month, one of us chooses a theme, a genre, a better way to do things, right? And each of us then chooses a movie that adheres to that theme or the guiding light. And then on the 4th week, we watch a wild card, a random movie that was selected to us by an electronic device that we have no control over. But before we get to there, this month was a Derek month. Month 12 rests squarely on my shoulders.
• 5:43
  Well, it's the 13th in the Fumbler calendar.
• 5:47
  Yep. Now, when we were coming up with this idea for this show, I said, what if every week we watched a movie And we had to make sure it's a movie he's never seen before. He's like, I want to watch movies I've seen before because they need to be revisited. And Terry's like, I'll do whatever. So that got us to this point. Very clown-like. I said, well, I'm controlling this month, so we have to watch a movie. You have to choose a movie you've never seen before, but not just any movie you haven't seen before. I went to Reddit and I said, hey Reddit, what are movies that when people say they haven't seen, you say, what? And you try to get them to watch the movie. So I got a record number of responses, somewhere between 400 and 4 million.
• 6:27
  Closer to 400. A mind-boggling amount.
• 6:29
  Darn near viral.
• 6:29
  Yes, darn near viral. Internet sensation. And we each chose movies that were recommended from this thread. It was almost 500.
• 6:38
  Offhand, then, because I don't have it in front of me, did you mention that we have a podcast someplace in that viral post?
• 6:44
  Oh God, no.
• 6:45
  No, I did not. Why would I do that? I would be rejected and shunned. Don't farm us for content. So I did it the way— I did it the old-fashioned way. I omitted. I lied through omission.
• 6:56
  Yeah, you pretended like you didn't have any ulterior motives for asking this question.
• 7:00
  I was just like, hey guys, let's have a friendly conversation where you give me movie ideas.
• 7:04
  Thanksgiving's coming up. I don't want to talk politics with the family. We're going to do this.
• 7:08
  Yes. Let's talk about, like, my first choice, The Fall, and then Terry's choice— or no, Keith's choice.
• 7:19
  Oh, sneakers.
• 7:20
  Sneakers. Yeah, he almost forgot about sneakers. And then this week became a Terry choice. And Terry, because it's a brand, it's, it's the newest to us, we'll be sure to talk about it at Thanksgiving with our families. And it is
• 7:33
  King of Comedy.
• 7:34
  The King of Comedy. Not the Kings of Comedy. No, not the real Kings of Comedy.
• 7:39
  Learned the hard way.
• 7:40
  But Kings and Queens. Not the King of Queens and not Something else.
• 7:47
  You know how many things I watched this week just to get it right? Geez.
• 7:49
  Just to get it right. This is the Martin Scorsese movie from 1983, '82. All right. You know, we do, we do a lot of fumbling through the early '80s. Have you noticed that?
• 8:00
  Which makes sense for Terry.
• 8:02
  Yeah, I like it too.
• 8:03
  It does?
• 8:05
  Well, yeah.
• 8:05
  I mean, you weren't alive in there.
• 8:06
  Yeah. So it's a lot of stuff. And then for me and Derek, it's—
• 8:10
  Well, see, it falls into things that we probably missed or overlooked because we were so young, Keith.
• 8:15
  Or, and, you know, maybe one of our parents was thinking more about what their kids should watch or not, and the other one wasn't.
• 8:21
  Yeah, my parents wouldn't let me watch shit.
• 8:24
  Yeah, my parents are divorced. Go to one house, watch a lot of craziness stuff.
• 8:28
  Uh, my parents got divorced because they wouldn't let me watch shit. My mom's like, I'm out of here.
• 8:35
  Oh, that's the last straw.
• 8:37
  Yeah, that's the last straw. Anyway, so watching The King of Comedy. before we talk about our viewing of The King of Comedy, before Terry takes us close, dangerously close to The King of Comedy, did any of us have any prior knowledge and/or experience with The King of Comedy? I'll start. I did. I saw this movie. I was going in the Wayback Machine, probably 23 years ago? Early 2000s. I remember where I was at when I watched it. I remember who I was with. Mm-hmm. I remember we were probably pretty drunk. Because we used to get together, watch movies, and just drink. We'd watch like 2 or 3 movies, and by like the 3rd movie, you're done. Uh, and this was about the 2nd or 3rd movie in a night. So I remember liking it. I remember it being one of those unsung Martin Scorseses from the early '80s, and I always liked it.
• 9:26
  Yeah, I hope that Derek doesn't say I was one of the people watching this with him because I know you weren't seeing this before. Um, I'm aware of the movie. And just, yeah, just something that never, uh, never hit, uh, on the younger viewing when I was like 7. And thus, uh, it never popped back up again until I saw it on this Reddit list, uh, that somebody posted virally.
• 9:49
  Just this viral Reddit post.
• 9:53
  Yeah, I've heard of this as well. Um, you know, it's, I think, a very influential movie, uh, the hit film Joker is heavily inspired by this.
• 10:04
  Yes.
• 10:04
  Which I'm not a big Joker fan, but ironically, as I am the Clown Prince, but, um, we have beef obviously. But, uh, I've actually been meaning— this, this lined up perfectly for my pick because I've had this soft goal for a while now to watch all of Martin Scorsese's films.
• 10:25
  Yep.
• 10:26
  And this was in order. I want to watch them like chronologically, earliest to newest, and this happened to be the next one up, so that's why I picked it.
• 10:35
  Also, you're very early in the viewing.
• 10:37
  Yeah, I'm not too far. I think I've only seen like 5 so far.
• 10:41
  Have you seen The Last Temptation of Christ yet?
• 10:43
  No, no, I got a ways to go for that one.
• 10:45
  I'm not a religious person at all, but I grew up knowing all about it. It is a fantastic movie.
• 10:53
  Is it?
• 10:54
  It's a fantastic movie. And people— I remember when it came out, people were like boycotting it and protesting in front of theaters, and they'd never seen it. It's actually very pro-Catholicism, Christian, but it's just a really well-done movie. It's so good.
• 11:09
  It's actually—
• 11:10
  Willem Dafoe is Jesus in it.
• 11:11
  He plays Jesus?
• 11:13
  Yes.
• 11:13
  That sounds awesome.
• 11:14
  A young Willem Dafoe.
• 11:16
  Yeah, he plays Jesus, and later on he plays the Green Goblin.
• 11:19
  Yes, very similar character.
• 11:22
  2 sides to the same quarter.
• 11:24
  Yeah,
• 11:25
  yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's— I guess I only got a couple movies till I get to that one, so it's actually not as far away as I thought.
• 11:34
  Yeah. Oh, you're watching them in chronological order?
• 11:36
  Yep.
• 11:36
  Oh wow. Yeah, that's like, that's like '85 or '86, I think.
• 11:40
  Yeah, I think, uh, the next one up that I need to watch is After Hours.
• 11:44
  Oh, I don't know if I've seen After Hours. Oh, you know what, you're probably getting close to like, um, Bringing Out the Dead too with Nic Cage.
• 11:51
  No, he's got a while. He's still got Casino and Goodfellas and all the other stuff.
• 11:54
  That's all because Casino's '90s, my man. Bring Out the Dead is like—
• 11:58
  Casino is before Bring Out the Dead. 1999 is Bring Out the Dead.
• 12:02
  Oh, okay. I thought that was like earlier, like early '90s, but I guess—
• 12:08
  yeah, been going on a journey, saw this was listed, and I was like, well, how convenient. This fits my ulterior plans. So I
• 12:15
  love it. Well, that's good news, and I'm glad that your plans aligned with our plans. Yeah, that is like a convergence of worlds. That,
• 12:23
  uh, yeah, 2 perfect worlds. Yes, Terry's personal movie-watching goals meeting the Fumbling goals.
• 12:31
  How
• 12:32
  often does that converge? You're just not very—
• 12:34
  2 hands coming together, the fingers interlocking. It's perfect.
• 12:38
  It's just 2 of my hands reaching at each other.
• 12:40
  It's like those gods touching humans, uh, Thank you.
• 12:44
  Yep, 2 fingers touching is the birth of a
• 12:46
  movie. That is a good point. It is like God's finger touching, like, my normal, like, oh, I want to watch Lone Wolf McQuade, and I'm getting touched by God instead. I'm like, oh,
• 12:54
  this
• 12:56
  is different.
• 12:58
  No, it was definitely a different hand touching when Lone Wolf McQuade came out.
• 13:02
  Yes. Yeah, or Snake Pit.
• 13:05
  Hey, Snake Pit is on that 1,001 movies you need to watch before you die.
• 13:09
  It's true. It was a cultured pick, but maybe not a popular one.
• 13:12
  Yes. All right. Well, I guess that— I guess with that, we need to let Terry— we need Keith— we need to relax while Terry, uh, chauffeurs us closer to the king of comedy than we could ever dare to get in another patent-pending Fumbler's Deep Dive.
• 13:31
  Please relax, everyone. This is gonna get crazy. Let's just all relax. I don't wanna get too hyped up here. Uh, this movie, the synopsis: Rupert is an aspiring stand-up comedian who's willing to go the extra mile in his attempt to appear in the late-night show hosted by his idol. That's the con— that's succinct. That's very succinct.
• 13:53
  He does go the extra mile.
• 13:54
  He really goes above and beyond. Yeah,
• 13:56
  he does.
• 13:57
  I think we could all appreciate that. Um, but
• 14:01
  elbow grease. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.
• 14:04
  Mm-hmm. There's a lot of hard work. Yeah.
• 14:06
  A lot of hard work in this movie.
• 14:07
  Yeah, sometimes you gotta skip a few steps. That's the extra, you know, that's the lesson learned. I learned from this. Uh, but so this movie is directed by Martin Scorsese. Um, I think most film people know who this guy is. I think most average moviegoers probably are familiar with his name as well.
• 14:26
  Probably the greatest American director.
• 14:28
  Yes, very prolific.
• 14:29
  Of all time, maybe.
• 14:31
  Made a ton.
• 14:32
  He's definitely up there in like the top 3 for sure. And again, it just comes down to personal preference after that.
• 14:37
  Who, uh, who else we going with there? Him, Spielberg.
• 14:42
  Spielberg. That's like modern cinema. Yeah, Kubrick is probably up there. Yeah, for sure.
• 14:48
  And I do believe the— it— I do believe those guys all hung out together like when they were first starting up with film too, I think.
• 14:56
  Well, I think Kubrick was much older than them.
• 14:58
  Maybe not only that, uh, Kubrick, but like Spielberg and I think Scorsese and Lucas and all those guys all hung out together.
• 15:05
  Yeah, maybe,
• 15:06
  because I think they talk about a lot when like Jaws is being made, like how he let him see like some early—
• 15:11
  Sure, they all came up around the same stuff. Yeah, and they're like, they were all seen as like the, the new, the next era of filmmaking was brought on by these guys.
• 15:21
  If you put them like in an order, it's like a gradient from intense to like, like hardcore movie making to popcorn moviemaking, right? Like, you went Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas. It's like a gradient from—
• 15:36
  yes,
• 15:37
  it's like a— it's almost like the perfect spectrum if you were to like plot on a timeline.
• 15:42
  It's almost a bit like if they were all hanging out together, they sat down at like a, a table in a diner at some point and like divvied up what films. Okay, all
• 15:52
  right guys, Marty, Marty, crazy sci-fi popular stuff.
• 15:56
  Marty, you're gonna take gangster stuff and things of those nature. He's like, well, I got this King of Comedy thing sitting here. Dad, just go with what we tell you.
• 16:04
  Marty's done a lot other than just gangster, but gangsters are his bread and butter, it seems like.
• 16:12
  I mean, that's his favorite thing. Yeah, actually, I saw this on IMDb. One of the trivia was that I think it was Spielberg and Lucas who Helped presented him his first Oscar.
• 16:24
  Oh, really?
• 16:25
  Like, all— they all came up together.
• 16:26
  Well, yeah, because he didn't win an Oscar until The Departed.
• 16:29
  Yeah, it took a long time, which is insane. It is,
• 16:32
  because you look at the movies he made between Mean Streets and The Departed, and you're like, how did none of those other get— win?
• 16:38
  I don't know. Yeah, he's done a lot of stuff. Like, the big ones— there's more than I'm gonna list, obviously, but Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, The Departed, Wolf of Wall Street. I mean, there's a ton of movies that are like Huge, you know, just influential. Like Wolf of Wall Street was gigantic when it came out. Like that's like a more modern, you know, like so he was huge back in the 70s. He's huge now. Like it's crazy.
• 17:00
  Yes.
• 17:01
  He's still with the Under the Flower Moon.
• 17:05
  Killers of the Flower Moon.
• 17:05
  Killers of the Flower Moon. Yeah.
• 17:07
  Haven't seen that one yet, but eventually. Me neither.
• 17:10
  I haven't dedicated four hours of my life to.
• 17:11
  Yeah, it was a little long. I thought about going to see it in theaters.
• 17:14
  Read the book. Didn't watch the movie yet.
• 17:16
  You've read the book? Oh
• 17:17
  yeah,
• 17:18
  nice. Was it good?
• 17:20
  Yeah,
• 17:20
  I
• 17:20
  enjoyed it.
• 17:21
  Nice, cool. Um, so I was reading some trivia. Uh, he's really good friends obviously with Robert De Niro. Um, yes, frequent collaborators. Um, he shows De Niro all of his scripts, um, that, that he's like involved with, or he wrote it, or he's just directing it because he wants to hear De Niro's thoughts. This— and this, even if De Niro's not even going to be in the movie, he's still involved in like just, I guess, like giving his opinion on it. Um, cuz he just values De Niro's opinion that much. He directed a music video for Michael Jackson, the song Bad. Apparently it's 16 minutes long, but they cut it short for on-air television.
• 17:54
  Yep.
• 17:55
  He was once asked who the next Martin Scorsese was gonna be, and he told people to look at Wes Anderson.
• 18:02
  Okay.
• 18:03
  I was like, I mean, you know, he's a very talented— yeah, he's a very talented filmmaker. I don't know if their styles are the same, but yeah, he's like a very like I, I sure, I'd go with it. Wes Anderson, he's a very, uh, very good director. So
• 18:16
  yeah,
• 18:17
  um, and 3 of his films are in the American Film Institute's list of 100 greatest movies.
• 18:22
  Oh,
• 18:23
  we got Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and Goodfellas.
• 18:27
  Yeah,
• 18:28
  so those are the 3 in there. Um,
• 18:30
  have you ever seen Goodfellas, Terry?
• 18:31
  I haven't.
• 18:32
  Oh, so you're really, you're really working your way through the Scorsese movies.
• 18:35
  Yeah, I saw it's a blind spot, you know, because I watched—
• 18:37
  that's a treat, man. That's a good movie.
• 18:39
  I watched a lot of junk, um, and I was like, I need to like treat myself to like smart and, you know, like well-made movies sometimes. So that's what it would be.
• 18:52
  Uh, nice little double feature. Watch this and Casino, uh, Goodfellas and Casino back to back.
• 18:57
  Oh, that's like 8 hours of your life right there almost.
• 18:59
  Yeah, that's true.
• 19:01
  Not quite, it's probably 6. It's good though, they're good movies. I like Goodfellas better than Casino, but Casino's got some iconic moments.
• 19:08
  I'll see them both. I have not seen Casino either, so I'll have to have to get to that one too.
• 19:13
  Uh
• 19:13
  huh. So this movie was written by Paul D Zimmerman.
• 19:16
  The Zim.
• 19:17
  Yeah, the Zim man himself. He does not have very many movie credits at all. He only wrote three movies. Oh, and he also wrote sixty five episodes of Sesame Street.
• 19:25
  Outstanding. I love it.
• 19:27
  Yeah, that's pretty cool.
• 19:29
  What are the other? What are the other two then besides this?
• 19:31
  I thought they were gonna say what are the sixty five episodes?
• 19:34
  No, because I because I'm already like well this is a very odd thing to go from Sesame. Street to this.
• 19:39
  Yeah, I know.
• 19:40
  I was like, the other two— I
• 19:41
  was surprised that he only had the other movies. So, um, one of them—
• 19:46
  movie.
• 19:48
  Yeah, yeah, he dabbled in a lot of different things. Um, so he wrote a movie called Consuming Passions, which is about a candy factory. They're starting to fail. They've got really bad reviews. Um, this changes when, uh, some people get knocked into the chocolate vat
• 20:05
  Oh.
• 20:05
  And it somehow gets shipped out anyways. So now there's this new ingredient and people who got a taste of this new chocolate really like it.
• 20:15
  Wow. I like this idea.
• 20:16
  So they have to start hunting for more, you know, of the special ingredient, quote unquote.
• 20:22
  Uh-huh.
• 20:22
  Which is human. Yeah, it's human. So yeah, it didn't have good reviews, but I do think I would probably be mad if I found out the chocolate I loved had humans in it. Um, I don't think how long this business strategy would last, but
• 20:37
  that Willy Wonka, the trip was a lot different.
• 20:40
  Yes, that's really special. Yeah.
• 20:43
  Damn, you know what happened to Augustus Gloop. There we go.
• 20:46
  Oh yeah, he ain't coming back. Uh, the other movie he wrote was Lovers and Liars, which is a romantic comedy about an American actress. She's visiting some friends in Italy and she starts to fall for her friend's Italian lover. The twist is that this Italian lover is also married to somebody else. So it's a classic issue, you know, love triangle kind of thing. It happens all the time. You go visit Italy, you fall in love with somebody, and then it turns out they're married and there's this huge deal. And your friend's there too, apparently it's also their lover.
• 21:18
  Extremely cliché.
• 21:20
  Oh, it's so cliché. Yeah, I mean, there's warning signs every time you go to Italy before you like get off the plane. You're like, Just be careful.
• 21:27
  They tell you when you get off and you go through customs, do you have anything to declare? What's it called? Like unrequited love? Is that what it's called?
• 21:34
  Yes, yes, yes. Yep, they're always warning about that. So, um, apparently Paul D. Zimmerman, he was a film critic for Newsweek magazine, so he probably was doing a lot of that between, you know, his movie writing and his Sesame Street writing. And he also worked in politics. He was a delegate of Pennsylvania. Oh, okay, good for him. So there you go. He had a lot of things going on besides just writing movies. Good for him. So this movie stars Robert De Niro as Rupert Pumpkin, uh, very prolific actor also. Pumpkin himself, Mr. Pumpkin. Um, he's done a lot of great stuff. So he's, uh, worked of course on a lot of Scorsese films: Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Mean Streets, Cape Fear, others that I just didn't feel like writing them all. Uh, He's worked on a lot of other big films, not Scorsese-related. Cop Land, which was a Sylvester Stallone movie. It
• 22:26
  was, yeah.
• 22:27
  He's a cop who's facing against corruption in the police force. Uh, Jackie Brown, which is a Tarantino movie, uh, that's about a flight attendant with a criminal past. She is like kind of pressured into becoming an informant. I have not seen that. I do want to see it.
• 22:42
  It's, it's one of my favorite Tarantino movies.
• 22:45
  Really? It's very good.
• 22:47
  Okay, I need to see it. I think I've seen almost all of them besides that, so I need to watch it. He was in a movie called Ronin where he plays a freelance intelligence agent. He's tracking down a package that the Russian and Irish governments are fighting for.
• 23:00
  Yep, that's the one that needs a rewatch.
• 23:04
  Ronin? Yes.
• 23:05
  Yeah, I haven't seen that in a long time, but I remember liking it.
• 23:07
  It's got a great name. I love that. Ronin.
• 23:09
  It does have a great name. I don't think I've ever seen it.
• 23:12
  Sounds pretty cool. Of course, as he's gotten older, he's been a little more different types of films. He's been in a couple grandpa films. Dirty Grandpa, where he plays the titular dirty grandpa. He tricks his grandson into taking him to Florida during spring break. So of course, there's a lot of partying going on and shenanigans ensue. Grandpa is a very big party animal, and he's trying to get his grandson to kind of loosen up a bit.
• 23:39
  Hmm.
• 23:39
  And the grandson's trying to rein this dirty grandpa in because, you know, he's a little bit of a pervert and he's a little bit weird. Somebody's got to get this grandpa on a leash, you know?
• 23:48
  Yep.
• 23:48
  Um, so, and he was also in The War with Grandpa.
• 23:53
  Hmm.
• 23:54
  This is not related to Dirty Grandpa. It's a different grandpa. Uh, there's no grandpa universe, if that's what you're wondering. But this is Robert De Niro. He is a grandpa. Um, and he has to move in with his kids and his grandkids, and he ends up sharing a room with one of his grandsons. The problem is, is the grandson does not want to share the room. Uh, so he declared— yeah, I wouldn't want to either. Uh, he just— he decides that the, the grandson decides he's going to declare war on Grandpa to get his room back. Hmm. It's based off a book. Hmm. Didn't know that.
• 24:25
  Um, is it a pop-up book?
• 24:27
  Apparently it's like a bestseller. I don't know. Um, that's what the trailer told me. Maybe he lied. Uh, but also, uh, Christopher Walken is in this. Oh,
• 24:36
  okay. Is he another grandpa that's at war with somebody?
• 24:39
  He might. He helps, uh, Robert De Niro grandpa with his war, so he's an ally.
• 24:45
  Brought him in as a mercenary. Yeah,
• 24:47
  he's a mercenary. He's like a free agent. Yeah.
• 24:49
  He's a turncloak afterwards and he's helping the kid.
• 24:52
  Oh God. Yeah, he like rips off his mask and he's just like a 5-year-old child underneath.
• 24:56
  Oh, well, or that too. He's undercover. He's a spy.
• 25:00
  Mm-hmm. Christopher Walken. I always knew there's something weird about that guy. Uma Thurman's in it as well. She's, I think, a neutral party. She's not in—
• 25:08
  What a weird cast. I know. Strange movie.
• 25:11
  I know. This is one of those like COVID movies too. I'm pretty sure.
• 25:15
  Is it? It caused COVID or it came out after COVID?
• 25:19
  I think it may have caused COVID. Yeah. I think, you know, one of those like super spreaders. Everybody was going to go see More with Grandpa.
• 25:27
  I almost lost it on that one.
• 25:29
  I think everybody was going to see this thing.
• 25:32
  Yeah, February 2020, everybody was going to see The War with Grandpa, and then I got sick.
• 25:36
  Yep. I think we could make a straight line from— yeah, I don't want to get too deep into it, obviously,
• 25:42
  but that's De Niro's comedy genius. He's gotta go see this one.
• 25:46
  Yeah, this is gonna be great. Yeah.
• 25:49
  Um, I don't know how he was— when he was the bad grandpa, now they're going to war. We gotta— it's not related. I don't care.
• 25:55
  He was such a good Dirty Grandpa.
• 25:57
  I don't care.
• 25:57
  I just need to see Grandpa action.
• 25:59
  Yeah, I don't care if the theater's packed to the brim. I don't know how the war ends. I assume they either have a treaty or, you know, I don't know, maybe one of them dies. Maybe they both die.
• 26:13
  Yeah, at the hands of one another. They're just like in the middle of the battlefield.
• 26:17
  10-year-old like choking out, uh, Grandpa like, you're, you're not— I'm never gonna share my room with you. And then it's like this like kind of melancholy ending of
• 26:26
  They're both laying in the dirt. It starts to rain. The blood mixes with the water. It looks like tears and bloody tears.
• 26:32
  Yes.
• 26:32
  One says her name's Martha, or their, their mother's name's Martha. The other one says, what?
• 26:37
  That's my daughter's name.
• 26:39
  Yeah.
• 26:41
  Then they stop fighting each other. Then there's a giant monster who shows up to make them team up.
• 26:48
  Yep.
• 26:49
  Here's walking.
• 26:50
  Yeah. It's a— he's a mutated Christopher Walken. Yes. Yep.
• 26:56
  Yep.
• 26:58
  That was the ending. I would watch this. This sounds awesome. Uh, but anyway, so Jerry Lewis is in this. He plays Jerry Langford.
• 27:06
  Yep.
• 27:07
  He is a comedian, actor, director, producer, done a lot of stuff. Uh, he had his own show, The Jerry Lewis Show. Uh, he was in a bunch of old movies from the '50s and '60s. Usually has a very specific type he played, the kind of geeky nerd. Um,
• 27:23
  nice lady.
• 27:25
  Exactly. Yeah, uh,
• 27:27
  it
• 27:29
  was like Crazy Frog.
• 27:32
  It had like a lot of quality to it. I thought
• 27:37
  you were singing like Crazy Frog. You know Crazy Frog?
• 27:41
  I do know Crazy
• 27:42
  Frog. Jerry Lewis may have voiced Crazy Frog. I don't know.
• 27:49
  I can't do it right, but you know what I'm talking about.
• 27:51
  The I don't know. I don't.
• 27:54
  Yeah, yeah. He he whatever character one of the weird characters he playing, he'd be like, you know, he I don't know, like he was talking like a girl or something like that. A very attractive woman or something. He'd be like, on the hot and the horrible way. He can't even do it. Well, yeah.
• 28:11
  Okay. That's Keith Cliff, I think. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well,
• 28:21
  he
• 28:22
  does probably do that at some point. I don't know.
• 28:23
  Wow.
• 28:25
  Um, he was in a movie called Cinderfella where he played Cinderfella himself.
• 28:32
  Oh yeah.
• 28:33
  Genderbent retelling of the classic Cinderella tale, but now it's Cinderfella where Jerry Lewis plays the main character and he lives with an evil stepfather, evil stepbrothers, and he has a fairy godfather who helps him escape the curse of his life. So yeah, just change all the female characters to male. That's— yeah, that's what they did. The clip in IMDb, it was not a trailer, it was just a scene of him eating some soup, uh, and then he accidentally pours all the salt in the salt shaker into it. He's disgusted, and then his brother makes him light a cigarette. Uh, it was not the most thrilling thing I'd ever seen, but, uh, I'm sure there's more to the movie. I don't know, I probably will never see it unless the wheel picks it. Uh, he also directed an unreleased film. This is a very, like, infamous film that I've even heard of. It's called The Day the Clown Cried. Mm-hmm. It's a movie that's never been released. Jerry Lewis directed it. He's— he had the only copy. It was locked in the private vault, and he vowed never to let it be seen. However, he did eventually agree to let it be preserved in the Library of Congress, and they had a deal that it could not be screened until 2024. But the Library of Congress has not made any plans to screen the film at all, or like allow a physical release of it, or even let other government facilities view it.
• 29:47
  So now we know what National Treasure 3 is going to be about.
• 29:50
  Yes, they're going to go try to see the Day the Clown Cried. Yeah. So the film has a very strange premise. It's basically, it's a circus clown. He gets imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II and he has to go to concentration camp.
• 30:10
  Oh boy.
• 30:10
  Jewish children. So Seems like a pretty bleak premise. Not very— I don't know what's gonna happen with this. Nobody really knows. There's only been a select few people who have seen this movie.
• 30:22
  Wow.
• 30:23
  Uh, one of the people who saw it said it was awful, off-tone, and the quote they said is, it's not funny and someone is trying to convey this serious event in exactly the wrong way.
• 30:35
  Huh.
• 30:36
  So that doesn't bode well. Jerry Lewis has stated that he is proud of the film, but he feels the legend around it has grown too much and it would be unfair to anyone involved If you ever released it.
• 30:47
  All right.
• 30:48
  I have a feeling it's like very distasteful or something. That's why I'm certain.
• 30:51
  That's my guess as well.
• 30:53
  I have a feeling he really shot himself in the foot directing that thing. Um, but the Library of Congress does have it. Maybe eventually people will be allowed to see it. I don't know.
• 31:03
  Um, yeah.
• 31:04
  They'd have to like get it approved by the Lewis estate if they did. So we'll see. I don't know. I doubt it. Uh, not that I'm really clamoring to see that. That seems like a weird movie. Uh, so the last person I'll talk about is Sandra Bernhard as Masha. She's been in a lot of stuff too. Movies, television. Uh, her early role, one of her very early roles was, uh, as a voice in Shogun Assassin.
• 31:28
  Oh, really?
• 31:29
  So this is an American dub of 2 Lone Wolf and Cub movies that were spliced together for American release. Uh, this is like a big Japanese movie series, Lone Wolf and Cub. I think there's six of them. I've seen a few of them. I think maybe four. They're all pretty decent, pretty entertaining. It's hard to keep track of the ones I've seen or like what the order is supposed to be because they're all like kind of vague names. They're not like Lone Wolf and Cub one, two, three. They all have like the little subtitles. So I'm gonna list them all: Lone Wolf and Cub Sword of Vengeance, Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart at the River Styx, Lone Wolf and Cub Baby Cart. To Hades, Lone Wolf and Cub, Baby Cart in Peril, Lone Wolf and Cub, Baby Cart in the Land of Demons, and Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven and Hell. It's easy to get those mixed up, I think. As you can see, there's a lot of Baby Cart to somewhere.
• 32:21
  Now, did Sandra Bernhardt do the voice that got sampled by the Wu-Tang Clan for the Shogun Assassin?
• 32:26
  I doubt that. She did not have a credited, like, name. I think she's just one of the generic, like,
• 32:33
  oh,
• 32:34
  extras.
• 32:34
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  Because that's like the whole burned in my brain.
• 32:37
  The whole Liquid Swords album is all from from that. I think I've actually seen the movie because of that.
• 32:43
  The water style, yes. Is that what it's based off of? Liquid Swords water style?
• 32:48
  No, I don't know.
• 32:50
  Oh, but he in between like in between songs like they play like clips from Shogun Assassin.
• 32:56
  Really? That's cool. Yeah, they're they're pretty good movies. I like the Little Foot Cut stuff. I really should just finish them. I think I have seen most of them, so.
• 33:05
  I didn't— I don't think I knew that that was, um, part of the Wolf and Cub, uh, series though.
• 33:10
  Yep.
• 33:11
  Yeah, I had no idea.
• 33:13
  Just about,
• 33:13
  uh, I didn't know there was a Wolf and Cub series to begin with.
• 33:16
  It's a lone ronin wandering with his baby child.
• 33:20
  There's a— there's a lot of volumes of it too, I think.
• 33:23
  Yeah, it's based off a graphic novel or a manga. Yeah, there's a lot of the issues of that. Um, But yeah, it's, it's pretty good. Cool. It's very, uh, influential as well. So definitely recommend checking 'em out. Uh, so she's also voiced a character for an episode of Spider-Man: The Animated Series from the '90s. She was in the Highlander TV series for an episode. Uh, she was in something called Plump Fiction.
• 33:50
  Okay.
• 33:51
  So that's, as you may have guessed, a parody of Pulp Fiction.
• 33:56
  Oh, with What, fat people?
• 34:00
  No, I don't. You know, I watched the trailer. That's a good point. I didn't see any like
• 34:03
  plumpness.
• 34:04
  Plumpness, really? Yeah. It's got a 2.7 on IMDb. Um, not great. That's
• 34:10
  one of the lowest out of 100. 2.7.
• 34:12
  Yeah. The 0 stars, 5 out of 5, you know, however that one guy I remember reviewed his thing. Um, uh, I don't think it's good. I watched the trailer. I agree with the rating—not very thrilling. It's mostly riffing off of Tarantino films, so Pulp Fiction, obviously. Reservoir Dogs.
• 34:34
  Yep.
• 34:34
  Except for I had a bunch of nuns walking in slow motion, so I don't know what's up with that.
• 34:38
  That's funny to think of.
• 34:40
  It was—it was kind of amusing. And then Natural Born Killers, which is a Tarantino-written movie, not directed, but spoofs that as well. Uh, the trailer states that it's a parody, it's a comedy, it's a movie. I'm like, yes, okay, whatever. Um, all 3 of those things are true. Um,
• 34:59
  well, one maybe not as much as the other 2.
• 35:01
  Comedy might be subjective.
• 35:02
  Yeah, exactly. No one's laughing at that.
• 35:04
  Can't argue with that. Yeah, parody, sure. Yeah, I don't know how successful, but sure. Um, another thing that I found out about Sandra Bernhard— Bernhard, I don't know if I'm saying that
• 35:14
  right. Bernhard, yeah.
• 35:15
  Uh, she's a singer. She's got some recorded music.
• 35:18
  Oh, she's singing in this movie, and I was like, oh, she sings pretty good.
• 35:21
  Yeah, she's got a good voice. Um, she's, you know, kind of like '80s pop style stuff. Um, sometimes it gets a little grungy in the '90s. Uh, she's not a bad singer. She's definitely good, I would even say. Um, but in the songs I listened to, she's kind of got this like operatic, almost disco vibe, I guess. I don't know if that makes any sense at all, but that's kind of what I think of when I say her singing. So Yeah,
• 35:42
  I know her most from being on The Roseanne Show.
• 35:45
  Oh, okay, okay.
• 35:47
  Not, not the, the new one, but the one that was on in the late '80s, early '90s.
• 35:52
  The OG Roseanne?
• 35:54
  The OG Roseanne, yeah.
• 35:56
  Okay, she did not play Roseanne?
• 35:58
  No, she did not play Roseanne. She played like Roseanne's friend or something like that.
• 36:02
  Okay, but she was on a bunch of episodes?
• 36:04
  Yes, a lot, a bunch of them.
• 36:07
  Yeah, nice.
• 36:08
  And that's the only way I knew her. And then when I saw this movie the first time, I was like, her? Because I just know her as kind of being annoying on Roseanne.
• 36:15
  She's done— she's done quite a bit. She's got a very, uh, varied career. I'll say that.
• 36:20
  That's impressive. I didn't know about the singing stuff.
• 36:23
  Yeah, she's done more than me, that's for sure.
• 36:25
  Yeah, me too. Yeah, probably more than both of us combined.
• 36:30
  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think she's probably done more than I will ever do.
• 36:35
  No, don't short sell yourself short, Terry. You can still release an album or two.
• 36:39
  I might release a vocal album. Sure. Well, I might never do that.
• 36:44
  Voiceover for a Japanese movie.
• 36:46
  Oh God, if I could.
• 36:47
  Yeah, I would love to do that. That'd be so much fun.
• 36:49
  That would be so awesome to do an anime. Yes, let me do an anime, or even just, yeah, find some random Japanese movie you want English dubbed. I'll do it.
• 36:56
  I'm tired of watching animes where I'm like, wait a minute, that sounds just like somebody else. I have to go to IMDb and like, oh, it's that person from that anime.
• 37:03
  It's the guy who voiced 20 other characters.
• 37:05
  And then all you can think of when you're watching the one anime is the other anime.
• 37:09
  Yep. It's like, oh, that's Midoriya from My Hero Academia, but now he's a Demon Slayer guy. Yeah. All right. But that's all I got. We can get away from this. We're too close.
• 37:23
  We were way too close to the king of comedy. And honestly, I don't want to be that close to the king of comedy.
• 37:29
  Yeah, if you get too close, you might get kidnapped and taken away,
• 37:32
  or you have to like play third guest on his imaginary talk show that he has in his basement.
• 37:38
  Yeah, or yeah, he might like, uh, he might start fantasizing about you and like,
• 37:43
  oh my God,
• 37:44
  your mom might have to tell you to stop.
• 37:47
  Yes, that's the thing that made me laugh the most about this movie. I know it isn't like technically a traditional comedy, but it is kind of funny and sad at the same time with him. His mommy, keep it down down there. Who are you talking to? And he's having like this imaginary conversation. Oh, I loved it. All right, we did it. We got super close to the King of Comedy. We started talking about the King of Comedy, but let's let's do it. Let's do it for real. Let's talk about our viewing of the King of Comedy.
• 38:12
  We should talk about it.
• 38:14
  We should.
• 38:15
  Because this is
• 38:17
  yes, we
• 38:17
  should. You know what, man? You're right, Keith. Why would we? Just imagine going all the way through a deep dive and just going like, all right, well, I guess we're done.
• 38:26
  Yeah.
• 38:27
  God, all you left to do is say, wait, this way to everything. All right. Yeah. Let's talk about the kid comedy.
• 38:34
  So I will say like the first time they, they do that thing where like he's kind of doing like the lines.
• 38:42
  Yeah.
• 38:43
  And then his mom's yelling down. I actually kind of thought they were doing like a back and forth where like he was rehearsing like What he wanted to say.
• 38:53
  Oh no.
• 38:54
  And then like they showed, oh, here's the conversation and how like it was going. But like he was really like, oh man, I know this topic's gonna come up. I definitely need to make sure that I know exactly what I want to say to him. And like, that's why I thought like the first one or two times they did like a quick flashback there, back and forth when they're having lunch and getting their caricatures taken. Um, before I started to figure out that, oh yeah, he's just rattling things off.
• 39:25
  It's all imaginary. Yeah, I think Scorsese does a very good job right away establishing that Rupert is unhinged.
• 39:36
  Yes, yes.
• 39:37
  Because there's like all these people going insane, bonkers outside the TV show. Sandra Bernhard, you don't realize she's part of the the main part of the movie at first, but she's like trying to like get in the car. Rupert— all these people know Rupert and they're all nuts.
• 39:56
  Yep, they're all obsessed with the same guy.
• 39:58
  They're all celebrity obsessed and they all know Rupert. He's like, he's like the norm walking in.
• 40:04
  And at first you think he's a normal guy, you know, like at first you're like, the way he acts with like, oh, I'm defending you against these animals. But then it's like you realize, I guess he's talking to the Jerry, like, oh no, he's just like doing this for his own selfish gain and he's like trying to like get his foot in. And yeah.
• 40:20
  But like, it's, it's so good because, because of that, it leads into that scene that we opened up with within the car. But getting there, you realize it's guilt by association, right? Like Rupert is like well known amongst these autograph hound crazed celebrity seekers, right? Starfucker type people.
• 40:42
  Yeah, because like, what doesn't one of the guys say something to him? He's like, I don't—
• 40:46
  this isn't my life. It might be your life. It's not my life.
• 40:49
  Yeah, but at one point in time, at one point in time, was it still
• 40:52
  his life?
• 40:53
  He's delusional. Yeah, he's got the— he's like, I'm not one of you. I'm better. But that's just like in his head.
• 40:58
  He is one of them.
• 41:00
  Yeah,
• 41:00
  yeah, actually. Well, I mean, I don't know that they're all just trying to get autographs. He's Going home and he's recreated a whole studio in his basement. You know, really kind of those people.
• 41:12
  He's one of them for sure. He might be the alpha of them, but he's one of them.
• 41:16
  He's got an autographed book just like they do.
• 41:18
  Yeah, he's so proud of it.
• 41:21
  Yeah, but like that that whole basement setup is just so crazy. He's got his own personal talk show going on. He's like a podcaster. Like, it's
• 41:30
  kind of like us.
• 41:32
  I'm gonna tell you. I wasn't
• 41:33
  gonna go that far,
• 41:34
  but yeah, he's like one of us, maybe. But
• 41:38
  he is one of us. He can be on the show.
• 41:40
  Well, let the listener decide which one it's like. Uh, no, but like, if he were in like 2020, he would be a podcaster, right?
• 41:50
  Yeah. Oh yeah.
• 41:51
  With delusions of grandeur. We have no delusions of grandeur. We know exactly who we are and what we're doing.
• 41:57
  Oh yeah, we know where we stand.
• 41:59
  We are the number one genre-defining podcast of 3 dudes talking about movies.
• 42:03
  That's true. Yeah. And I don't know. Yeah. Keith's the king of fumbling and I'm the conference fumbling.
• 42:09
  Yes.
• 42:10
  We know where we're at.
• 42:11
  Yeah. We know who we are.
• 42:12
  I can actually, I can't be the king. I'm the prime minister. So somebody else would have to—
• 42:16
  Well, prime minister, it works in liaison with the king. I guess that makes somebody else the king and I don't want to be the king. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I don't want that responsibility.
• 42:27
  Well, I can't be Clown Prince and King, so that's—
• 42:29
  no.
• 42:30
  Well, if one of the listeners can earn the
• 42:31
  title of King, yes, we will bestow that title upon somebody. So just email us and let us know that you want to be the King of Fumbling.
• 42:38
  First come, first serve.
• 42:40
  First come, first serve.
• 42:41
  Yeah, I love the— and I've noticed this when I've been watching the Scorsese movies— is like he seems to like to focus on like the very like, um, oh, what's the right word for it? Like not good people. You know what I mean? Like, either they've got problems personality-wise, flawed criminals, flawed protagonists. Thank you. Yes, that's exactly what he is.
• 43:02
  They're definitely not— a lot of them aren't heroes. Like Taxi Driver.
• 43:06
  No.
• 43:06
  Yeah, he's also the lead in Taxi Driver. I can't even think about his— Travis, right? Travis Bickle. Yeah. And Rupert here,
• 43:12
  I think he does a really good job of like exploring these weird— yes, you know, messed up people. Um, like And I'm just— I, I'm surprised. Sometimes it's— it can be hard, a hard line to ride with like making somebody like this the main focus because it's like hard to get attached, you know. You know, you have to keep the audience intrigued.
• 43:35
  You can't cheer for him.
• 43:36
  Yeah, but
• 43:37
  because he's clearly just not a good— not necessarily a— I don't want to call him a bad person.
• 43:46
  Yeah,
• 43:47
  but he's not a hero.
• 43:48
  He's unwell.
• 43:49
  He's not a hero.
• 43:51
  Yeah, but I think it does a good job with like all the drama that's in the movie and the dynamics between everything and just seeing where everything's gonna go. I think the intrigue of that is enough to keep it propelled.
• 44:00
  I mean, up until like the midway point of the movie, it— he's not a bad guy. He's just an annoying person who's trying to get— yeah, like 5 minutes of fame by being on the most popular show around. That'd be like in prime Letterman. If we just walked up off the street and we're like, hey, we've never actually done a stand-up routine before, but can we go on and do 10 minutes?
• 44:29
  Yeah.
• 44:30
  In the most coveted spots that you possibly could get. He's not a bad guy, he's just a guy who doesn't fully understand how the world that he wants to be in works.
• 44:44
  The thing is, he wants to be in a world. He's not 100% sure how to get into it, but he thinks he knows because he saw Jerry's character get his big break filling in for Jack Parr, right? It's like, oh, we're the same now, right? Like, that's how I'm gonna do it. But when told how to do it, what the best route, he dismisses that because
• 45:09
  he wants to do it now. He doesn't want to do it now.
• 45:12
  You know what it reminds me of? And this is going to make— well, it's not gonna make anybody listen to our podcast angry, or maybe it will. It reminds me of generative AI.
• 45:20
  Yes.
• 45:22
  People want— I have an idea, I want to make this, I want to do this, I want to make some art, I want to do that, but I don't want to do the work of getting good at making art. So I'm just going to use a machine that has been trained to synthesize everyone else's art to make something for me. Right? Like,
• 45:42
  yeah.
• 45:42
  And like—
• 45:43
  Taking a shortcut.
• 45:44
  Yeah. That's, it's a huge shortcut. Right. And while things like that are fun to screw around with, people take it as an earnest sort of thing. Like, look at what I made. Well, yeah, but. Right? And that's just— that's kind of what, uh, Rupert does in this movie. He's like, look what I did! And they're just hackneyed jokes, right? But he forces himself into a situation that he had no right being in. He got his— he got his 15 moments of fame, 15 minutes of fame for sure. And then of course the end, but we'll get there.
• 46:18
  I mean, he's got— he's got layers of his delusions as well because also he's got that— that girl that he's trying to reconnect with from high school.
• 46:27
  Well, now he feels so. I thought that was really interesting, right? Because he hasn't talked to her since high school. But the moment he talks to Jerry, he realizes, oh, my next step is stardom. Now I'm good enough to talk to this girl.
• 46:41
  Yep.
• 46:42
  And not only just talk to her, but he's gonna save her.
• 46:46
  No. Yeah.
• 46:47
  She never even said she wants to be saved either.
• 46:49
  She's no, which is the worst.
• 46:51
  She's obviously not 100% happy with her her life either. But she's also not like dying to be saved, and she can— you can tell she's like constantly annoyed with him, like, dude, you are out of your mind. And they just keep layering on things, and she keeps kind of going along with it.
• 47:04
  Yeah, because she doesn't even remember him at first. Like, when he comes in and talks to her, he has like—
• 47:10
  Think about it, think real hard.
• 47:12
  Yeah.
• 47:13
  Okay. I haven't seen you. He's 32, he said. He is. I haven't seen you in 14 years, right? But he knows where she's at though, which is kind of creepy.
• 47:22
  Yep.
• 47:23
  Yeah, just like he knows where, you know, Jerry is all the time.
• 47:25
  Yeah, he knows who his, who his, uh, his butler is. And
• 47:29
  yeah, he knows where the house that he goes and stays at is even though no one's told him that. Yeah,
• 47:33
  he's, he's not well. He's unhinged. This is not—
• 47:36
  he's obsessed. And he has— he thinks he's— because like he's living a false reality in his head. Yeah.
• 47:41
  Yeah.
• 47:41
  Oh, I, I love the false realities. I love his— I love his imagined conversations. And as a person that has— I hate to say this— I have conversations in my head. Usually it's always things that happen like, boy, I wish I would have said this 10 years ago, you know, stuff like that. He's thinking of— he's like, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to rehearse all this. This is what's going to happen in my head. He's got these delusions of whatever. Yes.
• 48:06
  And I think that especially the first, like the first time that he does that, I think Scorsese does a great job of setting it up with the Hey, I, you know, I'm not really doing well right now, but if you want lunch, you know, I can't take you out to dinner, but we'll do lunch. Yeah. And all of a sudden, like, when he does it the first time, it's— they're sitting at lunch.
• 48:24
  Yeah, the next scene is they're
• 48:26
  having lunch, getting a caricature drawn up of the two of them, and, uh,
• 48:30
  people coming to him to get autographs.
• 48:31
  Yeah,
• 48:32
  yeah, yeah. Which kind of makes you think that there's been like some kind of like a time jump or something like that.
• 48:38
  But then he does a good job of cutting back to To
• 48:41
  realize
• 48:42
  Rupert in his basement talking to nobody.
• 48:44
  Who are you talking to down there? Why are you so loud?
• 48:49
  Yeah,
• 48:50
  it reminded me of, uh, that I kept thinking of, um, uh, was it, um, Wedding Crashers when they go visit Will Ferrell? It's like, you know, it's Miles. He's just like yelling back, Ma, meatloaf!
• 49:03
  Yeah,
• 49:03
  he's like, that's kind of what it reminded me of, was a bit of that as well.
• 49:08
  It kind of reminded me of Vigilante and his mom from Peacemaker.
• 49:11
  Yeah.
• 49:12
  Yes.
• 49:12
  But not as— yeah, not as blue language, but like—
• 49:16
  Vigilante's got a lot of similar— like, Peacemaker's my best friend, and it's like, nope, Peacemaker is always really mean to you. Yeah.
• 49:23
  And like, oh, my girlfriend is, uh, Harcourt and all this. Yeah.
• 49:27
  It's not that far off. That's
• 49:30
  funny. I wonder, I wonder if when they did that, like, watch The King of Comedy because you are Rupert.
• 49:35
  It's very influential. I wouldn't be surprised.
• 49:37
  Yeah,
• 49:38
  yeah. I like, I like De Niro's acting in this too because I feel like he's got a very different look in this movie than he normally does, like with the mustache and stuff. He looks a lot less like some— I feel like in a lot of movies he's in, he does kind of have like a more physical presence, and this, he doesn't necessarily have that. I feel like he's a little more schlubby and like normal, like, yeah, this is normal dude. Um, but he does great. I really like his
• 49:59
  performance, especially when he's wearing that Hawaiian shirt, those blue blocker glasses and everything.
• 50:04
  Yes, he's got a look to him. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:06
  I'll be real honest, like, the 3 main characters that we talked about in the deep dive are all very good in this.
• 50:13
  They're all great. They're all great.
• 50:14
  Even Jerry Lewis, who is a person I don't really care for a whole lot, he's really good.
• 50:19
  I was surprised. I was surprised how good he was. Yeah.
• 50:20
  I don't know if I've ever seen a Jerry Lewis movie before like this, like main one.
• 50:27
  I've never seen all of one, I can tell you that.
• 50:29
  Like, um, was it— is he Dr. Dolittle or something like that? I think that that might be—
• 50:34
  no, in the original.
• 50:35
  Yeah, yeah, the original one.
• 50:36
  Flubber movie.
• 50:37
  Yeah, stuff like that.
• 50:39
  Oh,
• 50:39
  I don't think I've seen any of those. I didn't. And, and I thought he was fantastic in this.
• 50:45
  Yeah, he was. He really was.
• 50:47
  Also, I think, I think by the time, like, I'm more aware of him is when he's, like, later in his career. Um, I think his head has gotten a bit bigger because I think he had a medical condition of some sort.
• 51:01
  I have no idea.
• 51:02
  Oh, you mean literally?
• 51:03
  Yes. Yeah, like I just remember like his head being like really—
• 51:06
  Not the fame going to it.
• 51:08
  Okay.
• 51:08
  Yeah, no, yeah, no, like literally. And then, you know, but, and probably mostly just like him showing up like later in life on his telethon thing more than any actual movie appearance. So like in this one, I mean, he is He's really, really good.
• 51:24
  Yes.
• 51:24
  And it's, it's not a character that I think most people associate him with. It's that, that it's not the, you know, the guy that people, you know, doing the weird, uh, you know, uh, Asian accent and things like that.
• 51:38
  Yeah.
• 51:39
  All those other like odd little bits, um, that they would do. He's pretty much being himself from like the Jerry Lewis Show. Yeah. Which I also thought was weird. It was like, as they were introducing like a bunch of people, like it's all like Real name people.
• 51:53
  Yeah, Tony Randall made an appearance. I was so excited. I love Tony Randall.
• 51:56
  But like all the, like the guests like that they say that he's gonna have like the very first episode that they show him on. So, and the only thing they change is his last name basically, you know, to Jerry Langford instead of Jerry Lewis. And, uh, I just, I found it funny that all the rest of the people were like real, like legit people. But yeah, he's really good. And, uh, again, I don't, I was looking through Sandra Bernhardt's IMDb, and I'm like, I can't really put any pinpoint one thing I remember her from except that she was like a comedian in the '80s.
• 52:24
  Mhm.
• 52:25
  She's really, really good in this, especially when you get to like the, like the last quarter of the movie where like she's really kind of becoming very unhinged. She's, uh, she's standout in this as well. And then yeah, obviously De Niro's De Niro. So
• 52:40
  yeah, Sandra Bernhard plays that stalker very well. As I'm watching this, I want to talk about a thing that occurred in that scene. And it's a— it's the camera work, and it's outstanding where she comes walking down the hallway.
• 52:51
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:52
  You don't know that Jerry Lewis is sitting at the table. And it's like her, she's in that night— in that, uh, like evening wear, right? Like a real nice dress. She's walking up and the camera's following her. And then you get Jerry Lewis, he's tied from— it's like taped up from his nose to his knees in a chair. And it looks super funny. There's like this just super ridiculous nature of it. But the Foley work in that scene, because it's a very quiet scene where they're just talking and she's just constantly talking about how she's in love with him. She throws that glass and it makes like this exaggerated breaking noise.
• 53:23
  They heard a cat and they're like, meow!
• 53:25
  Yeah, she clears the table and there's like a cat, meow! I think that's a nod to Jerry Lewis movies and comedy. Right? Like the weird, like, yeah, slapsticky, strange noises that don't make sense. Like, you think, like clearing the table and you hear a cat you've never seen before, sort of thing. It's almost like throwing in the Wilhelm scream into something.
• 53:50
  Yeah, it's her apartment, everything. I— we don't see a cat walking around there at all the entire time they're there. But like, but I like the fact that, I mean, she's clearly just as, as it's going on, it's becoming more and more—
• 54:02
  yeah,
• 54:02
  yeah,
• 54:02
  you know, it went from like, you know, she left a message for him to She's trying to make him a sweater.
• 54:09
  Yes, she made a sweater for him.
• 54:11
  Pinpoints it perfectly, uh, size-wise and all, without, you know, just by based on looking at him.
• 54:17
  And it did look great in that sweater.
• 54:20
  Very good. Just need to put sleeves on.
• 54:22
  Yeah, but then like she gets there and like she starts out, it's just like, you know, she's sitting there at the table, starts off like as a key. Every time they go back and forth between what Rupert's doing and what she's doing She is she's taking a spiraling further, even further each time around.
• 54:40
  Yeah, yeah. She's she's just like Rupert. Yeah, they both have this weird reality in their heads of what, but it's obviously different. But yeah, it's like they're both living in a fictional reality that yeah, Harry doesn't want any part of. But
• 54:54
  they both had different motivations, but they're the same.
• 54:57
  Yeah,
• 54:57
  they want the same outcome. Just different ways to get there. Like, it's like Keith said earlier, uh, 2 sides of the same coin, right? Yeah, they're very much the same, but one just wants to bone Jerry Lewis and one wants to be best friends with Jerry Lewis and, yeah, do comedy with him. It's— it— they're, they're very similar.
• 55:17
  Yeah, they just— they both want a relationship with them.
• 55:19
  Mm-hmm. Yeah,
• 55:22
  yeah, because I think there's, there's one time, like, when you first realize that those 2 are working together Like, he starts yelling. He's like, it's like, you know, my relationship with Jerry is real.
• 55:31
  Yeah,
• 55:32
  yeah,
• 55:33
  I talked to him once. Yeah, you just chased him into a building and got—
• 55:38
  I'm going to his house this weekend.
• 55:40
  Uh-huh.
• 55:40
  Man, I, I really enjoyed that scene also.
• 55:43
  Yes, when he shows up at Jerry's house with the girl from the bar. I can't remember what her name is off the top of my head. She's super impressed. She has no idea, but she does steal stuff though, which I thought was funny. But yeah,
• 55:58
  well, at that point,
• 55:59
  that poor, that poor guy answers the door, it's like, what? It's like, I wanted to call the police, but I called you instead.
• 56:04
  Nah, he's out golfing, right? You think he's gonna break 100 this time?
• 56:07
  Yeah, he's like, he knew where you were.
• 56:10
  Yeah, yeah, they're like making drinks or going upstairs or putting on records and stuff.
• 56:15
  He's
• 56:15
  sticking his hand through the, through the art.
• 56:18
  Even Rupert's like, okay, hold, slow down, slow down. Like she starts putting on the records and stuff. You know, she might be getting a little over his head.
• 56:26
  He got her that far and she's she had no idea.
• 56:30
  Yeah, it's like well if you're friends with them, he's probably not going to care.
• 56:32
  Yeah, exactly.
• 56:33
  I agree with her. Yeah, but he's starting to realize that this might be yeah.
• 56:36
  She didn't realize until he got there. Yeah. And then he's like she's she's like oh god what have I gotten into?
• 56:42
  Yeah. Oh no, he doesn't want us here. We're not supposed to be hanging out here.
• 56:46
  Yeah,
• 56:47
  you didn't know that we were coming.
• 56:48
  He hates you. Yeah, he does.
• 56:51
  Uh, yeah, you told me to call you. I did, to get you to leave me alone. Like,
• 56:56
  oof. Yep.
• 56:57
  Jerry Lewis in that scene was very good. Just the straight-faced reaction to everything, trying not to— like, I'm thinking of, like, if I put myself in that situation, I'd be losing my shit on these people,
• 57:09
  right?
• 57:10
  Who the fuck are you? Get out of my house!
• 57:12
  And once they leave, then his— the butler guy opens the door back up and goes, and tells him, like, very good job, sir.
• 57:18
  Yeah, he keeps a level head.
• 57:20
  And that made me chuckle.
• 57:22
  Yeah, he's even— he even keeps his courtesy so much as like, I'm gonna call you a cab, it's gonna take you far away from here, right? Like, he's in his real life, he's as courteous as he could possibly be.
• 57:35
  Yes.
• 57:36
  When faced with this sort of reality. Like, even when he signed that autograph and the lady's like, can you do something else? He's like, no. She's like, I hope you die of cancer.
• 57:45
  Right?
• 57:46
  Yeah, like, Jesus Christ.
• 57:47
  It shows that he's actually not a bad guy. You know, he's going around like waving at the people and like interacting with them when they want to talk to him. But yeah, like when he's like, actually got to go somewhere, yeah, they get mad at him or whatever. But yeah, like he's— he shows that he's willing to like interact. He's not like a— the fame hasn't gone to his head so much that he's like trying to, you know, push everyone away. Yeah.
• 58:05
  No,
• 58:05
  but these guys are pushing him too far. Yeah, it's gone too far.
• 58:08
  But if you imagine— if you think about it, like imagine the amount of people like you saw after his show. Which he does probably 4 or 5 times a week, just the insanity outside the back door. And he's got— he's been dealing with that for how many years, right? Like, he's still not angry and bitter. He's still— Yeah,
• 58:28
  he's still friendly.
• 58:28
  Nods and smiles and
• 58:31
  makes jokes to them, makes them
• 58:32
  smile.
• 58:32
  Yeah, he's not a bad guy.
• 58:34
  No,
• 58:35
  he's a little grouchy for understandable reasons. And then, yeah, then he gets kidnapped. So
• 58:38
  then he gets kidnapped. Yeah. So he kidnaps Jerry Lewis and then uses that as leverage to get onto The Tonight Show or whatever.
• 58:47
  And to make sure that they— because they're like, well, we're going to tape this at 7, we'll know if we can cut it later on. And he makes sure to set it up so they— he's set it up perfectly. And he apparently knows how this works enough.
• 58:58
  Yeah.
• 58:59
  To say you're gonna have to keep the audience there for so long and we're gonna have to do this whole thing, otherwise, you know,
• 59:03
  and you
• 59:03
  gotta air it.
• 59:04
  Yeah, you gotta air it. And it was all ultimately just for the girl at the bar.
• 59:09
  Yeah. He wanted to show off.
• 59:12
  Yeah. I love that. They're like, all right, we're going to take you. And he goes, yeah, no, I need to watch it first. It's part of the agreement, and I need to go watch this specific place.
• 59:21
  Acting like you don't know me. That was funny. They didn't do that. They didn't try that hard.
• 59:26
  And then when they take him out, the guy at the end of the bar is like, what's going on here? That was the same guy.
• 59:32
  That was just the same guy that was on there. How'd he do that?
• 59:34
  Yeah.
• 59:35
  It's kind of wild. He did all of that. That's what it ultimately came down to. He felt he was embarrassed by Jerry Lewis at his house because he brought— I can't remember what her name is, and it's terrible. She's like— Rita. What was her name?
• 59:49
  Rita.
• 59:50
  Rita.
• 59:50
  Rita. She's like one of 2 women in the whole movie. I can't remember what her name was. So he does that and he felt embarrassed in front of her. And now in for a penny, in for a pound. I got to go the whole way now. Like, I gotta go the whole 9 yards, otherwise she won't respect me.
• 1:00:06
  To prove that I was right. Yeah.
• 1:00:09
  Yeah. Just to prove that he was— yeah. See, I told you I wasn't lying.
• 1:00:13
  You're not gonna sit here and work through and help me work on, you know, my, my comedy routine at your house. Like, like I imagine you said you would.
• 1:00:23
  Yeah.
• 1:00:23
  Uh, yeah, no, no. Now I'm gonna go. We're gonna just— I'm fine. What I have is what we're gonna have and I'm gonna push it through and this is how we're doing it. You called me out on it. I gotta work 5— I'm gonna work 50 times harder if that means I'm kidnapping you.
• 1:00:38
  It's funny you say that, Keith, 'cause it reminds me in the opening clip when he's like, you wouldn't believe how many times I've had this conversation in my head. It's like, does it always end this way? It does, actually. And so, you think about that, how many conversations has he had in his head with Jerry Lewis? Like, every possible scenario that he could possibly encounter, he's thought of.
• 1:01:02
  Which is why that first time that they do the back and forth thing, I'm like, oh, they're showing him kind of rehearsing it so he's ready to go with the conversation. But no, no, he's, he's just chatting it up while— But you could almost—
• 1:01:15
  you could almost be like, yeah, he is rehearsing it. But then it becomes more and more— I don't want to use insane or crazy, but insane and crazy.
• 1:01:24
  It is. Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  It's just more and more unhinged. As it goes on, it was like, now he's, he's the one signing autographs because he's bigger than Jerry Lewis and he's the one giving Jerry Lewis advice.
• 1:01:36
  Right. Jerry's begging him for stuff.
• 1:01:38
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:01:39
  Yeah. He got the million-dollar book deal, even though he had to go to jail. They're going to be making a movie.
• 1:01:44
  Well, that's the end. That's his fantasy. That doesn't happen. That's all in his head.
• 1:01:48
  That's what I was going to ask you guys about your interpretation of that.
• 1:01:51
  It's all in his head. He doesn't get 6 years for kidnapping the biggest celebrity in the world. And get out in two, two and a half.
• 1:01:59
  Yeah. No way. Everyone embraces him and lets him back on. No. Yeah. No, I don't think it's real either, but I like that that's like kind of up in the air, you know.
• 1:02:08
  And I I think especially that that very end thing where like he's coming out to like basically do his own show, I guess, whatever it is, and they just keep the guy keeps repeating. Let's hear it for let's hear it for Rupert. Fucking let's hear it for— and he, the guy, the announcer person repeats it like in a couple different versions, just repeatedly saying the same thing.
• 1:02:31
  Creepy. Yeah, the ending is like, oh yeah, that's like the first clue that that's a false reality. Like, I mean, that's when he kind of confirms it, like it's false reality. Like, this is just like this weird thing that— yeah,
• 1:02:42
  yeah, that's the confirmation. But like all the other stuff, the million-dollar book deal, the, the getting a TV deal as he comes out, 87 million people watched it. All this stuff is just insane. I
• 1:02:56
  mean, they would have no reason to watch it unless they had already heard what was going to happen.
• 1:03:02
  Yeah.
• 1:03:03
  Because otherwise to them it should just be a regular show and they probably don't even know that there's a guest appearance, a guest host until they actually turn it on. That was one of his things was we have to keep the audience here so they don't go out and spoil any of it.
• 1:03:17
  And there was no internet. There was no DVRing something. You couldn't VHS record it. Like, it aired live and then you caught a rerun in the summer, maybe, if you didn't catch it the first time. That's it. But 87 million people tuned in for it? I don't know.
• 1:03:33
  Even, even back then when there's only 3 channels, you're not getting 87 million people.
• 1:03:37
  No.
• 1:03:37
  Like, his act, even, I'm like, again, it was pretty good on the— but is that just in his head? You know, like, when they're watching on TV, it's like He— the crowd was loving it. He's doing a good job. But I'm like, that probably didn't actually happen. Like, that's probably, you know—
• 1:03:52
  You know, it's funny about those sorts of audiences. It's like, uh, Stockholm syndrome, right? Like, you're trapped there and all it takes is one person to start laughing and then everybody starts laughing.
• 1:04:01
  They got like little cue cards or something, like, laugh.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah. Yep. And they're just— they're, they're, they're there to laugh, right? They're, they're there with the predisposition of, we're going to laugh at comedy. And here comes comedy, and all it takes is like one thing and they're on your side, right? So he— yeah, he may have— he may have had people laughing for him, right? Yeah. But it doesn't matter. Like, he took every shortcut possible, including kidnapping.
• 1:04:29
  At that point, it's not even a shortcut. Yeah, yeah, at that point it's ruining your life. Yeah, it's not even a shortcut, it's just— that's an ending of a career.
• 1:04:39
  So we gotta talk about this too because Terry mentioned it. This is— The Joker is clearly the king of comedy, but R-rated and violent, right?
• 1:04:49
  Yes.
• 1:04:50
  It's like 100%, and they even shoot De Niro in the head at the end of that one.
• 1:04:54
  Yes, yes. I did expect the ending of this, them to kill Jerry, but to be more
• 1:04:59
  violent.
• 1:04:59
  Yeah, but that's because I saw The Joker first, so.
• 1:05:01
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:05:03
  Yeah, uh, yeah, it is very much a rip-off. Um, It's not. I don't. I don't really like it that much. It's I. People really seem to love it. I was kind of just like it was fine.
• 1:05:13
  You know, I was pretty mad Joker.
• 1:05:15
  Yeah, but
• 1:05:15
  no, I didn't like that at all.
• 1:05:17
  It was very like it is just like this is the exact same plot basically.
• 1:05:21
  Yeah, and you didn't even have the King of Comedy as reference before that though. Like you guys
• 1:05:25
  said, no, and I still thought it was me.
• 1:05:26
  Yeah, yeah, exactly. I knew the King of Comedy and saw it, and I was like this is the King of Comedy, isn't it? With that scene from The Dark Knight Returns, right, where the Joker shoots David Letterman or whoever like. type character in the head on TV. But yeah,
• 1:05:41
  yeah,
• 1:05:41
  this is what it is.
• 1:05:42
  It's influential.
• 1:05:43
  Definitely influential. And it's one of those under-the-radar Scorsese movies, I think, from—
• 1:05:47
  Yeah, they don't talk about this one as much, I feel like, compared to like Raging Bull or Taxi Driver.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah, for sure. Well, did we do it? Did we get through The King of Comedy?
• 1:05:57
  And I believe we have.
• 1:05:58
  Yeah, this is one of those gets me hyped up. I like this movie quite a bit. What'd you guys think?
• 1:06:03
  Uh, this is one of the better things that we've watched.
• 1:06:06
  Agreed. Yeah,
• 1:06:07
  yeah. If we were gonna have a list of 1,001 movies to watch, that— this is in there for sure. I, I'm, I'm actually upset at myself for not seeing this prior.
• 1:06:19
  Yeah, fair.
• 1:06:21
  Yeah, I, I love this movie. I thought it was amazing. Um, might be my favorite Scorsese movie I've seen so far.
• 1:06:26
  Uh, wild. Yeah,
• 1:06:27
  really good. Um, and he's had some good ones I've seen, like Taxi Driver I love, Raging Bull I love, obviously. Um, but I think this one might be just slightly better. I like it. Um, acting is great. Jerry Lewis does a really good job. Some really cool shots. It gets kind of like eerie at times when you start to realize what's going on in Rupert's head versus reality. Like, there's that scene we didn't even talk about where the scene where he's, um, making his tape.
• 1:06:52
  Yes.
• 1:06:53
  And there's just like constant laughter over his monologue. You can't even hear what he's saying, but like there's just like the laughter and laughter and laugh. Like, and it's just like slowly zooming out down this like long creepy hallway. That was— there's some great visuals in this as well.
• 1:07:07
  Like, it's just— Got that giant printout of a crowd on a wall. I don't know if that was real or not, right?
• 1:07:12
  I think that's in his head. Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:07:14
  But there was a picture on there, I wish I would have took a screenshot, that the dude looked just like Nathan Fielder. And I was like, in the crowd, kind of hilarious. He was in the lower right quadrant of the screen. I was like, that looks just like Nathan Fielder, maybe a little bit older.
• 1:07:31
  Maybe it's his dad or something.
• 1:07:32
  Yeah, maybe.
• 1:07:33
  Yeah, but I love that. I definitely agree, one of the best movies we've watched so far, if not the best. It's really good.
• 1:07:38
  I agree with both of you. This is one of those movies I love. You know how you were saying earlier when, when like you gotta go back and watch good movies?
• 1:07:47
  Yeah, remind myself to watch good stuff sometimes.
• 1:07:50
  This is one of those movies where you watch, you're just like, man, it is so well done. The acting is just absurd in it. The, the direction and the camera work, all that stuff is really good. Even the script is tight for like an early '80s movie. There's not a whole lot of loafing in this movie. Everything is just moving forward. It's moving forward. And then you get to that midpoint where he gets kicked out and then everything changes. He's like, well, fuck this, I'm gonna kidnap the guy.
• 1:08:14
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:08:16
  And they don't waste any time with the planning of the kidnapping, the drawing up the plans. They just go right to it. And I like that. I love that, actually. It's like, we're smart enough to watch the movie and put 2 and 2 together. Thank you for treating us like we're smart, Martin Scorsese. I appreciate that.
• 1:08:32
  And these people already know his every move, Jerry, so they don't really need to plan that much. They're just like, all right, follow him around here. Yeah,
• 1:08:38
  they are so obsessed with him. They know when he walks out the door. They know when he leaves. He doesn't look like him. They always send out a person that looks more like him earlier. Because it's like a distraction because of people like them.
• 1:08:53
  Yes.
• 1:08:54
  Well, we know what we thought. Yes, I really enjoyed this movie quite a
• 1:08:57
  bit. Also, I gotta say, Terry is known normally for taking the bigger swings. Uh, this seems like pretty much like just a fastball right down the middle for you. And,
• 1:09:06
  uh,
• 1:09:06
  it is, it's, it is a fastball right down the middle. You didn't need a big swing to send this one out the park.
• 1:09:10
  That's good, that's good. So, you know, every once in a while I like to treat Myself and you guys to some classic cinema. Not always to be originals with me. Not always a snake pit. Although that was one thousand one top movies of all time. And
• 1:09:24
  I don't know if this one is. Oh, it is. It is.
• 1:09:26
  It should be. Yeah. It's yeah. I don't think nobody ever thanked me for picking snake pit after we learned it was one thousand.
• 1:09:31
  Well, I'm thanking you right now, Terry. Thanks for. No, you're welcome.
• 1:09:34
  Thanks for pinning the king county. Thank
• 1:09:36
  you. Oh, well, I'll take that too.
• 1:09:38
  Okay. Well, we know what we thought. What did that old internet have to say? Well, on May 22nd, 2020, deep, deep into lockdown, or like, I'm gonna stay home and watch movies, Dom Mercaldi had this to say.
• 1:09:53
  Oh, that's a weird name.
• 1:09:56
  Dom Mercaldi. D-O-M-M-E-R-C-A-L-D-I. Dom Mercaldi. Another Martin Scorsese masterpiece. Pros: One, Robert De Niro, Rupert Pupkin, gives his best performance that I have ever seen. Sandra Bernhard, Masha, gives an amazing side performance. Two, the comedy comes from the cringy and awkward type humor, and it's work— it works greatly. I'm also going to say humor spelled with a U. They're British.
• 1:10:26
  Cool.
• 1:10:27
  Three, the film is essentially a pertinent allegory on people's obsession with fame and attention. Whilst also displaying the adverse effects of fame on those that are famous. Four, the transitions between Rupert Pumpkin's fantasy and reality is seamlessly and expertly done. Five, the directing, per usual with Martin Scorsese, parentheses director, is astonishing. Oh yes, thank you. Rupert Pumpkin is such a fleshed-out character that he's simultaneously lovable, admirable, but also worthy of incredible. Incredulity and disgust. He's definitely one of the most interesting characters ever created. 7. Why is it listed 10 apparently? Or no, just 9. 7. The costume design for Rupert Pumpkin is incredible and it perfectly mirrors his need for attention as well as his eccentricity.
• 1:11:28
  Yes. And did you notice he was wearing the exact same clothes as Jerry sometimes? Like,
• 1:11:32
  yes.
• 1:11:32
  Yeah.
• 1:11:35
  8, better be a king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime. Despite the over-the-top nature of the movie, it leaves the viewer with a positive and uplifting philosophy for life. Which is true, but—
• 1:11:50
  I guess. Yeah, so I think it's up to interpretation at the end there. I don't know.
• 1:11:54
  And then finally, number 9, the ending is one of the most satisfying and heartwarming conclusions to a movie in the entirety of cinema. I wonder if he didn't realize that that's all fictionalized in his head. Did he really think that Rupert Pumpkin became a hero at the end?
• 1:12:10
  I, I think maybe he possibly could have also.
• 1:12:14
  Oh, you could take it that way.
• 1:12:15
  I think you could take it that way. That's the beauty of the ending. You could totally take it that way. You could have 100 arguments to why that's true, because the world is insane.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah,
• 1:12:25
  but
• 1:12:25
  also, to me, I don't want to believe a world would just embrace the crazy guy, you know? I want to— I want to—
• 1:12:34
  That's why I think it probably actually happened because I just get the Rodney Dangerfield
• 1:12:38
  pull at the collar there. I'm
• 1:12:40
  like, oh, surely that would never happen in today's society.
• 1:12:44
  Well, 2 found this one helpful, 1 not so much. 10 out of 10.
• 1:12:48
  I like the list. I'm not sure what the point of it was, but
• 1:12:51
  well, he, he had 9 things he felt were very, very important.
• 1:12:55
  Do you think this guy also like, you know, got like trying to write like a book about movies or something like— because that seems like a lot of work to put in for just an IMDb review. Yeah.
• 1:13:04
  Yeah,
• 1:13:05
  yeah,
• 1:13:05
  sometimes he takes everything to the nth degree. He's very serious about his
• 1:13:10
  stuff.
• 1:13:10
  There are some people who just love leaving reviews, aren't there?
• 1:13:12
  That is true.
• 1:13:13
  Yeah, sometimes I'll write a long review, you know, Letterboxd. I'll get on there, I'll just— half the time it's just an emoji or something, but a lot of times I like to, I like to go off, pop off as they say.
• 1:13:23
  Well, you know, it's so like when you get excited about something, it's easy to like write a lot about it. it, right?
• 1:13:30
  Yes.
• 1:13:30
  I really like this movie, here's the reason. And then on the flip side, yeah, when you don't like something, it's very easy to write about. So not to be outdone, Big Very Bad Tom on March 18th, 2013 had this to say: Robert De Niro dodged a bullet.
• 1:13:47
  What?
• 1:13:49
  I don't know. I couldn't resist. Having played a lot of tough-type characters in his movies, De Niro tried to play against type in this movie, playing a mope who wants to be a big-time comedian. Whether playing this role was on De Niro's own initiative or whether he was pushed into it, his performance was so bad I couldn't believe that I was watching a major Hollywood star.
• 1:14:15
  That's, that's a crazy statement. He's really good in this.
• 1:14:19
  Let me give you the next paragraph. My mother and I bailed after 20 minutes, not only because she and I were both so shocked at De Niro's terrible performance, but there was nothing else worth seeing. Just overlong scenes with a lot of jabber and not much else. And neither of us are really Jerry Lewis fans, so it was just as well we didn't stay for him. Wow. Yes, De Niro's character was supposed to be a mope, But even a mope should give the viewer the reason to take interest in him. De Niro didn't look like a mope; he looked like a hack actor trying to play a mope.
• 1:14:56
  Yes,
• 1:14:58
  that that's
• 1:14:58
  that sounds like it fits pretty well with the character.
• 1:15:02
  That's who Rupert Pumpkin was. Another performance like this would likely have done irreparable damage to De Niro's character.
• 1:15:11
  Whoa!
• 1:15:12
  Come on!
• 1:15:13
  I think so. Irreparable damage and never going to act again in this town.
• 1:15:17
  You're still. Working with Scorsese again here. Like, I don't— even if it doesn't land perfectly, nobody's knocking anything here.
• 1:15:24
  But I'm gonna tell you what, it lands perfectly.
• 1:15:27
  It does.
• 1:15:28
  Yeah, it does. I— again, I'm really shocked that I did not see this one like at some other point in my life. Like, it seems like this would have popped up somewhere.
• 1:15:36
  Well, 14 people found that helpful.
• 1:15:40
  Wow.
• 1:15:41
  33 not so much. Thank God for the ratio. 1 out of 10.
• 1:15:46
  The only watch— you know what, I don't like it. Well, I guess it kind of makes sense. It kind of annoys me when someone reviews something, but they're like, I only watched 10 minutes. I'm like, yeah, and you're not allowed to review it. Sorry, I know if it's bad, you hated it, whatever, but you didn't take the whole experience in. It doesn't count. Doesn't count. So you know what, I'm gonna say it, this review don't count.
• 1:16:03
  Yeah, I agree.
• 1:16:06
  As the Clown Prince of IMDb, I'm just kicking this out.
• 1:16:12
  All right, we did it. We got through the first 3 weeks of the month. You know what that— you know what that means?
• 1:16:20
  What?
• 1:16:21
  We gotta go to that goddamn wheel.
• 1:16:23
  Okay.
• 1:16:24
  So we put our heads together and we each come up with an addition to the wheel to spin this month. Terry, you chose
• 1:16:33
  After Hours. It's
• 1:16:34
  another Scorsese
• 1:16:35
  movie
• 1:16:35
  which was mentioned this episode, I do believe.
• 1:16:37
  Yes, and it's, uh, next on my list to watch for Scorsese's films, so how convenient.
• 1:16:42
  So works perfectly. Keith, you chose?
• 1:16:45
  Let's do Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
• 1:16:47
  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a classic. That's supposed to be a great movie, and I'm intrigued by it. And that was mentioned during Sneakers because it's got Robert Redford
• 1:16:55
  in
• 1:16:55
  it. And I chose The Immortals, which—
• 1:16:59
  Henry Cavill.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah, Henry Cavill. Is it Cavill or Cavill?
• 1:17:03
  I think it's Cavill. I think
• 1:17:05
  it don't matter how it's pronounced. He's that guy. He's big and muscular, and it's like a Greek sort of thing. I can't remember. Why did it come up? It was like, is it directed by—
• 1:17:14
  It's directed by the same guy who did The Fall. Yeah.
• 1:17:16
  Okay. Yes. I mean, I'm intrigued by that because I really love The Fall. And
• 1:17:20
  The Fall was awesome.
• 1:17:21
  Yeah. All right. So what we have to do now is we got to spin that wheel. Spin that wheel. So I doubled up the movies. I put a spin again on there. We, it's, we got a 1 in 3 chance of our movie getting picked. Here we go.
• 1:17:38
  Come on, boy.
• 1:17:41
  It spins so fast at the beginning.
• 1:17:43
  Really meant to pick Hobbs and Shaw.
• 1:17:46
  Oh, spin again, spin again.
• 1:17:49
  And it claps for spin again. It doesn't know, it has no context.
• 1:17:52
  It's just happy. It's just happy to be here.
• 1:17:55
  It just went past the Immortals to spin again. Here we go. Oh, all
• 1:18:09
  right, The Immortals it is.
• 1:18:10
  So we're back to a heater for Derek. All right, we're watching The Immortals. All right, so we did it. We got through the first 3 weeks of month 12, which is the Our Movies Recommends. We're on to The Immortals. Which is another movie that we talked about, Henry Cavill. And I guess that leaves us with nothing to do but to end this way we end everything.
• 1:18:38
  It's true. Whatever you say, Sergeant, I won't say a word. Shut up! I didn't say a word, boy. If you become real, Sergeant, I'm fighting my match. What am I gonna get
• 1:18:47
  myself in trouble? Yeah, tell him you'll punch him in the nose. Stop putting words in my mouth. I won't say that. You won't say what? I'll punch you in the nose.
• 1:18:57
  Oh, I said it. Why you?
• 1:18:58
  Please, please don't kill me. You don't want to die, huh? Well, don't worry about it, Sonny. I'm gonna let you live. Oh boy, thanks. Oh boy, you're welcome. But on one condition: you got to keep your mouth shut. You understand? Sure. You don't talk to nobody. No, but you just keep your mouth shut. Don't say a word to no one. You keep everything quiet. You don't say nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. You don't say nothing to anybody. You keep your mouth shut and be quiet. You just do like I tell
• 1:19:19
  you. Thanks for. You're listening to Fumbling Through Film. New episodes drop every Thursday. Got feedback or questions? Email us at fumblingthroughfilm@gmail.com. Follow us on Bluesky at Film Fumblers and on Instagram at film.fumblers. You can also follow Keith on Instagram at kg33lives and dadscardsdaily. Terry's on Letterboxd at Terry2099, and Derek's on social media at Derek the number 9 and the word 9. All original music is produced by the Dr. of Kansas, Terry. Hit him up for the bangers. See you next week as we keep on fumbling.