Brandon Reynolds on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Brandon Reynolds is a writer of many things, from deep dive long-form magazine articles to TV scripts. He's also a super awesome and smart dude that Chuck is happy to call a friend. Listen in as they discuss his movie crush, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.

(00:29):
Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush. Friday Interview edition,
another long distance edition. Here with my friend Brandon Reynolds. Hello, Hello, Chuck.
How old are you, sir? I'm good man. We started
to catch up for a minute off Mike, and I
was like, dude, there is no off mic in my world.
That's right, it's all recording all the time. How are

(00:51):
you doing. Oh, we're very well. Uh. We're in Los Angeles, California,
and um, you know, I think we'll be the last
state to reopen, although the beat, although the beaches are reopening. Um.
But you know, Janet and I we work from home
and for the most part, and so there's been the

(01:12):
weird kind of disconnect of everything is normal in the
house and then as soon as you go outside, it's
a weird apocalypse of people strolling. It's a lot of
strolling with strollers, strolling with dogs, and then everybody has masks. Yeah,
so you mentioned Janet for the uninitiated listening at home.

(01:33):
Janet Varney is your uh life partner. That's right, fiance,
We're off fiance. Oh okay, you guys are engaged yeah,
we have been for a minute. Did you tell me that? Probably,
I don't know if you did or not. When did
you guys get engaged? Oh, it's been a year and
a half. Maybe we're so, I mean, we're so um,

(01:55):
you know, we're not wedding people necessarily. So so she
was like during this whole thing, during lockdown, she was like,
let's just find somebody online. And that seems very Janet,
doesn't it. We'll schedule it between a hike and some
work that we have to do. Well. Congratulations, dude, that's
great news. Um. Today is actually my fourteenth wedding anniversary.

(02:18):
Congratulations to you. Thanks man. Uh, how are things there?
Things are good. You know, we're a lot of family
time there, you know, working with with Ruby around his
challenging speaking of which, here she just walked in. So
I've been letting this happen. Occasionally she'll say hi and

(02:40):
then while boot her come here and say hi to Brandon. Hi, Hi, Ruby,
how are you can you you can't even see? Uh
there she is. Brandon says, Hi, what are you drinking?
Little chocolate milk? You never get chocolate milk? What a
nice treat? Did mommy get you some of those you

(03:01):
can barely even talk. That's the kind that's the kind
of enjoyment, that kind of that I remember from wine
coolers when you're a kid. You're like, I can hear
them because I have on headphones. But you know, I
gotta boot you out. Can you say hi to everyone
listening though? Because they like hearing from you know? You
got you can't wave? You gotta say words? H you

(03:25):
want to tell everyone what you watched? Since this is
a movie show, what kind of show you watched today?
You don't want to say? All right, well, then what
good are you? You You want me to say it? I
can't remember the name of it. It was a cartoon
about outer space that was supposedly educational. So, uh, we
were trying over here, I wasn't trying. Fantastic Planet. Was

(03:45):
Fantastic Planet, the one with all the nudity that weird
sep of these psychedelic forbidden Planet. Forbidden Planet? All right,
see your kiddo by, Brandon says by can you yell? By? Alright?
Shut the door? All right? So that's happened about every

(04:06):
movie Crush episode. Uh, let me put up my sound
panel that she just knocked over. I have not been
letting those get through for stuff you should know though. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta maintain standards. And she's not in the union exactly.
She actually did. We had her on a segment Emily,
and I've been recording some of these as you know.
And uh, we had Ruby down to talk about Frozen

(04:28):
and Frozen too, So she's a she's a part of
the fabric of the show now. So anyway, what I
was saying was you and Janet are getting married now,
which is great news. And that's how I don't know
if you and I don't expect you to remember when
we met, do you? Yeah? Remember? Yeah at the bar
of look at you? What's that bar? Well, I can't

(04:53):
remember the hotel, but it was for l a podfest. Yeah.
Well that makes me feel good because masic people remember me.
Janet had rolled out the red carpet of praise for
you because she loved you so much and was so
excited to get to hang out with you and that
you and I would get to meet and hit it off,
that's right. Yeah, So, because I was going to be

(05:15):
a guest on her live j V Club and was
she dashes in and you know, Janet at these events
and every event, she's usually got a lot going on.
And uh, she came in with you. I said hi
because I had just met her too, and she said,
I'm so sorry, I've got to go. This is Brandon.
You two will love each other. And I was like,

(05:38):
let's get a drink. And it was great. We had
a great first conversation and you're one of my favorite
people ever since then, well you're one of mine. We
um remember when we were in Atlanta when Jannet was
shooting Standing against Evil? Was this last? I think it
was the year before last. But you know, we like
to walk and uh, and even Atlanta summers are not

(06:00):
going to slow us down. And I went to meet
you at your whole place, which was to breakfast. It
was a multi mile walk. It was I was just
sweating and then I cantmera when I got to eat there.
But it was that was a great That was a
great experience. Like just like I'm going to go with
an old friend and all I have to do is
trek across. I remember when you walked and I don't

(06:24):
know if you remember the expression on my face, and
I was just like, wow, that's a long walk. Uh,
you know, Atlanta is a good neighborhood strolling town, to
be sure, but people don't walk, you know, eight miles
to get somewhere. It was it was one of this.
It's the same in l A. Will walk all over
the place and um and you move through different not

(06:45):
just neighborhoods, but like geographies, like oh, this is clearly
a part of town that's built with a whole other thing.
And in l A, um uh, so much of it
is about the car anyway that like, you really do
feel like an ant walking through these spaces that are
just not human, but but now they are, and now
people are like, oh my gosh, this sidewalk hasn't been

(07:07):
used in fifty years. It's kind of kind of nice. Yeah,
Emily and I used to go on some great walks
when we lived in l A. And we always um,
and this is true for anywhere. But you and I
know you know this. You you get so much, You
notice so much more when you're not flying by something
in a car, And especially in l A, with the
architecture and how the houses are kind of stuffed in there,

(07:29):
we would always just find these little hidden homes that
you never noticed that we're really cool and we're as
you guys are big into houses and architecture and and
little details and stuff, and so I think I think
walking is a super awesome fun thing to do like that.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's the thing. The houses particularly because

(07:49):
there's just no rhyme reason to why somebody built this
thing next to that thing. And yeah, and so yeah,
you really get a it's become kind of a meditative
thing anyway, Like well, and we just sort of build
it in. If she's got a show, you know, somewhere
we'll go, we just build in another hour and a
half to get there, you know, and it becomes part
of the journey. So also if she has to go

(08:11):
do something on stage, there's there's an entire line of
wardrobe for um that's very specific the Van diagram of
your very active but also you have to perform, so
it's like, you know, things that wicked sweat but also
have a nice tie feature, you know, or something. So
she would actually wear on stage what she would walk in. Often, yes,

(08:33):
my lord, I could. I would have to bring probably
three T shirts. I know. Well, it's you just you
control your your endocrine system as much as you can.
That's what it's all about just endocrine training. Yeah, I
know you guys have legendary endocrine control. Yeah, our reputation
procedes us as far as our glands. So, uh, I

(08:57):
know where you're from. But for the benefit of listeners,
where are you from? And I want to hear a
little bit more about sort of Um, while this movie
Aspin Tour Repet Detective is most certainly a movie of
your youth, what were some of the movies of your
youth aside from this that you felt h impacted you? Um?
You know one that I really thought about and I
have thought about a lot as a kid, that you know,

(09:20):
we would rent it over and over at Blockbuster was
The Last Dragon. To chers that movie. It was the
Last Dragon. That was the spoof it was it was
it was like it was kung Fu movie in Harlem,
Verry Gordy thing and um and I love that movie.
I loved all the kind of kung Fu karate type movies,

(09:42):
but that one really stuck with me for some reason.
And um, and when I think about stuff that I
was just renting over and over, uh, the Last Dragon
was one of them. Voltron, the cartoon movie I liked
a lot. Uh. Yeah, and then so my stepfather, UM,

(10:02):
who's a total not in a lot of ways, he's
also a big film guy and has this insane encyclopedic
memory of not just all the movies he's seen, but
like the day he saw them in the theater, even
if it was like, you know, John Wayne's first movie
at such and such a theater Tuesday in nine or
whatever it is. Um. Anyway, so he would always bring

(10:24):
all this crazy stuff into the house. And so he
you know, he had a video tape of Reservoir Dogs,
and like nobody had heard of that at that point.
And so my friends and I this was in high school,
we all became Tarantino devotes, like very early on, and
we would all get together and and um and watch
that kind of stuff. So that I had just sort

(10:46):
of a similar experience with Reservoir Dogs. A friend in
college turned me onto it, and it was one of
those movies that like you bring it over and you're like, oh,
we're watching this, can you do it right now? And
it was college, so I was like, yeah, sure, of course,
uh and yeah. Ever since then, Tarantino I have a
love hate relationship with him now. But those early films,

(11:07):
just every single one of them got me. Yeah, as
far as this being a thing to think about, like,
this is a film that is about stuff and you
need to, you know, consider it. I don't know, and
also being kind of a I mean I look at
that stuff now and stuff that really was exciting to me,
and a lot of it was somewhat too real violent

(11:27):
even though I wasn't that violent of a kid, there's
those threads of that stuff that fascinated me. Um. Then
now I look back on with a certain degree of discomfort. Um.
So you said you weren't that violent. He strike me
as not violent at all. Did you get in fights
and stuff? No? No, no, um, because you're big. Yeah. Yeah.

(11:48):
And I and when I when I do get angry,
I'm extraordinarily cruel. So no, uh no, I. Um, I
think there was a part of me that was an
angry you know, suburban kid hits in San Antonio. M
My parents got divorced when I was four, and um,

(12:09):
and you know, they get along and they get along
very well now they're friends now. But um, but yeah,
that was that head And of course, you know I
realized this years later, um, that that was something that
I sort of wrestled with in a weird way, and
then also having I have a younger brother who's autistic.
And while that was the norm that we sort of

(12:30):
existed with, there were all these stresses that just didn't
exist external to the house. Um, but that I found.
And again looking back on it now that I'm out
of the house and now that um that it doesn't
that I have some time to reflect on like what
was going through my head at that time. You know,
if they had, if they had meditation apps back then,

(12:51):
maybe I would have figured these things out much sooner.
But um, but yeah, no, I didn't get any fights,
but I did. I would. I would have a sort
of quick temper and you know, get into verbal things
with friends. But yeah, Janet had a divorce early in
her life too. If I'm not mistaken, right, I think
the same age. I think also for wow, that's crazy. Yeah, well, no,

(13:13):
wonder you're getting married, That's right. No, I mean it
does explain I think in part why we were so
hesitant to do it earlier in life. You know, I
think we had a very um, skeptical view of that,
and not because and again you know, not because like
our parents were jerks or we didn't get along with
them or anything, just like kind of little kind of

(13:36):
I think also for us, sort of a little bit
like religion, like well, clearly this is just not for us.
What else? And then you know, and then you find
somebody and all of us some of those things click,
you see a version of it in which it can work,
and um, and then everything else falls by the wayside,
and you're a giant hypocrite. But at least you're one
in love. That's sweet. How did you guys meet? I

(13:57):
don't even think I know that. Um. I was the
editor of SF Weekly in San Francisco, California, and you
covered sketch Fest, and that covered sketch Fest. Yeah. Um.
For a couple of years, you know, we would work
with them and do like a comedy issue. I would
go and do like profiles of the comedians. And one

(14:18):
year we had a bunch of comedians right, you know,
essays about ones who had connections to San Francisco, right,
essays about it, and so um. You know, for a while,
Janet was you know, we were just emailing like business.
You know, it's just this little it was just a
a two line or a from line. And then one year, um,

(14:40):
as it often happens. You know, these things sort of
all come to a head where we did finally meet, um,
and you know, became fast friends in that sort of way,
like I was going to shows and and she would
sort of dart in and out uh during the festival
where she doesn't sit down that much. Um and uh.

(15:00):
And then we just became friends that way, and it's
sort of over a period of time went from there.
She was still in l A, I was up here
um uh and so yeah, we're friends for a while
and then we both ended up in a window of
singleness um at some point after I had left the paper,

(15:22):
and so I really was It really was kind of
one of these where all of the things were changing
at once for me. And if you do you ever,
have you ever had those where a bunch of unrelated
things all of a sudden change at once, and it's like, oh,
clearly that was a chapter that's ending, and this is
a new chapter, new job in a place to live,
new relationship. You know what that is. That's God's hand

(15:43):
at work. That is God's hand at work. Yeah, and
that's yeah, it is. It is interesting how alignment has
so much to do with how things work out in
one's life. Some people might call that divinity or fate
or whatever, but I kind of called the alignment, um,
dumb luck. Maybe I like that term. Yeah, yeah, that

(16:06):
can that can be the difference in why people end
up together very often times. Is yeah. Well, and I
think too about um, you know, you can run into
somebody in the grocery store and have that spark or
you know, any number of ways all the ways people
meet people. UM, but I think for us there was
something satisfying in that we were both meeting doing this

(16:28):
thing that we loved that was unconnected but just happened
to have this one moment of crossing and you know,
rather than you know, nothing wrong with dating on a
website or anything, but um, but that it felt like
it was Yeah, it felt like it was more reinforced
by the fact that we didn't have to step out

(16:49):
of our normal patterns like this was. We were sort
of hurtling toward each other in that in that sense,
that was very nice. Yeah, it's very sweet. And you
were writing, uh, I think you have a pretty interesting
career story. You were writing for SF Weekly, but you
also have done these great, um, sort of deep dive

(17:11):
articles for magazines where you would go and live crazy
places and really kind of throw yourself into an experience
and then write about it, which is I think if
you're a writer. Uh, that's one of the romantic notions
of writing that not many writers get to do. Is
you know, the the single Man and Antarctica, you know,

(17:31):
doing a job for how long? What was it? Antarctica
was one of them. Yeah, I was on. I went
with a coast guard. They have an ice breaker that
sales from Seattle every year called the Polar Star, and
it sails down to McMurdo station UM in Antarctica because
that gets ice in and so it has to break

(17:51):
this channel in the ice so that re supply ships
can come in and give them a year of food
and fuel and then so cool take out the trash
and so um. When I was in San Francisco, um
and I had read a story that the ship came
through every year and it was dry ducked because it
would get beat to hell going through ice, you know,

(18:12):
for months and months. Uh. And I just thought that's
so fascinating, even more so because it's the only one
the US has, Like there's no one wants to put
any budget into building a new one, and so they
just kept re re retrofitting this one they had and
it was like forty plus years old, you know, from
nineteen seventy six, this thing. And anyway, so the whole

(18:33):
process to it was fascinating when you think about like
Russia had one, has like forty of these. We had one.
So I was like, I want to ride with them
down Antarctica and see what that's like. And uh, you know,
and so that was one of those where I wanted
to do it, and no one publishing wise was that
interested in it. There was. It was always something that

(18:54):
made it not that interesting to people, But I don't
know why. I was just so fascinated about what this
was gonna be like and what the people on the
ship were like and what they thought and all that stuff.
So it turns out the Coast Guard is extraordinarily reasonable.
I wrote to them and they were sort of like, yeah, okay,
come on, come on, you got any heart problems that
I know, the most accessible of the armed services. Yeah, yeah,

(19:19):
they're very um, they're you know, they're like, you know,
kind of cool sailor types. But anyway, so I was
on the ship, I met up with them in Um
Australia and sailed with them for fifty four days down
there and then back up the coast of Chile, and
then I got off in Chile, and um, yeah it
was great and they were all these there's a handful

(19:39):
of other like there was a National Geographic team that
was on there, and some scientists and you know, some
random navy divers. Everybody kind of had um they're various motivations.
But but I'm working on a book about it now, hopefully.
Really Yeah, yeah, there's no you wrote you wrote the
article though, right where was that published? I wrote, Oh right,

(20:00):
so k QUEED, which was the public radio station in
San Francisco, which actually had been the place that published
the initial story that got me into it. Uh. They
ended up doing like a diary. I mean I wrote
a diary sent it to them while I was underway.
So I wrote a series of I think eight stories
for them, and then a thank for the Seattle Weekly
because that's where the ship lives. So you know, stuff

(20:23):
was sort of scattered here and there. And then there
was just so much about Antarctica as this political place,
you know, like it's this kind of politically idealized situation
that you know, Eisenhower and all these guys in the
late fifties, UM didn't want Russia to get at it.
So they're like, Okay, we have to create a scenario
in which no one can own it. And in time

(20:45):
it was a hundred plus years of people fighting for
ownership of this thing, um, And so they ended up
coming up with this document, the Antarctic Treaty, which is
this extraordinary piece of political theater essentially, but one that
everybody continues to invest in and believe in, where it's like,
no nukes, keep the environment pristine, no one can own anything.

(21:06):
All research must be shared, anybody can inspect anything at
any time, protect the wildlife, all this stuff, and you know,
if there's any mineral discoveries like that has to be shared.
And all of this was designed to screw the Russians
at the time. All that became very interesting to me.
And you know, if we go into space and discover

(21:26):
the worlds, I feel like this is sort of a
model for that. Oh totally. I never really thought about that,
but it's kind of the same thing. Yeah, Yeah, it's
it's very far away. It's very hard to get to
even though it's just kind of right around the curve,
so to speak. Um, what can people find that online? Yeah? Yeah,
that's um, if you do a search for Brandon Reynolds

(21:47):
and k Q e D. It's kind of the one
and only thing I did for them. Okay, cool? So
what other? What is another like favorite project of yours
that you've written beyond that's not like screenwriting stuff, because
I know you're doing some of that now. Sure. Um,

(22:10):
the last big thing I did, well, my career has
been entirely kind of local or regional publications, all weeklies
mainly and then some San Francisco magazine, l A magazine,
So a lot of it is about very specific places.
And um, the last thing, I think it was the
last thing I did for Los Angeles Magazine. I have

(22:30):
an editor who's this great editor. He went on to
go work at NASA, and I would always come to
him with these pitches, like I want to do a
thing about suits of armor or you know, pillows or something,
and he'd be like, that sounds interesting. What's the story? Uh,
And then he would send me back and say find
a story. And then you'd find a story and we'd
go from there. Um. But then he said Hey, I

(22:53):
want you to write a story. I said, what about
He said about trees, which was so strange coming from
him because he usually is like very specific. And I said,
what about trees? He said, I don't know, you'll figure
it out. Um. And so that launched me into this
whole thing about the history of Los Angeles trees and
the fate of the trees, all of which is of

(23:14):
course connected to every other part of Los Angeles cultural, political,
business life. And and that was you know, speaking of
like walking all over the place. Uh. Finding out about
the trees not only made me look at the trees differently,
but also the decisions that have been made to build
the city in the White Head and the fact that
the city, unlike old cities in Europe, you know, Los

(23:36):
Angeles and a few other cities in the US, evolved
along with the evolution of the car, and so as
uniquely sort of car based um. And then and then
they would sort of wedge these trees in. That's why
like pine trees, I mean, palm trees are the trees
they use because they're like, we need something that's narrow
but dramatic. It's got a fit between the curb and

(23:56):
the sidewalk. Um. So anyway, I did this whole thing
about how the fact that the trees are all dying
because of climate change because you're changing water table, and
and then how the city will have to evolve um
kind of its relationship to trees. Basically, if it wants
to survive in any significant way, you sort of invest

(24:17):
in trees and takes care of a lot of the
issues with climate change and with one of the things
that's going to happen in the future here is there
will be hotter summers and wetter winters, and so the
city does not have any kind of capacity for flooding
that so when it rains, it becomes really bad. So

(24:40):
if you have trees, they have roots and so they
absorb that. So it really you know, there's often stories
that I'm interested in right them and then move on,
But this one has continued to stick with me and
has turned me into something of a tree kind of
a tree freak. So when you walk around, now, are
you just constantly looking at trees still? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,

(25:01):
you know, And and you know, it's also a reflection
of class, like where there's a lot of trees that
tends to be where there's more money. The types of
trees like magnolias are big out here, even though magnolias
have no business being out here. They take too much
water and so they'll all eventry go away. Um. Yes,
all that stuff, you know, it just sort of becomes
superimposed on the landscape of what you look at as

(25:23):
you walk around. Dude, what's the name of that one?
I'm going to read that myself. The dramatic headline is
can l A survive the death of its trees? I think,
all right, I'm gonna read that tonight. Yeah, because that's
right at my alley. I love trees. Yeah, Yeah, it's great, right,

(25:45):
it's great stuff, and there's there's some surprises in there. Oh.
But then there was a whole other thing that didn't
make it into that story that I want to spend
into something else, which is about all these animals and
that only live in cities, that have evolved to live
in cities, Like there's something like forty two species of
fly they found in l A backyards that don't exist
anywhere else in the world, really, just this particular tree.

(26:08):
Nobody knew. They put these traps out for these flies
a couple of years ago. I think USC did or
maybe U C. L A. And they found all these
flies they were catching there, like what the hell are
these things? And then they would you know, gene test
them and they're like, these are not related to anything
anywhere else but kind of to each other. So you
find these speciations within cities. You know, we think about

(26:28):
like raccoons and coyotes and rats and stuff are all
very um city specific, but then birds and other things
just sort of look at the city as another ecosystem.
It's another thing I want to do a story about
once I figure out again what the story is, rather
than here's something neat right. That's why, uh, I love

(26:49):
hanging out with you and Janet because both of you
are kind of science nerds and both of you pay
attention to stuff. Uh, And it's always a good conversation,
Like whenever I'm hanging out with you guys, is so
I look forward to reading about the flies. Yeah, that's
somewhere down the road. So you're still doing well. I

(27:09):
didn't know you're still doing that kind of stuff because
now you're dabbling in screenwriting, right yeah. Yeah, with Janet,
we have written one pilot that we sold, and that's
now in another phase of there's all these you know,
there's it's like a writing on scripts for anything in
Hollywood is sort of like you know, uh, caterpillar becomes

(27:33):
a butterfly, but this is like a caterpillar becomes a
slightly fatter caterpillar when it goes into another thing. It
goes into a chrystalist. It's entirely built by executives. And
then you come out and you're like, I didn't want
these wings, but now I've got them. It's a really
strange process. You really have to you have to ride
the thing. But yeah, we've worked on a few things. Uh,

(27:56):
we've got kind of a couple of show ideas that
we're kicking around. Once a cartoon. We're very excited about that.
Um that a friend, a journalist friend, actually brought me
from San Francisco. He said he was working with an
artist up there. He said, hey, you want to work
on this school thing. So that's yeah, that's all been
very satisfying. I mean I got into journalism from fiction anyway,

(28:17):
so it was very easy to go back to making
stuff up. Do you have a novel in you? Do
you think? Um? Yeah, actually, yeah, one that I have
been thinking about for a while and now I have
really settled down to write. Is based on the Strasbourg
dancing plague of fifteen eighteen. You're familiar with us totally. Yeah.

(28:41):
There was like a month in the summer of fifteen
eighteen where all these people in Strasbourg started dancing, many
of whom died as a result. And um, and that's
that I have sort of thought of as a weird
family story because all my life, my dad's always told me, oh,
we're Alsatian, We're Alsatian, because there was this colony of

(29:01):
Alsatians that came to Texas back in the mid eight hundreds.
And I never knew what that meant. You know, if
you're Irish that means something, or if you're German whatever,
you know, how does it mean to be Alsatian. I
don't know. You know, you're just divorced from any kind
of cultural connection. So I always thought that was fascinating.
Then I look into it and I'm like, okay, So Alsace,

(29:22):
which is now part of France. Uh, it was important
because it was a killing floor in World War One,
and then back in the fifteen hundreds, all these people
dance themselves to death, so I thought, Okay, there's just
some great stuff that's written about it and um, And
I think particularly when you think about like how fear
is manifest in like this day and age, um and

(29:43):
the thing that can become a plague or a pandemic
that isn't physically a pandemic, but it's just manifested by
fear anyway. So that's one of those things that I'm like,
I think people are gonna love to read this, but
everybody's no, we want we want more bad names. What
it was is the novel actually set in that time

(30:04):
in setting that all that sounds amazing because there was
there were people who I mean and in so much
of its satiric anyway, Like, there were these conversations going
on in the early days of this thing where they
would debate, based on the dancing, whether whether a devil
had caused this or whether God or one of the
saints had And I feel like, based on like, well,

(30:26):
that hip shake looks devilish, but on the other hand
that you know that kind of one two three step
is is very saintly. They didn't know who they were
being punished by because the church was so corrupt and
the poor work, extreme, extremely poor. The Black plague had
come through, there were all these harvest problems, um, you know,
and these people just lived these lives where they didn't

(30:47):
know who to trust, and so their answer was to
go into this essentially fugue state that was that defied
all endurance. You know. They would dance for days and
days and their feet would bleed and they were Then
the city was like, you know what the solution to this?
The doctors were brought in. The solution to this is,
let's get musicians and play for them, and then that

(31:09):
of course made it worse. I don't think I knew
that part of the story. I know we covered this
somehow on stuff you should know. It might have been
one of the video series or something. I don't think
we did a whole episode on it, but um, I
remember some of the explanations, which you probably can't get
into as a novel set in the current time, because
that's all sort of looking back on doctors and scientists

(31:32):
going like what the funk actually was happening? Um, But
I think I remember some of them being like or
maybe I'm thinking of the Enlightenment like being bad bread,
moldy bread or something was this That was one of them. Yeah,
that was it. There was a thinking that you know,

(31:52):
people got into some wheat that had spoiled and this
chemical which is related to LSD, but it wouldn't have lasted.
I'm month. You know, you write convulsions and hallucinations and
you get sick, but nobody's doing that for months. So
that's one that they have continued to throw out over
the years, but it doesn't really hold up. It seems
like it was a mass hysteria. That's crazy, man, what

(32:13):
a cool story. Yeah, I'm excited about that, but again,
that's one of those you know, I don't know if
it you know, there's a sense of like do you
want to escape from what the hell is going on?
Or do you want to think about it more intensely
in a slightly different way. So I think I chose
that one. Like do you watch contagion or do you

(32:34):
not watch contag exactly? Yeah, that contagion, like everybody wants
to see that. We haven't seen it for Janet and
she's like, no, I don't need any I don't know
any more rends what um before we move on to
a spinura? I would love UM. I always try to
glean insight as a fellow writer and then for our
writers in the audience, what what your process is a

(32:54):
little bit like whether or not you write every day, uh,
discipline wise, and what you kind of do with writer's block.
Oh sure, Um, I do write every day. Um, I
try to. I think one of the things I've tried
to do during the pandemic is to be more rigorous
about the non paying projects, you know, like like I

(33:16):
do stuff for the radio station here, um, and that's
kind of been my more usual thing. So you know,
I'll go to reporting on Zoom and that sort of thing. Um.
And so there's these jobs that that will take time,
and so trying to really justifying my own mind, like
this is worth writing down because it's important to you

(33:36):
and you need to make time for it. Um. So
that's a big part of it. I usually I've kind
of historically always had a handful of fiction idea things
going at any given time. And so um So as
far as rider's block, Yeah, if I'm working on something
that stalls out, then I'll just shift something. Yeah, I too,

(34:00):
you Yeah, I never thought about that. I seem to
be kind of pour myself into something and then I've
been a bad writer for the past like three or
four years. Um, but when I'm when I get going
in a groove, writer's block just doesn't happen. It might
not be good, but I enjoyed the process, so I
don't labor over it too much. Uh, not a lot

(34:22):
of handwringing for me. When I'm in the writer mode.
I have a good I have a good time. But um,
it's been a while since I've kind of taken something
on for fun. I should I should do that soon.
I love they script that you wrote that we kicked around.
Do you remember that? Oh? Yes, The Lighthouse a movie. Yeah,

(34:45):
that was That was sort of an exercise because I
had never written a thriller before. Um. No, I've written scripts,
but they've always been comedy, and I'd never gone down
that road. I think that one could be okay with
a lot of work, a lot of work, thanks man.
But then Edgers went and made The Lighthouse, and after that,

(35:06):
I was like, Clow, he just made an awesome lighthouse movie.
So what's the point. Yeah, that's true. You gotta think
of what's another building that has a beacon purpose? You know? No,
trust me, it's um. When we started getting into fiction
podcasting and dramatic podcasting. My my boss asked me if

(35:27):
I had anything laying around, and I was like, you
know what, this lighthouse could just as easily be a
station on Mars or the Moon or whatever. Uh, because
it's sort of the same thing. It's just the whole
premise is an isolated location. Um, so it's it really

(35:47):
could be easily retrofitted for for outer space. You're gonna
rake in all this big outer spacebox, the sci fi
crab man sci fi dough. Uh. All right, buddy, Well
that was fun, and let's let's get into a Spinura
Pet Detective. I feel bad I should share with everyone
the text exchange we had. So we were texting last

(36:12):
week and I said, think on the movie. And at
one point I got this random text and you said
a Spindura Pet Detective and I kind of laughed, and
then I think two days ago or whatever. I said,
so I really need to know the movie, and you went,
that was not a joke. Yeah, And then I immediately
had to say, am I making a terrible mistake? Um?

(36:32):
And the caveat here is that Anure is by no
means my favorite movie. Uh, it has aged excruciatingly poorly,
and it wasn't that great then, I mean it was
there were just so many unfortunate qualities about it that
it um that just make it bad. Like the the

(36:52):
women are written very poorly. There's a whole homophobic thing
that is most to the third act. He's sort of
obnoxious almost the entire time. You know, there's there's a
bunch of things that absolutely don't work and that really
are the sort of product of a kind of a
nineties like gag writer sensibility, and then like sort of

(37:16):
an all or nothing, like We're gonna put this guy
carry out here and just let him do what he
does and see what happens. See what America thinks. America
loved him, America did love him. Um. So this film
was released in directed by Tom Shad Yack. Do you
know his story a little bit? I mean, I know

(37:38):
when I was living in Virginia he did one of
his later movies, Bruce Almighty, no which was the one
he did with Noah. Was that Evan? That was Evan?
He did Evan Almighty outside of Charlottesville, I think. And
the thing I remember was that he had invested a
bunch of money um in buying trees and planting trees,

(37:59):
and there we are back to and so I I
sort of knew after that that he was sort of
an environmental type of guy, but not not much more
than that. Yeah, so it's pretty interesting. He started out
his career as a comedy writer. He was the youngest
writer for Bob Hope joke writer that he had ever had,

(38:19):
and that's where he got to start. And he you know,
went on and you did a Spenter was his first movie,
and did some of like Liar Liar. He and Jim
Carey did a few things together. But he had this
bicycle accident, had post concussion syndrome, uh in a really
bad way, like the kind of deal where you stay

(38:40):
in a dark room for a couple of years and uh.
It changed obviously changed his life. So he was sort
of a hippie dippy guy. Anyway. I think he sold
his mansion in l A. He made a document he
he opened up a homeless shelter in Charlottesville, Virginia. UM
gave away most of his money, made a documentary called

(39:01):
I Am which was about apparently it's not very good,
but it's about how much the world sucks in so
many ways and how to change it. Um gave away
all his dough and his material possessions and then eventually
recovered and now is a teach us film at the
University of Memphis. But kicked Hollywood to the in the

(39:23):
rear view mirror and was just like I'm done. Uh,
kind of one of these weird life changing stories because
of a bicycle accident. And does that make you feel
more warmly toward as matura or its byproduct? So it's
by products. So here's my I think we should talk
about our history with this movie because, um, you're younger

(39:46):
than I am. This came out when I was twenty three.
I was in college, so it was a little below
And this is when I was working at the cool
video store and just getting turned onto like independent film
and like the best of film and uh, really opening
up my eyes to that. And this was a little
below my I mean it was a movie that was

(40:08):
made for adolescent boys. Um, I imagine in half of Americans,
like twelve to fourteen year old boys addressed as eight
a spent tour for Halloween. Were you one of them? Yeah?
That was it? No, So so that was one of
the weird. So yeah, I would have been fifteen. I
think when that came out of fifteen say kind of

(40:31):
right up your alley there and um. And so there
are a number of things that clicked, um that would
not have clicked in a even slightly older person, like
the fact that this person's behavior is obnoxious at the
time you're like, yeah, I mean one of the things
was if you're not a sports guy, uh, and you're
kind of a weird kid, like to have a hero
who essentially is like a Noir detective except instead of Noir,

(40:54):
everything's bright and Miami colored. Um, who is a total weirdo.
And if pocass but it's always right and somehow gets
the girl. You know, all of that stuff really resonated
with me. I was like, Okay, you know, you can
be a weirdo. And unfortunately, I think I took, you know,
some of the lessons of loudness and animation and ran

(41:17):
with that for quite some time, much to the sugarrin.
You know, my stepdad, as I said, he was a
film guy and just I mean that was like the
anti Christ to him, like Jim Carey, and for years
to this day still makes fun of me as a
Jim Carrey type. But it uh, it's so there was that,
and it did. It turned me on Hawaiian shirts I
addressed as Jim care I mean addressed his and then

(41:38):
went on to collect wine shirts to this day. Really yeah,
I mean, you know, the styles have changed, but I
became I really liked him. I don't know, it's you know,
and I had like seventy at one time at the
end of high school. Seventy shirts. Yeah, that my mom
threw away. She said, it looks like a rainbow threw

(41:59):
up in your closet and she was done with them. Um.
So yeah, so there was there were a lot of
things that, as stupid as it was, it still managed
to speak to me. Yeah. Well, I mean there's nothing
wrong with that, man. I'm if I went back to
movies I loved when I was fifteen, Um, there are

(42:19):
not many of them were very good films. You know.
That's if you're a discerning film fan and and sineast
at fifteen years old, than your a rarity. But that
doesn't matter. That's sort of sort of the joy of
this show in a lot of ways. Um, for me,
Jim Carey, I watched in living color and I was
a fan of that show, and I think what I

(42:42):
had to wrap my head around with him was, and
especially with this role, was um concentrating on the funny parts,
which there are tons and tons of genuinely funny, amazing,
physically gifted comedian parts. It was in between parts the
bugged me Um him always like not rendering a single

(43:05):
line of dialogue that wasn't over the top. I think
there's one line in the movie I noticed today when
he goes to Courtney Cox's house, and he has one
line that's just like I can't even remember. It's just
like a greeting where he's not doing the gym carey thing.
And I was like, oh my god, right there he
did a normal thing. But I imagine as a fifteen

(43:26):
year old, it's like all you're doing the next day
at school is walking around and talking like that. Yeah,
just mugging. Yeah. Yeah. It's so it was so seductive
as a as a way of behaving, you know, like
and and you know, I think it's it's also not
a coincidence that I have always been interested in like

(43:49):
the Tricksters, and you know, this kind of character is
like the one who's you know, maybe not the hero,
maybe not the villain, but some kind of weirdo that
can you know, step outside of society and you don't
change it. I don't know, I don't know what I
was thinking. Somehow, somehow a spin sure did all that
crap for me at the time, But you know, it's
it's amazing, Yeah, and I you know, I liked it enough,

(44:11):
and and I like the sequel to When Nature Calls.
You can barely say it with a straight face. You know.
Janet was sitting in there because she had never seen it,
and I guess the part where he talks with his
ass and and she's like, okay, it's like this is
a big this is a big part. I remember. This

(44:31):
is the critiques they leveled against the thing. I mean,
you know, there are many things to be critical of,
but when he talked with his but that was I
feel like, you know, you reach a certain age where
as a critic or just somebody who's seen things and
you're like, this is a sign that civilization is on
the way out, like this is. And I think for
for you know, Roger Ebert, he was like this is

(44:54):
the ultimate crap garbage talking with his but okay, did
well that was such a I mean, if you talk
about acepin Tura and you saw the movie back then
when you were fairly young, let's say one of the
first Like that's it became an iconic part of that movie.
Kids were talking out of their butts for for a

(45:16):
year after that, to the dismay of their parents. You know,
at the dinner table, kids probably talking back to mom
and dad bent over through their asshole. Yeah, this adult man,
this adult Canadian man can do it. Therefore, you know,
and we're worried about violence and sex, you know, I know, seriously,
really like she should have gone after the ass contingent?

(45:42):
What what did did Janet finish the movie? No? Did
she walk out after that part? She said maybe I'll
see the rest of it later and shell late at night.
So she was she she was entertained by my combination
of reflections on it, and in fact that I can
still quote it pretty much for a big yeah. Um,

(46:03):
it's funny because I don't know Janet to be a liar.
She's a very honest person, and for her to say
that she might finish it later is the biggest lie
she's ever told in her life. I think she will
I think as a as an anthropological study of me
as a young man. I think there's something to it.
And um. And so there's a whole other element here
that that I don't know that I would have brought

(46:26):
this up as this influential film if not for this thing,
which is that, as I said, I have an autistic brother, right,
he's two years old, and he loved it. You know,
like his communication is, especially then, was quite a bit
more limited. And you know, and so like stuff so

(46:47):
much stuff would just not connect with them, movies and
TV and other people. Um. But Jim Carey has a
preternatural ability to connect because I think he's so big
and nothing is left on the you know, nothing is,
nothing is subtle, nothing is implied. And so my brother
immediately started quoting Jim Carey stuff and does to this

(47:10):
day as a matter of fact. And um. And I
when I was in grad school, I wrote a thesis
graduate thesis on the condition my brother has. It's called
fragile X and um. And I was talking to this
researcher at UC Davis, kind of one of the world
renowned researchers, and just offhand I had said something like, oh, yeah,
my brother likes Jim Carey and she said, you know,

(47:31):
they all do, said he yeah, he's yeah, he like
has an ability to connect with you know, I imagine
autistic people in general. I don't know that for a fact,
but she said that she would anecdotally talk to parents
and that their kids after that came out and after
the Mask, which my father also loved. Um that, yeah,

(47:53):
that's something about his manner and you know, maybe the
subject matter, but since they also love the mask, it's
something fundamentally to him and to that that style of
performance at very big clown clown life style of performance.
And and I think it's so interesting that he ended
up with Jenny McCarthy as an artistic kid. Oh that's right.

(48:15):
I mean, she's a wing nut who doesn't believe in
any scenes. But but I think that was the luckiest kid,
right to end up with Jimmy, who you know, has disability.
But anyway, so that's that's a big part of why
it continues to be relevant like it was. It was
developmentally important to me, it's mentally important to my brother,
and it's something in fact, Janet hasn't seen hadn't seen

(48:39):
the movie before last night. But one thing that she
says to my brother all the time, which he started
saying to her a year or two ago, was we're
going downtown, and so Janet says that my brother now
Brian all the time. And then when that showed up
in the movie, her eyes went wide, like, oh that's it.
Oh man, that's really sweet. Yeah, so that connected with her.

(49:01):
Right at the beginning, as he's kicking a box of
broken crap down the hallway before he steals a dog
from Randall, text Cob Yeah, dude, I mean that opening
bit is so funny, and it really um, it really
establishes the tone right away, and you've got to hand
it to a movie that that knows what it wants
to be. Um. I know that Jim Carey developed to

(49:21):
this character very closely with the director and with his
with his other writing friend Bob Odo Kirk and and
he was like, listen, there's there's two things that has
to happen. Is I've got to be able. Uh, I've
got to be able to take this as far in
the in the ludicrous direction as I can and let's

(49:42):
just see what happens. People may hate it, but I've
got to go And and Ace has to be good
at his job. Yeah, and I never really noticed that
until I read that this morning after I watched it. Uh. He,
he is good at his job. It's it's you gotta
pay attention and if through it. But he it is
a more detective story, and he does solve all the cases.

(50:07):
Uh you know, there's the one main case with the dolphin, obviously,
but um he you know it opens up with him
getting that dog and and you know, he tricks the
guy in the most elementary school way possible. But it's
it's a cartoon, you know, is what it is. And
that opening bit with a box establishes that tone. And
it's fucking hysterical, especially the hallway bit. It's just so

(50:30):
over the top when the elevator door is closing on
the box and and you're thinking, like, how much more
ridiculous is this gonna get? And there's the one moment
in the hallway where he's kicking the box and he's
doing all the little funny moves and he puts the
box down the ground and he stops and he jumps
up in the air and he thinks he's gonna smash
it and he splits his legs over it and then

(50:53):
picks it up with his feet and it's just a
very small little moment, but it's it's it's genius. It's
so unexpected and funny. Yeah, absolutely, they the physical comedy.
Janet did say, you know, she she managed to get
her barbs in before she before she went to bed.
One of them was like, you can see why the
French liked, uh, Jerry Lewis. Yeah, like this is our

(51:17):
Jerry Lewis, which you know was either a compliment or
critique that was leveled at him at the time, but
it is true, you know, like the clowning tradition is
so yeah, so unappreciated. And you know, which is not
to say that I'm endorsing clowns or or you know,

(51:39):
ace Mantua as a competent body of work, but but no,
I do. I do think that one of the other
things I liked about it was and you know, again
maybe being a teenager, you hope like you're right about everything,
and the fact that he didn't change at all in
the course of the movie. He didn't have to write
the world had to change to accommodate this guy's worldview,

(52:00):
and this, you know, like it had is weird. As
it is that it was like dined off of these
gay jokes and and these like transphobic jokes. The fact
that the message was ultimately about like kind of a
weird acceptance, you know, like accept weird people and strange
people in different people because they may have something to offer.
Maybe I'm giving it way more credit than but that's

(52:23):
you know, that's hard. I don't know. Um uh yeah.
One of the other parts. Um and you know, I'm
gonna talk about a lot of my favorite bits, but
as far as just going for it, like the blow
job scene right after when he brings the dog back
for the reward to the to the buxom rich housewife
or whatever, and you know, she she drops down out
of frame. That could have easily like he could have

(52:46):
just gone like and it could have still been over
the top if he was just like, oh oh my god,
oh my god, and it could have been silly. But
the decision to to grab hold of the the buttress
above him and to swing around like he's being attacked
by a shark kind of reminiscent of the later scene
when he was attacked. It was just so like it

(53:08):
had to go that far. I think, yeah, yeah, yeah,
he didn't. There's a thing that he says, you know
about like spitting when he realized he kissed a man,
like he wanted it to be so intense that no
one mispect it for reality. Weirdly, you know, like I
think he was doing what he could to offset any
kind of homophobia in retrospect. Sure, um yeah, but but

(53:33):
also there is something to be said for you can't
go a quarter of the way or halfway or even
of the way if you're going to do a movie
like this, and you know that scene as homophobic of
course and transphobic, but it's, uh, it's funny, and he
you know, he goes for it. And I laughed today. Yeah,

(53:54):
everybody spits, Oh my god, it's it's it's such a
well that part two, Yeah, that's pretty bad. But even
when I add at the time, I was confused, you know,
I was like, wait, it's such a it's such a
weird plot device anyway that I can only assume because
it nods to the crying game that it was like,
that's how we do it the killer? How do you

(54:14):
hide the killer in plain sight? Right? And so if
the go to is like it's a different it's a
different sex. We'll have sean young, poor, long suffering you
a formal football kicker who went crazy because Dan Marino
may have held the laces are wrong. It's also absurd,

(54:36):
it really is. And what's funny is is like I
think this movie was. You know, it got hammered by
the critics, and a lot of people probably look back
and say, you know, it started Jim Carey's career, But boy,
what what what a sort of bad movie? In some
ways had it been. I think there's certain people that
can get away with sort of this sort of absurd
humor under the guise of like, hey, we know we're

(55:00):
being absurdist, and uh, we're really highbrow, but we're smart
enough to do absurd ast humor. I don't think that
people view this that way because it was Jim Carey.
You know, did you um see it when it came out?
I did. I'm trying to remember. I don't think I
would have seen this in the movie theater, but I

(55:22):
was racking my brain today trying to recollect my first
experience with it. But I know I remember laughing, and
I remember being annoyed at I was trying to figure
out Jim Carey because he was still young on the
scene and I was like, who is this guy? Like
can he act? Uh? And and it turns out he can,

(55:43):
and he's shown that it again and again. But you know,
he was making this was his first big movie. Like
he he didn't know how to do anything else yet,
I think, or he hadn't built up the currency so
that Hollywood would allow him to do anything else at
this point. Yeah, yeah, I mean it was such a

(56:05):
It really seemed like an all or nothing, like, well,
I have to do all my impressions, you know, it's
just overstuffed with and that's one I mean. I think
now if they released some version of that now, or
if it was made now, you know, if that was
Will Farrell or something, there would be the version where like,
here's all the outtakes, here's all the crazy crapp he
did that we didn't get to see. Here's all the

(56:27):
other times he talked with his but that never made
it in you know. Yeah, And I think if this
is made today, I think there would be some really
ham fisted character arc and and something that Ace would
have to learn and become a better person. But I
kind of had my hat off today to them. Just saying,
you know what, we're going to make a really silly,

(56:48):
sophomoric film for fourteen year old boys, and we're gonna.
We're not gonna alter it. We're not gonna because this
movie would have been worse if it would have had
some ham fisted Ace learns things about himself. You know,
no one wants to see that. Yeah, it would have
felt dishonest to the absurdity, to the to the childishness

(57:11):
that they were trying to capture. Yeah, and you know,
I was trying to think of what was around that time.
You know, was there anything that informed that in movie
making or TV or anything. I mean, I guess there
was stupid stuff, you know that like now like I
think nowadays, if I thought of stuff that a thirteen

(57:31):
year old likes that to me seems insane. You know,
maybe be like Minecraft or you know, like these games.
It would be a game, probably a game that has
you know, absurd noises and colors and a plot that
you know, I have to work to understand. But um
so I always keep that in mind when I feel
flummixed by cultural developments this day and age. I love so,

(57:57):
you know, comedy is perfect. There's always something. It's funny
because knowing you, I mean, I feel like I've had
so many good, heavy conversations with you and about the
world and people and science. And when you threw this
out at me, I was like, that's why I didn't
believe it. It It wasn't like this can be someone's favorite movie.
I was like, this can't be his favorite movie. Yeah, I, Um,

(58:19):
I really didn't have to think about you know. I
was I was wanting something from when I was a kid,
and and that one just kept coming back to me. Yeah,
I would say, you know, but I would honestly say,
and I thought about this today if if it was
you know, best overall, it might be Eternal Sunshine, which
is also Jim Carey. Oh yeah, it's already covered that though. Yeah,

(58:41):
that's why I'm glad I didn't do it, because I
looked and that was already covered. Um. Then the mask, then,
the mask is my favorite, not mask, but the mask
with no The mask was was was pretty good. I
mean it was another Um. I mean that early Jim
Carey stuff was really good. It was before uh, I

(59:02):
think before he felt like he needed to shift gears.
And I love the gear shift he made in his career,
but there's something really pure about when he was younger
and just concentrating on being Jerry Lewis or being the
clown and certainly one of the most physically gifted actors ever,
you know, oh yeah, yeah, I mean nobody, nobody can

(59:25):
do that even still. And I find that, you know,
as I watched it a bunch of times, you know,
the things you enjoy are not the plot points or
you know, any of the big stuff. It really is
those little micro expressions, and like him squeezing the box
with his legs, like it becomes these really really precise moments.
I mean with him and with anything that you love

(59:46):
enough that you watch it a lot or read it
a lot or something, it really does. It's like you
just become so granular in the things that continue to
appeal to you that they're not they're almost not even conscious,
you know, the things you like. I'm and I was
thinking about that, Like certain expressions he made like you
would freeze in one particular way mm hmm. For example,

(01:00:07):
when he was in the mailbox and he was holding
the guy's hand and he had the jeweler's loop and
the lighter and he's got the squinched up face, which
is it? It's next. It's kind of a beautiful shot.
It's really kind of wonderfully lit, but it does look
sort of painted. And you don't see him make that
particular face at any other time in the movie. And
there's these weird one off faces he makes that they

(01:00:29):
feel like their own kind of thing. I don't know,
and so stuff like that. I'm like, yeah, there's always
this sort of sense of enjoyment when I see that
one thing. No, I totally agree. I mean this movie,
there are certainly all the big I kind of like
talking out of your button, all these big moments that
everyone remembers, but if you pay attention, there are also
there's so many little, small moments filled with little bits

(01:00:50):
of comic genius that uh that you know, we're important
to him, Like he he worked really hard on this role. Uh,
he didn't go in there and fun around. Like there
are stories about he and Odo Kirk staying up till
like four in the morning just writing hundreds of jokes
and working them out and whether or not they would

(01:01:11):
work for the movie. So it's not like he was like, yeah,
you know, I'm Jim Carey. This is a throwaway for me,
I can go in there and just kind of be myself, Like,
he worked really hard at this film, and I think
those small moments or when you notice that you know, yeah, yeah,
And I think that's good to sort of also be
reminded that he was a craftsman that even though this
looks slap dash, improv insane, you know that no, there's

(01:01:37):
there's It takes a lot of control to and planning
to have that um have that sort of effect on
yourself and to produce that kind of thing. Yeah, which
I mean, I don't know that I even still can see, like, oh,
that's clearly a joke that he saw coming before it
came out of his mouth. You know. I assumed like
they were just shooting a bunch of stuff and then

(01:01:58):
they you know, in the editing room, they found their story.
But it does kind of make sense that he's an
obsessive perfectionist. Yeah. The UM. A few of my other
favorite pits that I still laugh at today, Uh, like
laugh hard for for a forty nine year old man
is the when he's when he's walking through the the

(01:02:23):
suicide of the of the football team. Oh not the owner,
what was he? The UM here's the oh yeah he's
the manager. Maybe yeah, but he was when he was
doing the big Scooby doo explanation of why that was impossible.
And he goes to the door with the double soundproof glass.
There were there were a hundred ways to do that

(01:02:46):
that wouldn't be as good as what he did when
he you know, when he booms his voice out and
slams that door back and forth so forcefully it and
it just it kills me every single time that one art.
It's just so great. Yeah, and they let it hang
out there. And and that's the other thing that I

(01:03:06):
think is smart about it, because not everybody's crazy, Like
so you know Courtney Cox, who God bless her, she
she really she really stiff up or lipped it through
this thing. Um. But you know, they treat him as
a crazy person like they don't. They're like us, like,
that's a weird thing to do. And so you see
when he's doing that that there's that pan across all

(01:03:26):
their faces where they're irritated about it but have to
admit that he's right. It's this, you know, it's this
transitional moment where oh, now I see that he knows
things sees things that other people don't see. This celebration
is to do this weird staccato opera. Yeah, oh man,
it was so great in the sound, in the sound

(01:03:47):
design in that one part too. It just works so perfectly.
The other big line that kills me is and my
brother there in law. He is a a two star
general in the Marine Corps and uh he I don't
know if he's ever seen a war movie. He's he's

(01:04:08):
one of these guys that and I think people might
think of marines is like, yeah, man, let's watch zero
Dark thirty again. But he doesn't want any part of that.
That's his day to day life, like real ship. So
he loves this kind of stuff. Um, the silliest Jim
Carrey movies. He's like his comic idol. And you will
not like be able to experience joy then watching a movie,

(01:04:32):
a Jim Carrey movie with him, because he just turns
into a kid. And the line that it always reminds
me of him, and we always and I will still
say this when I see him, and he cracks up
every single time, is I'm looking for Ray Finkel and
the clean pair of shorts, the shotgun right in his face. Yeah,
that line is just so like the timing of that

(01:04:52):
line is just so great. And the fact that he
didn't say, like, I shipped my pants, like and a
clean pair of shorts. It's just brilliantly executed, no change
on his face at all. Somehow all of that bodily
movement happened with that expression. Yeah, that was the way
that thing slid out and just popped him right in
the face and he no blinking, no, nothing's great. Yeah,

(01:05:15):
it was wonderful. Uh. And of course the and I
think he became sort of well known for this part
was the slow mo and reverse motion bit in the hospital. Uh.
It's just how can anyone look at that and not
recognize like the genius of someone being able to do

(01:05:35):
that with their body realistically like that. Yeah, my best
friend Kurt in high school, who he and I would
feed off of each other quite a bit, and he
was also very big and rubber faced and um. For
our senior talent show, we did the last scene from
Macbeth for Macbeth and Beff have it out, um, and

(01:05:58):
then did it in reverse or so then did it
in slow motion Entirely as a result of that. I'm
sure we thought that was the coolest thing. So we
had this whole fight scene all choreographed, and you know,
I don't think we timed it out, but it was
like all these parents, you know, and families, and you
know that some kids were like playing the cello and whatever.
And then we come and we do this like fifteen

(01:06:19):
minute debacle just the end of Macbeth, you know, like
nobody knows what's going on. They think one guy's against another,
and then this elaborately choreographed sword fight that we were
just sure was the right thing to do. People did,
They cheered, you know, but we'd like, we would do it,
and yeah, we did in reverse the whole thing backward
and then in slow motion some of it. But are

(01:06:40):
really looking at now, It's like, if you're a parent
or just anybody in the audience, you have no idea
where this is going to go, how long it's going
to go on. Um, but I did. I was very
inspired by the physical comedy of that, and like watching
him reverse, like because he smashes into the his face
smashes into the doc or and then rolls off, and

(01:07:01):
then the way he reverses is almost flawless, like right
back into the same thing. Yeah, I mean that was
that was the genius of that scene, is was it
looked totally real. He wasn't. Um, I mean I didn't
see you and your friend do your version, but it
was probably not a spot on, is it fair to say.
I think that's probably fair to say. You Yeah, actually

(01:07:23):
that's that whole sequence at the hospital has a lot
of funny moments. Um, when he's in the hallway and
he collapses to his knees and smashes his face on
the bench. Um, it's just so like I know, he
hurt himself a lot in those early days doing some
of this ship. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, and it
reminds me of of Jackie Chan. I wish I don't

(01:07:44):
have been thinking about Jackie chan movies lately, like the
ones like Rumble in the Bronx and kind of early
ones which are amazing. I mean they're just amazing, um,
you know, but not terribly different than this in a
lot of ways as far as you know, this this
intense physicality where the physicality is the kind of the
point of the thing, you know. Um. And so yeah,

(01:08:07):
that and he also when you said that I was
thinking reminded him the fact that Jackie Chan also hurt
himself all the time. Oh yeah, he the evil king,
evil of of action movies. Um. And the final bit
that still gets me to even though it's the culmination
of of all the bad third act transphobic homophobic stuff,

(01:08:28):
is when he's doing the big Scooby Doo ending again
and he's trying to trying to show ah Sehn Young's body.
It still gets me. Man the way he does it
when he rips her shirt open and then just starts
sort of maniacally laughing, and then he goes, well, that
kind of surgery can be done over the weekend. And

(01:08:49):
then he goes finder and I still don't know what
this means, but he goes behind her and he rips
the skirt off and he says, what about big old
Mr Kanish? What is big old Mr Kenish? What is
that from? Do you know? No? I think that's I
think that's sweet generous right there in that moment, I mean,
uh no, does it come from something? Who knows? I mean,

(01:09:12):
a kindish is a thing? Right, Okay, it's the penis?
Well that well, never mind that explains it. I think
I think I didn't know exactly what Yah I think
it's even funnier. Oh man, I feel dumb and like
validated somehow. All it was and that's the point of

(01:09:34):
the movie, I think dum to feel dumb and to
feel validated for feeling dumb, and not to feel bad
about it. But that whole scene is ridiculous because in
if in reality, if you step back and look at it,
he's taking this woman's clothes off. He's pointing at the
body parts. And then Dan Marino in the background, you notice, says,

(01:09:56):
you know he's telling him, because he calls him over
and he's like, you know, she's tucked it under, and
they kind of do the kind of do a football huddle,
you know, like a turns into it, and so Dumb
peeks over his shoulder. You can't see, Oh my god, yeah,
you know. I mean they wanted the big finish and
they were like, Sean Young is gonna have a dick.

(01:10:18):
That's that's the finish, don't you understand, that's the big review?
But I did you know I had seen um uh oh,
what is it? I saw the the what's the Elliott
Gould Raymond Chandler one that oh the long goodbye, longabye
or the big Longabye. Yeah, the one that the long

(01:10:42):
good Night good n Yeah, I get that one confused
with the Genie Davis one. That's the one I think
that Robert Altman directed. Anyway, Um, once I saw that,
I was like, Okay, so there's a whole tradition of
like weirdo, quirky detectives, you know, sort of navigating the space,
and it's about how right they are, like they're always

(01:11:04):
the rightest guys and the whole world sort of against them.
Oh and they're also you know, like poor, right, And
didn't really pay attention to the fact that until I
saw it again last night that like they really make
a big point about the fact that though he's very smart,
astern sure is poor. I mean, he can't pay his rent,

(01:11:24):
he's got money, he spends a lot of money, presumably
feeding these animals, which now that you've seen Tiger King,
of course, it just seems in humane. It's how but um,
but yeah, like, oh, he's he's not doing well. He's
not succeeding despite the fact that he's you know, which
I guess makes him more of a kind of a
sympathetic figure, like, oh, he's not he's not doing this

(01:11:47):
money no, well that's kind of true though. I mean that, um,
they make it clear from the very beginning how much
he loves the animals, uh, and he's yeah, he's he's
clearly not doing it for the dough. That scene at
the beginning is great when he when he jiggles the
keys and goes in there, and when all those animals
come out, like that's on on on the page that's

(01:12:09):
just written in a script, is like all of a
sudden that the room is flooded with animals and that
could have been it, but him getting on one knee
and and singing and looking up like snow white like
that's what makes that scene work so well. Yeah, yeah,
just opposing getting all those animals to sit still. There's
a raccoon over on one side that's like clawing at

(01:12:30):
the bird's tail feathers. You just you're like, oh, they
had like seven seconds to do this before everything went crazy.
You know, you can't imagine. And I love that. I
just love that about it. And then in the second one,
not to jump forward too much, but you know, then
there's a big loss at the beginning of when uh,

(01:12:51):
when nature calls, which is I don't remember, well if
you remember the beginning of Cliffhanger, the semesters alone movie.
It's that, except instead of a love interest, it's a
raccoon who going from one Swiss alp to another, and
the harness breaks and the raccoon plummets to his death.
And then Ace has to go into a monastery because
he's so rattled, and so he's pulled out of, you know,

(01:13:15):
his monastic exile to solve one more case, which is
an albino batlie. I saw that one once. I saw
the first one quite a few times, admittedly, but I
think I only saw that when nature calls the one time.
It's not um In some ways, I like it more

(01:13:36):
because there's some of the stuff in it, some of
the bits. I kind of feel like you're a little
more refined. That one was directed not by Tom Shady
act but by Bob Odokirk so her so that one was,
you know somewhat closer maybe too, the core spirit of
the thing, because those two really put their minds together

(01:13:56):
on it, and that one part of it was filmed
in Texas. In fact, our family had this ranch outside
of San Antonio that you know, like had been in
the family for generations. Yeah, Statians had passed this thing
down and um, the neighboring ranch. This is one of
these wild game ranches where you know, like hunters from
Houston will pay fifty dollars to shoot a water buffalo,

(01:14:18):
and so it was just stocked with all this African
game that you would see like driving around in the
middle of the Texas hill country, here's a spence and
then there'd be ibex and zebras and stuff just right
over there. Yeah, it was so weird. But one of
the African villages they put the filmed there and they
put it and so we would like go driving through

(01:14:38):
and go along the game fence and you could look
out over this hill, um in the middle of Texas
and there was just this little African village that was
there for years before they took it down. And it
was from a furn. Sure how any of that came
to be, I have no idea, but but it was.
I bet your brother thought that was pretty cool too, huh. Yeah,
he loved it. It was you know, it all resonated

(01:15:00):
in this way to tell me like, oh, these are
the right films for us, in some kind of cosmic,
cosmic way that that I now decades later have to
defend some of them, some of the things. But you know,
you're right, the funny stuff is funny, ah, you know,
because it's stupid. But then you know, if you you're

(01:15:21):
really there to see, if you like the athleticism and
that physicality of all that, that's the thing that you're
there to see. Like everything else kind of incidental, um
or entirely incidental. But yeah, that that that talent, which
again nobody else really has. I mean, nobody else does that.

(01:15:44):
There's no there's kind of like weird out. You know,
there's there's one Jim Carey who does that thing, and
he even he doesn't do it anymore. Well, I guess
he did do it in Um. He was kind of
rejuvenating that in Sonic, which I didn't see, but I
got the impression he's back to some of his old tricks.
Did you see that? Yeah, I have not seen that,
and I forgot that he was in that, But yeah,

(01:16:06):
he did come back and kind of do a a
more Jim Carey like thing, right, Yeah, it seemed like, yeah,
he was the kind of the big villain um doing
a lot of you know a lot of crazy face stuff,
and he's up against a c G. I Hedgehog, so right,
he really has to push it. Yeah, well, in at

(01:16:27):
his age, you know, yeah, it's it's seriously though it's easy.
I mean it's never easy. But for him to do
roles like ace Ventura when he was I mean, how
old was he was he in his twenties. I was
wondering about that too. Yeah, you do. You have this
thing where when you see a movie when you were younger,

(01:16:48):
that person always seems older, Like I look at that
now and I must be older than he was every time.
And I'm obsessed with doing that. Yeah, isn't that weird?
Even now? And no matter who it is, but like
you know, you watch I don't know, name anybody in
any movie m and you just you can't shake that
impression that that, Yeah, even though you know they're younger

(01:17:09):
than you are now, somehow they seem older in that thing. Yeah,
I've talked about that on the show before. I'm obsessed
with doing that. Is is saying, oh my god, I
am the age of Marlon Brando when he played the Godfather.
And granted they aged they aged him up, you know,
they made they made him an old video cor Leone.

(01:17:30):
But Um, it's still hard to like reconcile some of
that stuff when you start getting to the age of
Indiana Jones and some of these people that you saw
when you were a kid that were just old as
hell to you. Yeah. I don't recommend doing it. Yeah, yeah,
I avoid it whenever possible, But it's certainly it comes

(01:17:51):
up in old movies. I think more like we were
watching um, The Conversation the other night, you know, and yeah,
and you're like, Gene Hackman has never to young. I mean,
he could never look young, and and I think in
that he was. I think he his character and the
actual actor or my age now, and it's like, there's
no way this is the way he's got like twenty

(01:18:12):
years on me. Then people lived harder back then. Maybe
we should, uh, you should come on again and we
can talk about the conversation. Yeah, I'd love to put
a great movie that one was so strange. Well, and
you know, in that whole late seventies style of filmmaking
where it's just it's not informed by any of the
decisions we make. Now, it's kind of like you were saying,

(01:18:33):
you know, they're not necessarily as worried about like tucking in. Uh,
you know, somebody's got to learn something here and this
and that, you know some of it. Yeah, yeah, the storytelling,
there's just these like emptiness is in it that you know,
are about the atmosphere or in that case, the sound
design is so much like you follow it through what

(01:18:54):
Walter Merch did. Um. Yeah, we should talk about that one.
That one is definitely one of my favorites. Well you
should have fucking picked it? Is it too late? Start off?
I don't want anybody thinking that Astan Schier is my
absolute favorite movie, but I do want them to know
that it's formative for better and possibly worse. Yeah, well, dude,

(01:19:20):
this was great. I knew that we would have a
good conversation about it no matter what, because you're you
and um and you can come on again. You have
repeat guests now, So I would love to do this
again anytime. This is great and it's great to see
you again. I feel like this is the way people connect, yeah, man,
through video screens. It's you know, it's something that we
didn't we sort of a shoot before. I mean I did,

(01:19:42):
and Janet did and here and now it's like, oh,
you know that she's kind of nice like friends that
live across town will have game nights with It's like,
what we would never see him otherwise, we just never
see him. So yeah, and uh, and we want to
plug her stuff too. She's been doing um with our friend,
our mutual friend Bannacker the U and Paula Tompkins and

(01:20:04):
so many other of our mutual buddies. But they've been
doing the Thrilling Adventure Hour again, uh, at home and
virtually and that's been fantastic. Yeah, that's great. They that's
such an interesting feat of engineering all of these people
in their varios zoom accounts, like watching them do the
rehearsals for that and then actually executing it. Yeah, it's

(01:20:27):
really impressive. And you know, and then of course they
sort of start to become more and more ambitious about
what can we get away with. Janet has to do costumes,
she has to dress up for it. Um. Yeah, it's
pretty awesome she did. And so that, you know, that's
been you know, there's some hope in that. Oh, there
are new forms of creative expression or whatever that that

(01:20:48):
you know, maybe they'll stick around. I'm always wondering, like
what's going to be the thing that Yeah, I do too. Um,
I think this reboot it's almost a reboot for humankind
and a lot of ways, and um, not to get
too sappy, but you know, we can do better and
and hopefully some of these uh, you know, neighbors are

(01:21:10):
sharing things and uh, I don't know if you're on
like neighborhood pages are on social accounts like that. Like
people are bartering and exchanging and sharing and stepping up
for one another. And it's been really cool to see
and I hope that stuff stays. That would be really
I told my co host Knoll on the Mini Crushes,
if if half of humanity ends up five better, that's

(01:21:32):
a big change in the world. Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah, there's
so many things like air quality, you know, and we
should plant trees and seeing people walk around and um,
you know, thinking about and feeling sad at the idea
that things would go back to the way they were,
Like the machine. The machine is shut down. Now, this

(01:21:52):
is the time to change parts out. This is the
time to improve it because it's much harder when it's
in motion. And um, and you know, you you hope
that that people will take advantage of that. And I'll
be like, oh, I like this new version, see through
all the awful ship and and sort of grasp onto
the stuff that we would like to change. Dude, what

(01:22:14):
a perfect way to end. Thanks for doing this. Thank you,
it's great seeing you. I love you guys, and uh
hopefully we'll see each other soon in person and we
can share whiskey. Absolutely, I would love that. Take care
and kiss all of your people out there. I will
see buddy. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit

(01:22:43):
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.