070 Surely You Can’t Be Serious x Famous & Gravy (transcript)

Listen to the full episode and see show notes at this link.

[00:00:00] F&G: Hey, famous and gravy listeners, Michael Osborne here. We're going to bring you something a little bit different today. So recently Ahmed and I connected with some guys who run a podcast called Surely You Can't Be Serious. On that show, Jason and Dee. They're the hosts. They debate movies and music, a lot of which is from our generation.

[00:00:20] And since on Famous and Gravy, we give a different perspective on the lives behind a lot of famous figures in pop culture, we thought it'd be fun to do a kind of mashup show. So we are debating the IMDB MVP. This was a idea that was inspired from the famous and gravy episode on Bill Paxton. This episode is moderated by Jeff Johnson of the podcast, a film by, so there's kind of like three podcasts here, famous and gravy.

[00:00:51] Surely you can't be serious. And a film by, it was a fun conversation. We had a blast doing it with these guys. So here is our conversation where we debate the IMDB MVP. Enjoy.

[00:01:06] SYCBS: Hello everybody and welcome to what promises to be a very fun, very stimulating conversation because we are going to determine who the IMDB MVP is.

[00:01:21] I'm Jeff Johnson from AFilm by Podcast and joining the debate, I've got Ahmet and Michael from the Famous and Gravy podcast. Hello, gentlemen.

[00:01:32] F&G: Hello. Hello. Good to be

[00:01:34] SYCBS: here. And squaring off against the Famous and Gravy podcast, the Surely You Can't Be Serious podcast, Jason and Dee. Hello, gentlemen. Hey, Jeff, how are you doing, buddy?

[00:01:46] Doing great. What's going on, man? We're ready for this.

[00:01:50] F&G: I didn't realize it was so confrontational. I thought this was a friendly You're going down, brother. Would you guys be cool if we paused and sang the National Anthem so I could get the tears out ahead of time, you know? Actually, I

[00:02:01] SYCBS: think we should pause and talk about how did this episode

[00:02:05] F&G: Yeah, so, uh, this kind of was birthed from our show Famous in Gravy, the description we've been using lately is life lessons from dead celebrities.

[00:02:15] So on every episode, we choose somebody who died recently, and we go through a series of categories and answer the question, would you want that life? The Ideas, it's sort of a alt biography in some ways, and we did an episode a few months back on Bill Paxton and when I was doing the research on Bill Paxton, I was going through his IMDB and I mean, I was just like, man, movie after movie after movie, I was like, you know, if you were on a desert island and you could choose one person whose IMDB Catalog you could have the entirety of and I made a case that it should be Bill Paxton And I kind of wanted somebody to challenge that and then I guess a little while later we connected with the guys from surely you can't be serious Jason and Dee and I think something in that conversation sparked there and you're like, maybe we should do an episode on this.

[00:03:09] What's your memory of it,

[00:03:10] SYCBS: Jason? That's about right. We hooked up and we started talking about that a little bit and, and we thought that was a great idea. And so here we are today. We got an idea of what the famous and gravy podcast is all about now, but, uh, What's the Shirley you can't be serious podcast all about we typically

[00:03:27] F&G: take two Albums or movies from the 80s or 90s and compare those we typically pick monolithic albums and movies, but sometimes We pick some stinkers and we say what the heck happened And then part of what we did last year was best year of the eighties.

[00:03:45] And that's kind of the marriage of Mike's idea. And what we'd done in the past was taking something like this, taking actors and their catalog of work and say, as

[00:03:57] SYCBS: for myself, uh, Over on AFilmbypodcast, we like to discuss some of Hollywood's best directors, but specifically their underrated hits and what we love about them.

[00:04:09] In the meantime, we've had some fun with some limited series that both Jason and Dee have been involved in, in the past. So, uh, we got a nice, uh, little pedigree of, uh, film and entertainment podcasting going on here, guys. Shall we begin? Let's do this, man. Let's do it. All right, so let's go to our first category.

[00:04:29] Box office and quantity of roles. Jason, let's start with you. Who are you representing? Samuel L. Jackson. The big MF er himself. And you

[00:04:41] F&G: will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance

[00:04:47] SYCBS: upon thee! I feel kind of bad starting off with box office. So I'm going to go and do IMDB credits first. So he's had 180 IMDB credits.

[00:04:57] That's solid, right? That's good. As far as box office numbers go, Samuel L. Jackson is number one for his catalog at the box office. And I show it somewhere around 28 billion dollars I I hate to spike the football and everybody coming out of the gate, but uh, top that suckers Yeah Well, i'll tell you Uh for the listeners and uh for the listeners of a film by podcast I thought why don't I add like one little nugget one little factoid?

[00:05:31] about these performers. So, uh, Jason, you may be interested to know that Samuel Jackson happens to collect action figures, specifically only of figures of characters that he's played. So I'm sure he has plenty of, uh, Shaft and Frozone and Mace Windu figures. Maybe, maybe a couple of Jules Winfields in there, but, uh, yeah, I'm at.

[00:05:56] Let's talk about who you're representing with this first category. Who are we talking about? I'm

[00:06:01] F&G: representing Fred Willard. Fred Willard. The reason I'm doing that is we, we did an episode on Fred Willard. It was our episode 59, entitled Best in Show. So it was during that episode that I realized how prolific he is.

[00:06:15] And how many movies he has parts in, regardless of the size of the part. I can lick any rare end problem you can bring me. In fact, I do a lot of celebrities too. Just last week I reamed out Roger Moore. He was totally satisfied. Matter of

[00:06:29] SYCBS: fact, he's coming back next weekend for a complete

[00:06:31] F&G: rear end job. We did a lot of research and a lot of work on him, and I was wowed by the breadth of his appearances and his IMDB, so that's why I'm backing him.

[00:06:40] SYCBS: I gotta say, when I first heard this lineup, I heard the name Fred Willard, I said, excuse me? But, Fred Willard? Then I saw his IMDB. And was kind of, wow, you know, this guy knows what he's doing. Ahmed, talk to us, uh, what do we know about his box office and quantity of

[00:06:55] F&G: roles? I'm to be entries at 317. That's versus what did you say for Samuel?

[00:07:01] 180,

[00:07:02] SYCBS: I said was substantial. So Fred Willard. We've shared

[00:07:05] F&G: that by 137. Leaps and bounds. Yes. The actual amount of roles is over 700. Many of those credits are for a series in which he appeared multiple times. And I challenge anyone to beat that.

[00:07:19] SYCBS: I think he's gonna go uncontested. Uh, I'll tell you one thing I love about Fred Willard.

[00:07:24] I'm from Ohio. Uh, Fred Willard grew up, uh, just north of me in a little city called Shaker Heights. Turns out, he was doing that the same time another famous actor was doing it. Uh, talking about Paul Newman. So, that's some pride for that neighborhood.

[00:07:40] F&G: That is huge. Fred Willard and Paul Newman could have been on the same Little League team.

[00:07:44] There's another little bit of Fred Willard trivia that I think really relates to your show. Do you know what I'm talking about, Dee and Jason? No, hit me. Originally cast as the role of Striker, an airplane. Whoa. And missed the roll. Pass it up. Yeah. He, he was the one who would have said the words. Surely you can't be serious.

[00:08:05] He was that close and he ended up not getting that. Wow. Wow. How about that? That's great. And then his wife said, actually, it would have been, it wouldn't have been as funny. I thought that was the perfect way to deal with it. That's love and support. Beautiful. Okay. So you haven't hit me on box office. Do I even play anymore, or is it just over after Jason talked?

[00:08:26] So I, I think I'm at about a tenth of yours, uh, 2. 3 billion in worldwide box office. It's not bad. No, it's not bad. It's just outside the top thousand. That is GDP of several countries.

[00:08:38] SYCBS: He's besting Sam Jackson in roles, but he's Coming up short on the box office. Uh, D welcome to the game, sir. Hello. Hello.

[00:08:47] Who

[00:08:47] F&G: are you representing? All right. My IMDB MVP is the infamous, the amazing, the unparalleled Gary Oldman. Banny,

[00:09:03] bring me everyone. What do you mean everyone?

[00:09:09] Pausing for applause. Thank you guys. All right. His box office at this point is. 11 billion, which puts him in the top 30 for all of the actors in Hollywood. IMDB has his roles at 106. We talked a little bit before the show that that can include shorts and video games and music videos and such, but obviously most of these are major roles, mostly in movies and then some TV series.

[00:09:42] SYCBS: Well, thank you, Dee. And, uh, a fun fact. For those listening about Gary Oldman, Gary Oldman is actually a very accomplished musician and has often stated he would rather be a musician than an actor. Fun fact about him, while on the set of the Harry Potter films, he taught Daniel Radcliffe how to play bass guitar.

[00:10:00] That's

[00:10:00] F&G: fantastic. That's cool. In my biography research on him, I saw that he actually gave up music to pursue acting when he saw Malcolm McDowell's performance in The Raging Moon. How

[00:10:11] SYCBS: about that? We got one more competing for the IMDB MVP. Michael, who is your

[00:10:20] F&G: choice? Call me lazy, I went ahead and since this whole idea was inspired from Bill Paxton, I'm arguing for Bill Paxton.

[00:10:28] I'm gonna, uh, plant my flag in the ground there. I had expected his box office to be a little better than it is. It's not bad. It's a very Respectable 000. Uh, which puts him somewhere around 136, 000, 000 in the global ranking. I had expected it to be better because of his association with James Cameron films, which, you know, have consistently performed extremely well.

[00:10:53] That's it, man. Game over, man. It's game over. What are we gonna do? I guess I want to make the case here, while we're on this category, that money is not everything. It's also about what you do with those rolls, and I think that there is a per movie calculation worth doing here. Because Bill Paxson was in, he's credited with about 99 different parts, most of those are I actually don't know the exact number for movie, but I think if you were to take just the box office movie and then divide it by the number of movies he had, I think there might be a case there that the per movie gross is strong.

[00:11:32] But I'm not sure. I'm making that up. Sorry for Fred Willard.

[00:11:39] Fred, each of your movies is worth about 3 and that's all you got. Yeah. So that's, that's my case. Bill Paxson. I'm here to represent him. This is

[00:11:47] SYCBS: a fantastic lineup of actors that we're discussing today. I can't wait to see how this is going to shake out. So let's get into. Another category that might, uh, shed a little more light on how accomplished these actors are talking about our second category, genre diversity.

[00:12:06] You know, when an actor looks at a script and he looks at his options, I mean, he's got action, sci fi, thrillers, horror films, romance, westerns, dramas, comedies, sports themed movies, action adventures, mysteries. There's so many genres and sub genres to choose from. So let's talk about this genre diversity.

[00:12:25] Of these four guys, uh, starting with Samuel L. Jackson, Jason. All right, Samuel L. Jackson's diversity, I think, is excellent. So if you want action movies, we've got Die Hard 3, we've got Patriot Games, we've got the Long Kiss Goodnight, we've got the Kingsman movies, you want westerns, we've got Django Unchained, we've got the Hateful Eight, you want romance, how about Out of Sight, Jungle Fever, sci fi, we've got Sphere, Jumper, all the Star Wars prequels.

[00:12:54] The D loves so much. You want horror movies, we've got The Exorcist Part 3. We've got 1408. I don't know if you could count Deep Blue Sea. Thrillers. We've got, of course, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Sea of Love. You know, crime movies, you got True Romance, Goodfellas, Juice, Shaft. Comedies, I mean, Coming to America, Loaded Weapon 1.

[00:13:16] Drama, I mean, you got Do the Right Thing, one of the best movies of 1989, which I spiked the football on on our previous episode. Menace to Society, Time to Kill, the John Grisham thriller, so good. You want family movies, you've got The Incredibles, which I, I said was the best movie since the year 2000, I love that movie.

[00:13:35] Adventure, we have Snakes on a Plane, we've got Jurassic Park, we've got, I mean, in the fantasy realm, you've got all the Marvel movies, the MCU, you've got the Kong, you know, the monster universe there, with the King Kong movies, Captain America, Iron Man, Avengers, Spider Man, and then of course you've got the Unbreakable movies.

[00:13:57] He's got it all covered, except maybe the musical, or maybe a mystery. He's covered it all, guys. I don't know how we're gonna How you guys gonna do but there you go,

[00:14:08] F&G: but quality is factoring into some of this, right? These are like not all necessarily good movies Well, we're

[00:14:14] SYCBS: talking genre diversity, Michael, so we're not going to hold, uh, Okay.

[00:14:17] Okay. I

[00:14:18] F&G: just want to make sure I understand the rules. This category included both quality and diversity, not just diversity. So talk about the quality, my friend. Where, where are we at with those? You want

[00:14:29] SYCBS: quality? Yeah. Jurassic Park. How's that? How about Pulp Fiction? How about coming to, how about The Incredibles?

[00:14:35] Do the right thing. Out of sight. Those are all great movies. I noticed

[00:14:39] F&G: that you didn't say The Clone Wars or Snakes on a Plane when we got into quality, but I wonder how that happened. I just want to talk about what an MVP is, exactly. Somebody who performs consistently at a level of high

[00:14:50] SYCBS: excellence.

[00:14:51] Alright, uh, Ahmet, let's talk Fred Willard here. Yeah, I'm gonna

[00:14:55] F&G: ask you to think about genre in a different way here, so, uh, let's just talk about Brett. We have credits going all the way back to the 60s, up and through Year of Death, which is 2020. So if we're gonna really count that, that's gonna be seven different decades.

[00:15:10] I'm not that concerned about genre, as you talk about it, between horror, family, action. It's, uh, that's Futile, I am on a desert island. The last thing I want to do is to be reminded of horror, action, adventure, people in peril. I just want to smile, laugh, giggle, and have a little hope. Your diversities and genres, you can keep them.

[00:15:29] I'm just not interested in playing that contest. We do win comedy outright, and what we have is subgenres within comedy. Family friendly, we have Pixar with WALL E. We have rock and roll, which might be music. Uh, Jason said he lacked a musical, we have one in Spinal Tap. Then, uh, we can take another musical in Waiting for Geffman.

[00:15:50] We can take Action Adventure in Austin Powers 2, The Spy Who Shagged Me. Uh, Traditional Comedy in American Wedding. You can get, uh, Action Adventure, um, Mystery, uh, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. We have Media and Journalism in The Anchorman. The journalism

[00:16:10] SYCBS: genre. Journalism. The

[00:16:11] F&G: journalism genre. Yeah.

[00:16:13] So we really, really dominate the subcategories. We're only concerned with the lighthearted and comedy, but we got it all underneath there.

[00:16:20] SYCBS: Ahmet, your debate there was built upon extremely thin ice, but you, sir, are very light on your feet. So my compliments to you. Thank you. He didn't even mention like maybe the sweetest movie of the 1980s.

[00:16:35] F&G: Roxanne. Roxanne, yes. Yeah, that is her. He played the mayor in Roxanne. I would like to say that I would rather be With the people of this town Then with the finest

[00:16:48] SYCBS: people in the world. Yeah, I thought Jason was gonna drop a different 1980s film on us But I will reserve that title because I want to see where Ahmet takes it.

[00:16:56] So D. Let's discuss the quality And genre diversity of Gary Oldman.

[00:17:05] F&G: So this category, we're talking about the quality of the movies, and that's a difficult thing. I mean, everything is subjective, but they do at least give us some ammunition when we look at IMDb. And if you look at IMDb, Gary Oldman has 45 movies that rank 7.

[00:17:27] 0 or higher. Those that rank lower than 5, he only has 8. And I can't think that he's responsible for that on any of those 8 movies out of his 106. Now, if you want to talk about his diversity, I think that he Unquestionably wins this category. He's got family movies. He's got fantasy movies. He's got horror.

[00:17:56] He's got music. He's got thrillers. He's got 15 talk show movies. He's got two musicals, which beats Samuel Jackson. And he's even got a game show movie. Let's talk action adventure. You've got dark night trilogy. Let's talk fantasy. You've got the Harry Potter movies. Let's talk animation. He has got. Kung Fu Panda.

[00:18:19] He has got Quest for Camelot. He's even got, in video games, Call of Duty. He has had 38 comedy movies. I could not find where he was in any of them with Fred Willard. I don't know. Yeah, I can't think of one. He's got 38 comedy movies. And that is just naming a few of the multiple categories he's in. History, which he's been Oscar nominated for, and

[00:18:47] SYCBS: won.

[00:18:47] I will say, uh, you know, anyone that can play Sid Vicious, Dracula, Winston Churchill, and a low life pimp. We have a seat, boy.

[00:19:00] F&G: We have a sofa egg roll. We got everything here from a little I Joe to damn Nirvana.

[00:19:04] SYCBS: I don't know that that person exists, so. Michael, let's talk about Bill Paxton and his genre diversity and the quality of roles he's

[00:19:12] F&G: had.

[00:19:12] Before I begin, I think it's important to Call out what we're actually doing. We are sitting on a desert island I'm picturing something from like a Far Side cartoon where there's a little bit of sand a palm tree and a DVD player with a Screen and that's about it, right? And so what we want here is is to kill time, and to me, that speaks to rewatchability.

[00:19:38] It also means that I don't want to be fatigued by seeing the same face over and over, even though, obviously, whatever catalog you choose here, we're going to be seeing this person again and again, but there's a question about One, whether or not they are dominating the screen and whether or not you just get tired of seeing their face over and over.

[00:20:01] And there's a question about how many times can I just watch this movie, just, sometimes it's on in the background, sometimes I'm locked in on it, sometimes I'm just listening to the soundtrack. If that is the thought experiment we're having. I think Bill Paxton is a slam dunk. If Jason won the first category with the box office smash, Bill Paxton has it all.

[00:20:21] And not only does he have it all, he has excellence with it all. So if you want action adventure, you've got Predator 2, Twister, Commando, Navy Seals. If you want science fiction, I mean Terminator and Aliens. Uh, if we're going after horror, there are a ton of cult classics. Uh, Near Dark, there's a Tales from the Crypt episode.

[00:20:42] If you're looking for a thriller, you have a simple plan. If you want romance, and let's not forget, again, we're on a desert island staring at the ocean, you have Titanic. What more could you want than an island if you're watching Titanic? If you want westerns, you've got Tombstone. If you want drama, you've got Apollo 13, Next of Kin, and if you're after comedy, Weird Science, Stripes, and Club Dread.

[00:21:07] Sports, we have Million Dollar Arm. And for family friendly, there is Mighty Joe Young, and maybe Big Love, uh, is family friendly. It's not family friendly, but it's at least family oriented. I could watch all of these movies over and over again. And sometimes Bill Paxton is front and center, and he's Munching up the screen and totally chewing it up.

[00:21:28] Other times, he's kind of hanging in the background, and he's giving other people the stage, and elevating the experience. If you are on a desert island, killing time, waiting for the rescue, then what you really want is to escape. You want to be taken somewhere else. All of these movies transport you back in time, into outer space, way into outer space.

[00:21:52] Anywhere you want to go, you get to go with Bill Paxton. You know,

[00:21:55] SYCBS: you gave me a different way to look at this category. Now I'm thinking, well, maybe I don't want to watch Bill Paxton, but I do want to see a great Arnold film. And maybe I want to watch Commando. Or maybe I just want to hear, you know, just some background music and, uh, you know, I want to put Twister on because it's got a great soundtrack.

[00:22:12] So, I'm looking at this category a little bit differently now. And, uh, that's because of, uh, your argument for Bill Paxton. So

[00:22:19] F&G: thank you for that.

[00:22:20] SYCBS: You're welcome. Gentlemen, let's move on to a category that I absolutely always have a lot of fun with. This category is called Wild Card. This is your opportunity to talk anything you want about your MVP candidates.

[00:22:36] Background, filmography, whatever it could be. Anything goes here. Jason, show them how it's done with Mr. Samuel L. Jackson. For my wild card, I'm just going to pull out a few things that I think add a little bit to the name Samuel L. Jackson, okay? Now, we know that he is one of the actors who is known for weaving the tapestry of obscenities throughout his movies, right?

[00:23:05] I have had

[00:23:05] F&G: it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking

[00:23:09] SYCBS: plane! They look like a couple of dorks. Ha ha

[00:23:13] F&G: you're close, motherfucker.

[00:23:16] SYCBS: You know how to shoot

[00:23:16] F&G: a gun? Look, all brothers don't know how to shoot guns, you racist motherfucker. It didn't work, man! I'm

[00:23:22] SYCBS: still alive, motherfucker! But actually, come to find out, he is only sworn on screen 301 times.

[00:23:31] Which sounds like a lot. Except, that's only 6. 9 Times per every thousand words. It surprised me to find out that both Jonah Hill and Leonardo DiCaprio rank much higher on the swear words than that. But he is the guy who made the big MF er bomb cool to say, right? And in fact, It is a anchor word for when he was a young man, he used swearing as a stop to his stutter.

[00:24:01] So when he was a young boy, he had a hard stutter. He actually had an aunt who lived in the house with him, who was a school teacher and actually in charge of the performing arts at her school. And so from a young age, he would be pulled into these plays. You know, he's three, four, five years old, but that's okay.

[00:24:16] We need a little kid for our play. We had a bad stutter and the way he combated that was learning to swear. So I thought that was pretty interesting The other thing I wanted to bring up that I had no idea about He was a stand in for bill cosby on the cosby show. So he stood there in these colorful sweaters As like, you know, the guy who, you know, you see Bill Cosby's back, but you know, Bill Cosby's having a Coke in the other room.

[00:24:43] So that was Samuel L. Jackson. But the main thing I wanted to bring up though, is the franchises that this guy is associated with. Okay. I just don't know how any actor I've ever heard of could be involved in so many successful franchises. He is involved in the Star Wars universe, the MCU, the Incredibles.

[00:25:05] The Triple X franchise, the Monsterverse, Shaft is now a franchise, he's involved in the Jurassic Park franchise, the Kingsman franchise, Unbreakable is now a franchise, the redo of Robocop, and Die Hard. That's pretty impressive. He's also the coolest guy in the Star Wars universe because he's the only dude who has a purple lightsaber, and on a personal level, this dude was an usher.

[00:25:33] At Martin Luther King's funeral. The dude is the coolest guy in Hollywood. I'm spiking the football. The cool factor is off the chart. A wild card that promotes the use of profanity to cure speech impediments. Motherfucker, that is good. Ahmet, let's discuss Fred Willard's wildcard.

[00:25:58] F&G: Okay, I'm gonna start with my favorite, and the big one.

[00:26:02] He was and is the only human actor to have appeared in a Pixar movie. When he appeared in WALL E in 2007. Woo, that's right. In his obituary, you know, on our show, we deconstruct the first line of an obituary and rank it. They use the word scene stealer in the first line of his obituary. So, in these 317 credits that we have, this very large stacks of DVDs on our desert island, we know that we can wait for the Fred Willard moment in each movie, and see the scene being stolen away.

[00:26:37] So there's a bit of a hunt and anticipation. in each of these movies in the watching experience. And that in alone, I think, is entertainment on top of entertainment. Secondly, the style of acting that Fred Willard really, really made famous was this improvisational comedy that Christopher Guest is best known for, and Fred Willard being his top lieutenant in it.

[00:27:02] So we saw that in Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, Mighty Wind, Mascots. That was actually little known. That tactic was used in Anchorman and Fred Willard playing the station manager in Anchorman was kind of a coach on set to everyone on how to just kind of go with the flow and improv your comedic lines.

[00:27:21] And lastly, I, I think compared to the other three candidates here, Fred Willard has an extensive catalog of TV appearances, so not only do we get these movies, but if we are sitting on our desert island, we will get not only the entirety of Everybody Loves Raymond, but also Modern Family, Bold and the Beautiful, huge wild card, he actually won a daytime Emmy.

[00:27:45] You'll also get I Think You Should Leave, you'll get Drunk History, you'll get Saturday Night Live, which he hosted in 1979, uh, you'll get Family Guy, you'll get Roseanne, you'll get The Simpsons, you'll get The Love Boat, Fame, Golden Girls. There's pretty much not a sitcom you can name around the 80s or 90s that he did not have an

[00:28:04] SYCBS: appearance in.

[00:28:05] He just laid down the Ace, the Love Boat series.

[00:28:10] F&G: And speaking of Ace, the Ace Trucking Company was Fred Wilder's improv troupe, which made over 50 appearances on the Tide show. All

[00:28:17] SYCBS: right. It's impressive. Dee always holds his cards, uh, close to his chest. Dee, are you ready? To play a wild card on behalf of

[00:28:24] F&G: Gary Oldman.

[00:28:25] Yes, moderator. I believe this is where I pull ahead of the pack and leave everyone else behind. I could not have asked for a better setup than Mike gave in our last category. You didn't want a leading man as your actor because. You'd get tired of seeing that same guy over and over again. Tom Hanks has a lot of great movies.

[00:28:49] He is a great actor. But if you've got the rest of your life with only watching Tom Hanks movies, you're going to get tired of him, right? So I want you to think about something for just a second. Think about Fred Willard's voice. Mm hmm, you got it? Let's start right out. Hey, what happened? As you know, back in 1970, I starred on a series called Hey, what happened?

[00:29:13] Think about Samuel Jackson's voice. It probably is a profanity, right? Well, I'm a mushroom cloud laying motherfucker, motherfucker. Every time my fingers touch brain, I'm super fly TNT. Even Bill Paxton, whether he's an Earp brother or whether he's Chet, think about his voice. Coconut, Pete's, paella, the

[00:29:34] SYCBS: secret ingredient.

[00:29:37] F&G: Now think about Gary Oldman's voice. Because he knew deep

[00:29:41] SYCBS: down, it was you all

[00:29:44] F&G: along. Can you even tell me what country he's from? A man could not live with himself, and it would be such.

[00:29:53] SYCBS: Bit

[00:29:54] F&G: politics. Can you tell me where he was born? It was Christian camp. My father founded for poor, unfortunate castoff little boys and

[00:30:05] SYCBS: girls who would do

[00:30:07] F&G: anything for a candy bar.

[00:30:09] No, you can't because his voice is different in everything he's in. He is a leading man in several of these movies, but. It doesn't matter because he's a different human being in every single one of these movies. His range is incomparable to anyone else. He is an outlier with his ability not to act, but to seemingly medium channel Other human beings and become them.

[00:30:36] There is a meme out there that says, if suddenly you were walking along and somebody yelled cut, and all of a sudden you realized that you were actually Gary Oldman being played in a movie, you wouldn't be surprised. Okay. Let me throw this out at you. Okay. He goes from playing a New York gangster. To a Shakespearean comic knave, to Lee Harvey Oswald, to a Transylvanian count, to a dreadlocked, eubonic speaking pimp, to an American drug addled cop, to a 19th century German composer, and that is only 1990 to 1994.

[00:31:18] All of them fantastic movies. He's played an ape. He's played a peacock. There is nothing that this man can't do. And so even though he might be a leading man sometimes, and he might be a very simple bit part guy, some of the time as well, he is always going to give you something fresh. There is nothing that is repetitive about him.

[00:31:46] SYCBS: Michael, that's gonna be a tough act to follow. Uh, are you ready to play the Bill Paxton wildcard?

[00:31:52] F&G: I do think that there are some very compelling reasons to elevate Bill Paxton. First, I think a little trivia here, just because this communicates how fun he is. And I actually have Jason to thank for this little factoid.

[00:32:06] Bill Paxton is the only actor of all time who was killed by both a Terminator, an alien, and a predator. That tells you something about what he's up against, that he's willing to, uh, go to the far reaches of space and the most dangerous machines of all time. Not to mention whatever the other third thing is.

[00:32:26] Uh, I lost the thread there.

[00:32:29] SYCBS: The hottest day on record in, uh,

[00:32:31] F&G: in Los Angeles. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Uh, something else that should be brought up about Bill Paxton. This has very little to do with his movies, but it's important. He Saw JFK, not the movie, but the man, on November 22nd, 1963, as the motorcade was passing through Fort Worth.

[00:32:52] There is a picture of a young Bill Paxton, up on his father's shoulders, looking at the president hours before he was assassinated in Dallas. Anybody who intersects with history in that kind of way, is walking around with a gift, is walking around with something special that he carries with him everywhere he goes, including onto movie sets.

[00:33:13] And that brings me to the last point I want to make in Wild Card. Amit brought up the obituary a moment ago. There was a word used in Bill Paxton's obituary that I want to draw attention to, and that word was affable. You talk about Fred Willard on a desert island being somebody who brings joy and humor, that's great.

[00:33:33] I think affability is a more important quality. Affability relates to who you're hanging out with and how much you want to hang out with him. Yes, I am impressed by Gary Oldman. He brings an intensity to who he is and there is not a role he plays where he doesn't disappear into him. But I'm not on this desert island to celebrate one man.

[00:33:52] I'm On this desert island to celebrate a rich catalog. And sometimes that means that it's not just one person, but the entire cast and the entire experience of a movie. I need somebody affable who's here to bring every movie to a place of transportation and vicarious experience. So that's my wildcard.

[00:34:14] Mike,

[00:34:14] SYCBS: I gotta tell ya, if there's one word that defines you in the wildcard round, I would say passionate. Uh, that was a very well, uh, given speech there. Guys, we've already name dropped several incredible titles that these actors are a part of, but uh, this next category, uh, here's where you need to come out swinging guns a blazin cause we're gonna do Top 5.

[00:34:38] Jason, I wanna hear your Top 5 performances. I don't know if these are top five performances. I'm gonna say these are his top five movies going toe to toe with you guys. So, my first draft pick is going to be D's all time favorite movie from the 90s. That's Pulp Fiction.

[00:34:58] F&G: You know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in France?

[00:35:01] Royale with cheese. You know why they call it that? Because of the metric system? Check out the big brain on Brad!

[00:35:10] SYCBS: I'm going to go with maybe the greatest family movie of the 90s. Jurassic Park. Kids absolutely love this movie. I loved it. Everybody loved it. It's a fantastic movie. Then I'm gonna pull out Avengers Endgame.

[00:35:25] You get anybody below the age of 20, it's maybe the greatest movie they've ever seen. Then for me, in the family genre, again, I think it's the best movie since the year 2000. It's absolutely fantastic. And then lastly, I'll throw out Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee. A great movie from 1989. Showing his diversity.

[00:35:48] It's not all just laser beams and dinosaurs. He actually has enjoyable, you know, socially conscious movies as well. So that is my Samuel L. Jackson top five. Excellent top five. I gotta be honest, I've been looking forward to this category just so I could talk to Ahmet. Ahmet, let's hear your choices for Fred Willard's top

[00:36:14] F&G: five.

[00:36:15] Number one best in show from the year 2000. Uh, Fred Willard played one of the hosts of The Dog Show and absolutely stole the movie. The cast of that movie overall, it is incredibly rewatchable. Writing exactly on those coattails, but 16 years prior, Spinal Tap. Still watched regularly. I believe there is a sequel in the making.

[00:36:37] Uh, right now. So here we are, uh, God, what, 40 years after the movie and still feels contemporary. Number three, I referenced earlier, I will go with WALL E, given his significance in the role, and with Pixar, that was also a movie that grossed 530 million worldwide. So if we're looking at Fred Willer's 2. 3 billion, we've almost got 20 percent of it.

[00:37:00] Number four, I will go, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, and that is a personal choice because it was one of the first movies with a cool Indian protagonist. So, uh, a big yippee for my people. And number five, I just don't think we can discount it because it's arguably the biggest comedy of this millennium.

[00:37:20] Would be anchorman. All right. I would throw in waiting for Guffman on my list. I don't know who I'd knock off your list. I agree. Waiting for Guffman is my favorite of all of Fred Willard's movies. Yeah, I, I would not disagree with you had I, I was going for, for variety in my, my top five picks, and since I led with Best In Show, that's the only reason why I didn't bring in waiting for Guttin, but I could have easily substituted it.

[00:37:42] Completely agreed. D, brilliant in all respects.

[00:37:44] SYCBS: I mean, you don't realize this, but you're sitting in a podcast room with two of the biggest fans of a Fred Willard movie that there may not be anybody else in the entire country as big of fans as there are. Can I guess it? Sure.

[00:37:59] F&G: Moving violations?

[00:38:00] SYCBS: Yes. Yes. I gotta say I was, I was conflicted here because I wanted so desperately to hear moving violations on your list, but with the choices that you made.

[00:38:11] Where do you, where do you put moving violations among those films, so S

[00:38:15] F&G: for me. Everyone calls me Doc. Stop by the clinic anytime. Excuse me, you have a clinic? Not just a clinic, the clinic. We do the finest diagnostic checkups in town. Doc Williams

[00:38:26] SYCBS: at your service. D. This couldn't be easy for you. For Gary Oldman, what are your top five

[00:38:31] F&G: choices?

[00:38:32] It's the understatement of the year to say that it was not easy to bring this down to only five. He's won an Academy Award. I didn't see that movie so I didn't pick it. He's won a Golden Globe but I didn't see that movie either so I didn't pick that one. He's won three British Academy Film Awards and he's been nominated for two other Oscars and he's been nominated for an Emmy but I didn't pick that one because it was just a couple of episodes of Friends.

[00:38:58] I pick the movies that I like. It's my personal top five. It probably will be different than anybody else's top five, but I'm going to go number five, Leon, the professional number four Oppenheimer where he plays the president Truman. Number three, true romance. Because it is the role I went, this is the same guy.

[00:39:24] SYCBS: I'm still a mystery to you. Say, if

[00:39:26] F&G: I ask you if you want some dinner and you grab the egg roll and start a chow down, I said to myself, this motherfucker, he's carrying on like he ain't got a care in the world. And who knows? Number two. Immortal Beloved, because I'm a huge classical music fan. I think it's one of the most underrated movies of the nineties.

[00:39:41] Great mystery, great music, and obviously great performance. Number one pick for the Gary Oldman movie. It was my number one pick for all of the movies of the 20th century. And that's Dark Knight. No Dracula. It's, it's fantastic. But I mean, dude, there's a million movies that he could, that I could pick.

[00:39:59] SYCBS: Okay.

[00:39:59] Okay. A lot of Dracula talk on this podcast. I didn't, I didn't expect that. Michael, let's talk about Bill Paxton's top five.

[00:40:09] F&G: All right, let me win this thing. So, I think the thing that has to really be elevated again here, and there has to be called out, is the word re watchability. That's come up a few times.

[00:40:19] We are absolutely talking about some of my favorite performances with Gary Oldman, and definitely some of the most funny movies in the Fred Willard catalog, and everything that came up with Samuel L. Jackson is, well, I think competes with re watchability, but not quite this list. So, Number five. I struggled here, but I wanted to get a little sentimental.

[00:40:40] I'm going to put Titanic. Uh, I'm ready to get sentimental. I'm ready to get weepy. And look, man, you put that movie on in the right, in the right moment, and I can get caught up in it. I've always had a thing for Kate Winslet. I think the set design is extraordinary. I feel like I'm back in the early 20th century.

[00:40:56] And I guess on the subject of re watchability, one thing about Bill Paxton movies is you often know the outcome. We know the ship's going to sink yet we watch it anyway. And in fact, we re watch it anyway. And that I think to me is what this desert Island thought experiment is all about. Mike, you and Jason really need to hang out.

[00:41:15] We do.

[00:41:15] SYCBS: Yeah. What are we doing here? I love Titanic, man. I think it's the best movie of the 90s. It's

[00:41:20] F&G: a great movie. I'm sorry. I'm a, I'm a sucker for a certain kind of romance. All right. Number four, I'm going to go Apollo 13. I think that the Apollo 13 captures the wonder of space. It's got a high drama. I think that there's a celebration of a moment in history.

[00:41:37] And I think to just imagine yourself traveling literally around the dark side of the moon Is the kind of thing that you can connect with if you're on a desert island because you too feel alienated you too Feel like you're at the ends of the world number three. I need something that is both fun, but also high stakes I'm going terminator, uh the original I think that the way it puts me back in 1984 like those special effects while sometimes feeling dated actually have an electricity to them and I think it's arguably Arnold's greatest role.

[00:42:10] Number two, I want to go back to the Old West with Tombstone. Mostly because of the Val Kilmer Doc Holliday performance, but I want to be taken back to the Old West and, and a great shootout. And number one for me is, uh, pretty obvious maybe, but Aliens. I can watch Aliens over and over and over again. I think the set design of all these movies, and I keep coming back to this idea, take me somewhere else.

[00:42:33] I'm on a desert island, I don't want to be. I want to be anywhere else. The range of environments and settings that we get to go to with these five Bill Paxton movies are what I need on this desert island.

[00:42:44] SYCBS: I gotta say, if uh, if physical media did not exist, and Cable providers provided the all aliens all the time channel.

[00:42:53] I would subscribe.

[00:42:54] F&G: That's all I need

[00:42:57] SYCBS: Filled with Cameron love right? I love I love James Cameron. Yeah, speaking of love. Uh, let's talk about uh, I don't recall if it was Jim Caviezel or Willem Dafoe who once said who has never sinned

[00:43:07] F&G: who? Whoever that is,

[00:43:12] SYCBS: come up here and throw these! If we're casting stones for sins, we're all gonna be hurt real quick.

[00:43:17] But these guys have sinned before, so let's move to our next category. Another holdover, another favorite one. Cinematic Sins. So for those of you that are unaware what the Cinematic Sins category is all about, this is the opportunity for three others to gnash their teeth. And call out the cinematic sins of the fourth pick for MVP.

[00:43:41] So Jason prepare to get stoned because. I'm going to talk to these guys about Samuel L. Jackson's cinematic sins. Ahmet, cast the first stone, sir.

[00:43:54] F&G: I mean, it's got to be snakes on a plane. I don't even have to look up. Shooting

[00:43:59] SYCBS: from the hip.

[00:43:59] F&G: Yes. I saw the trailer. I didn't need to see the movie. I think America felt the same.

[00:44:08] Yes. I

[00:44:08] SYCBS: have no defense on that one. I can't say anything. I cannot defend that one. Cannot defend that one. D, take your best

[00:44:16] F&G: shot. I make a concerted effort not to watch bad movies. And so this was the hardest category for me. Like I, if I've seen a movie that you guys in, I probably liked it, but I did see the clone wars.

[00:44:31] SYCBS: Are you phantom menacing me right

[00:44:33] F&G: now? The phantom is a, those are menacing. I also haven't seen the marvels, and I never planned to, but it would be number three on my list. I'm getting like a quadruple shot! I haven't seen it. I won't call it that one. My pick is Clone Wars because I've seen it and I will never watch it again.

[00:44:51] Remember Obi Wan, if the prophecy is true, your apprentice is the only one who can bring the force back into balance.

[00:44:58] SYCBS: How about it, Michael? The

[00:44:59] F&G: problem with Samuel L. Jackson on a desert island is decision fatigue. Yes, there are some gems in here. We can pluck out True Romance or Pulp Fiction, but my God, do you have to sort through an unbelievable amount of crap before you get to anything good.

[00:45:15] So maybe that is my dig. I'll go farce of the penguins. I never saw it. I assume they're making fun of March of the penguins and Samuel Jackson was the narrator. So, uh, that is the stone I shall cast,

[00:45:27] SYCBS: sir. Jason, any, any last comment about, uh, defending Samuel Jackson's cinematic sins? I can't really defend myself on any of those, but I will say that.

[00:45:37] This summer, we're going to take a deep dive on our What the Heck Happened series where we're going to break down and discuss the Phantom Menace versus Star Trek The Motion Picture and ask the question, What the Heck Happened? Otherwise, I have no defense. All right, while Jason rests, it's Ahmet's turn.

[00:45:56] Let's talk Fred Willard's cinematic sins.

[00:45:59] F&G: One of the nice things that I figured out from doing this episode is that on the IMDB app, you can actually Sort all of the movies of a particular performer by IMDb ranking. And here's what I figured out about Fred Willard. When someone says, do you want to be in a movie?

[00:46:18] He does not say no. That was him. He was a yes guy. So on his IMDb credits list, he has a movie that ranks less than a 2. 0. But I'm not picking that movie because just a couple above that one is the movie Christmas Vacation 2, Cousin Eddie's Island. Oh,

[00:46:40] SYCBS: gosh.

[00:46:41] F&G: Not only is it a horrible movie, but it's an affront to the whole series.

[00:46:46] And so for that reason, it has to be Fred Willard's biggest cinematic sin.

[00:46:52] SYCBS: Ahmet, anything to say? I mean, I'm glad Eddie

[00:46:54] F&G: got an island, but I haven't just

[00:46:58] SYCBS: Well, in that case, uh, Michael, what is Your choice for Fred Willard's cinematic sin.

[00:47:05] F&G: I'm running into the same damn problem. The fact that he basically said yes is nice.

[00:47:11] You need the job. You gotta take the work. But have some, I don't know, sense of taste and some dignity. Sometimes it's really okay to say, That's not for me. I'll go ahead and choose Reanimated, which is a TV movie from 2006 that got a star of 2. 8. I'd never heard of it before I brought it up, but it's representative of the overall decision process for Fred Willard.

[00:47:33] SYCBS: Ouch. I'm at silent. I guess we move on to Jason to continue the pile on here. I'm just going to jump on Michael's coattails here and just say yes. He's got a great voice. And so working as a voice actor, you get drug on some bad projects. But for me, I mean, I don't even have to watch this movie, the pooch and the pauper I feel as a father, that's one that I would have been in the movie theater with my kids going, what is this crappy movie that I'm watching?

[00:47:59] So mark me down the pooch. And the popper. Okay. Amit, what can you say in defense of the pooch and the popper? I

[00:48:08] F&G: mean, great title. I'm a little intrigued, actually. Yeah, it could be good. Yeah, I didn't have plans tomorrow night until now.

[00:48:19] SYCBS: Dee, I'm curious, and we won't hold this against Fred. The title that you were going to suggest, was it

[00:48:24] F&G: named? Yeah, it's called Schoolgirls. Spelled with a Y. Where would you put a Y? It's in 1. 8.

[00:48:32] SYCBS: 1.

[00:48:33] F&G: 8? When I did the sorting by rank, it was impressive how many movies in the 2 point something category. I don't know how many bad movies you can make, but this is, his amount is impressive.

[00:48:47] That speaks to accessibility, uh, I don't know. Alignment with the proletariat. I feel like if David Arquette, Tom Arnold, And if Fred Willard was still alive, got together and made a movie, it might rank in the negatives somehow. Well,

[00:49:02] SYCBS: Michael, let's, uh, there's still more Sin to discuss. So, Dee and his choice, Gary Oldman, are on the stand.

[00:49:09] So let's talk Gary Oldman's cinematic sins, Michael.

[00:49:13] F&G: I'm going to take a slightly different angle on this, because Gary Oldman is excellent in everything he's on, so I am not about to criticize the man's, uh, decisions, uh, in terms of role. What I am going to criticize here is his decision in terms of impact, and here I am going to attack the film JFK.

[00:49:32] Somehow this keeps coming up. Now, I I'm entertained by JFK. I've watched it several times. I think it is a well crafted movie. I think it is extremely well cast. I also think it has forever altered our opinion of what happened on that fateful day. I do not claim to know. I am interested in the conspiracy theories.

[00:49:51] I am also interested in the mainstream message. But I also believe that a large chunk of, not just America, but the world, now believes a certain story because Gary Oldman Was so good in that movie in a way that is a cinematic sin that it is presented as truth And as the final say I have some reservations around that and I'm gonna call that a son I'd

[00:50:19] SYCBS: go with that, you know in in the future People are going to look at me and say, you hosted a podcast that said negative things about JFK, and I will be forced to say, I'm just a patsy.

[00:50:32] F&G: Oh, wow. All, all I mean to say is that there is such a thing as too convincing of a role. I'll

[00:50:39] SYCBS: leave it at that. Jason, uh, let's talk Sin and Gary Oldman. Okay, so I'm gonna throw out the stupid IMDb rankings. I could care less about what other people think. I just know what I think, right? I am an expert on my own opinion, and when I went to the movie theater in 1998, when I watched The Fifth Element, I thought this movie might be the worst piece of crap I've ever seen on screen.

[00:51:08] It is Unbearable to me between Bruce Willis was uncool and you had Gary Oldman dressed up like, uh, Dead or Alive from, you know, You Spin Me Right Round, like a record. I can't take this movie. I can't do it. I know other people like it. I think it's a giant pile of heaping crap.

[00:51:27] F&G: Never be ashamed of who you are.

[00:51:29] You should be proud of that. So what if the federal government scatters your

[00:51:33] SYCBS: people to the wind? What doesn't kill you makes you

[00:51:36] F&G: stronger. Your time for revenge is at hand.

[00:51:40] SYCBS: Voila! And I guess as moderator, I shouldn't say anything, so I'll go to Ahmet and ask him. Ahmet, your thoughts on Gary Oldman's cinematic sins.

[00:51:49] F&G: Yeah, I'm leaving myself a little vulnerable here because I'm going to point out one of Matthew McConaughey's bigger cinematic sins. And should you want to throw that back at me, you could also point out that Matthew McConaughey starred in The Wedding Planner, which also featured Fred Willard. However, Fred Willard did not.

[00:52:06] Except to play a role in the movie Tiptoes from 2002. Gary Oldman did, enough to be one of the leading characters. And what is Tiptoes about, you ask? Let's just take a little look. Let's Google Tiptoes. The film's plot revolves an average sized man, Matthew McConaughey, who struggles with revealing to his pregnant fiancée, Kate Beckinsale, that his entire family are little people, as he worries that their unborn child may be born with dwarfism.

[00:52:39] Wow.

[00:52:39] SYCBS: Interesting.

[00:52:40] F&G: Gary Oldman's in there? Gary Oldman is in there. He signed off on that? He is one of the top three actors on it. In fact, he plays Rolf. He plays

[00:52:48] SYCBS: Adorf? No, he plays Rolf. Oh, okay.

[00:52:52] F&G: Uh, Peter Dinklage is in it though, and I'm assuming he plays one of Matthew McConaughey's family members. Wow. Just to be clear, he does play Adorf.

[00:52:59] SYCBS: Whoa! Wow! Yes,

[00:53:00] F&G: he does. Oldman does. Yes. Sweetie? I love you. There's one small problem. Hi. I'm

[00:53:11] SYCBS: Rolf. I'm his brother. We're twins. Are you parents?

[00:53:13] F&G: Um Yeah. In my research today, I came across this movie and I was just like, yeah, this one looks like it has so much promise. And yet, but I mean, it's, it's, I don't think it's, I mean, they've got multiple little people, actors in it.

[00:53:30] Yes. Then why did they need Oldman? Right. Exactly. I think, yeah,

[00:53:34] SYCBS: that's making more grandiose. Yeah. So to clarify, we're not talking about. Tim Conway's Doors, we're talking about Gary Oldman's Rolf. So, Gary Oldman played

[00:53:44] F&G: Rolf. Confusion there.

[00:53:47] SYCBS: Dee, uh, what do you have to say to defend Gary Oldman's cinematic sense?

[00:53:51] F&G: Okay, so I have to take something back because earlier I said that the wild card category would be the category that I pulled ahead not to be left behind, but apparently it's this category. I'm going to just take them in reverse. Okay, tiptoes. If that's a cinematic sin, also committing that sin, as he mentioned, is Matthew McConaughey.

[00:54:11] Also, Kate Beckinsale, Peter Dinklage, Patricia Arquette, David Alan Greer. Everything I read about it said it had so much promise for the first half and then the last half it became a TV movie of the week kind of thing. I actually want to see this movie, despite the fact that it does have a dismal 4. 2 rating.

[00:54:32] On the other two movies,

[00:54:34] SYCBS: Fifth

[00:54:34] F&G: Element. One of the best regarded sci fi movies of the 90s. I will accept that as a sin, if you will. And then JFK, 8. 0. 8. 0. Are we playing the IMDb MVP or what? If you go to IMDb, it's just telling you guys that you're all crazy. I'll save my rebuttal.

[00:55:03] SYCBS: Absolutely. Well, Michael, you're going to have plenty to say here because we're about to discuss the cinematic sins of Bill Paxton, and we're going to begin with Jason.

[00:55:11] I love Bill Paxton. I can't deny it. I'm a big Cameron guy. In fact, I listened to a two hour interview with him today on the way over And I presently like him even more than I did two hours prior to that. Great actor, fun guy, down to earth. But I know that I watched a movie in college in 1993 called Monolith and it's like X Files, cops chasing aliens, and I was very hopeful because, obviously, if there's a guy who knows about aliens, it's Bill Paxton.

[00:55:43] But this was a piece of crap. Who the hell are you? That information is

[00:55:47] F&G: classified. We can step aside. Where are you taking that girl?

[00:55:51] SYCBS: Also

[00:55:51] F&G: classified. Can't you play any other tune? Let me lay some reality on you. Detective Tucker, if you obstruct me Then you are obstructing the United

[00:56:04] SYCBS: States government.

[00:56:06] Ahmet, your thoughts on, uh, Bill Paxton's Cinematic Sins. Yeah, so I

[00:56:10] F&G: feel a little bad about this one because I think it was one of his last films and was released, uh, posthumously. Uh, The Circle. Which is an adaptation of Dave Eggers book of the same name. Horrible adaptation of that. So, particularly bothered me because I liked the book so much.

[00:56:29] And to see Bill Paxton play May's father, May, the leading character, in it, in just the, this, Horribly conceived adaptation was a punch in the gut.

[00:56:42] SYCBS: This was the one with, uh, with Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks

[00:56:45] F&G: is notorious for accepting terrible roles in movie adaptations of Dave Eggers books. Yeah. I have no

[00:56:52] SYCBS: rebuttal.

[00:56:52] D, your conversation about Bill Paxton's cinematic sins.

[00:56:57] F&G: Well, I don't like watching bad movies. I avoid it at all costs. But I also have five kids. And so sometimes It's unavoidable, and among the movies that I've had to watch because I have children are the Spy Kids movies. Hmm. And he was in not one, but two Spy Kids movies.

[00:57:20] That'd be Spy Kids 2 and Spy Kids 3 as Dinky Winks. I don't know how you get offered the part of Dinky Winks and say yes, unless Robert Rodriguez has agreed to put you in his next vampire or grindhouse movie. I don't, I just don't get it. Well, hey there, little Miss First Lady, I'm Dinky Winks, owner of this fine establishment.

[00:57:45] Are you ready to ride the ride and shrill to the thrills, spills, and chills? Yes, I am.

[00:57:50] SYCBS: Rock

[00:57:51] F&G: this one! There you go. Take your pick. They're basically the same movie.

[00:57:54] SYCBS: I have nothing to say to Deekie Weeks, so What do you have to say as far as defending Bill Paxton's cinematic sins?

[00:58:01] F&G: Well, now that we've gone through all of us, who among us has not sinned here?

[00:58:07] I think what I would have to say, IMDb can have their own stars, their own rankings. This is not a conversation about what the critics say. The cr This is a conversation about what we want and what's best for us as we wait out the long hours and days on this desert island. So, that's thought one. Thought two, I think I already said, who among us has not sinned?

[00:58:28] And thought three, and this is probably the most important. Look, you're not going to have great movies if you don't take big risks. I think that's what we want from our actors. I think we want them to say, you know what? I am going to go for it. Hold my beer while I make this movie. And yes, sometimes that's going to result in the occasional spy kids too.

[00:58:48] And maybe you ask somebody to do it again and Spy Kids 3, uh, comes around. Or maybe you say, you know what? Monolith sounds about right. I've had a good streak with these, uh, science fiction, horror, uh, thriller movies. What could go wrong? And unfortunately, everything goes wrong. But when you go for it The way Bill Paxton went for it.

[00:59:07] You also get The Terminator, and Aliens, and Twister, and on and on, and Tombstone, and Big Love, and you name it. So, uh, I'll take the good with the bad here. And I think, on balance, these were calculated risks that pay off. No one is a saint here. But the sum total of virtue far outweighs the sin.

[00:59:29] SYCBS: Well, I am nearing my final judgment.

[00:59:32] But, uh, before I offer that Should we offer you guys a short summation just to say one last thing about your candidate for IMDB MVP? Yeah, I'll start. You want me to start? 28 billion dollars and 11 successful franchises. That is a catalog to take to a desert island. That right there.

[00:59:53] F&G: Amit. 317 credits, uh, both movie and television.

[00:59:59] You don't know when that rescue boat is coming, so you better have a lot to watch. Dee. I feel like my competitors are just drawing at straws right now. I'm just going to give you a few facts that I didn't have another place to put it in. Fact number one. Before he became an, a working actor, he sold shoes and he beheaded pigs in a slaughterhouse.

[01:00:26] Fact number two, when he became an established actor, he was the first one they offered the part of Edward Scissorhands to, and he turned it down. Because he might behead a pig with those scissorhands. And then fact number three, and I, I know you guys have been waiting the whole show. I sent you a picture earlier today.

[01:00:46] Vizuma Thurman, 1991. He was married to her from 1990 to 1992. What? The only, and it just, to throw it back to, uh, the, the different types of movie, I mentioned all of the, um, you know, kids movies that you could watch with Gary Oldman. He had one NC 17 movie. It's called Henry and June. I remember that. Umu was in that one with him.

[01:01:13] I think that's where they Hooked up, if you will, that picture, that picture doesn't give me some kind of extra credit that I don't really need. I don't know what

[01:01:22] SYCBS: does. I do like Uma.

[01:01:23] F&G: Yeah. All right, Michael. Yeah, I don't know how to respond to that. I don't know how it has anything to do with what we've been talking about.

[01:01:30] That's completely irrelevant.

[01:01:31] SYCBS: Just a fluster tactic right there. I think

[01:01:33] F&G: it's pretty simple. Who do I want to hang out with as I'm waiting for that ship to arrive? I'm asking myself, what do I want from a movie? And what I want from a movie is to get lost in it. I want to be taken somewhere else. I want to consider fantastic stories with epic stakes.

[01:01:51] I want to consider the impossible, and I want the impossible to be made believable. Nobody, uh, was in the range of movies that accomplished that central goal across genres. And across budgets, I think that how much money it made and what the critics had to say has nothing to do. This is about our relationship to film.

[01:02:13] And on that score, I cannot think of a better candidate than the late, great Bill Paxton. Very

[01:02:19] SYCBS: well. Listeners, We have been discussing the box office, roles, genre diversity, and films, both bad and cinematically sinful, of Bill Paxton, Gary Oldman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Fred Willard. As far as I'm concerned, This was, uh, not an easy decision, and it was a very tight race, uh, I commend all four of you.

[01:02:47] But should I find myself a castaway with a treasure trove of, uh, one actor's films, I'm gonna have to say, the name is Gary Oldman. Ah,

[01:02:59] F&G: fuck!

[01:03:03] SYCBS: I'm looking at my scorecard, I'm hearing these passionate pleas, and ultimately, uh, D, I think you did a great job convincing me that Gary Oldman Was the choice because well, I won't tell you who I had tipped before this even started Gary Oldman was not who I expected I would come to in the end. So well done, sir.

[01:03:22] Thank you

[01:03:23] F&G: It's a worthy foe. I see this argument. Well

[01:03:26] SYCBS: gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for allowing me the opportunity to moderate this amazing episode Absolutely love both your shows. I'm at Michael. Can you tell us a little bit about what's coming up this season on famous in gravy?

[01:03:38] F&G: we Select who we're gonna talk about, um, not too far in advance, and we bring a lot of real time to the table.

[01:03:45] There are some things, I dunno if you wanna preview them, Michael. Well, I don't know without having prepared a quiz for the opening quiz. How about this? How about I call you early next week and uh, and you can take the opening quiz for the next famous Eng Gravy episode.

[01:04:00] SYCBS: I'd be happy. I'd be honored.

[01:04:02] F&G: Yeah, let's do it.

[01:04:03] All right. All right. We like to not reveal until we get to the episode. Although, now that we're putting the artwork out, it's not really working. But anyway, we like to try and keep it a mystery. Yeah, our devoted listeners like to not know until the day of release.

[01:04:17] SYCBS: Okay. Jason D, what can we expect this season on the Shirley, you can't be serious podcast, man.

[01:04:24] We are covering a whole slew of awesome stuff from 1984, 1989. We're doing a little bit from 1979. So we're comparing the cars heartbeat city versus Brian Adams. Reckless album from 1984. We're going to do Pink Floyd's The Wall versus Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, head to head comparison there.

[01:04:44] We're even doing like great sequels from 1989. We're doing Lethal Weapon 2 versus Indiana Jones 3. It's going to be a lot of fun. Gentlemen, I'm, I'm absolutely excited about, uh, the upcoming seasons that we're, that we're getting into both these podcasts and I can't wait to hear what you guys have for us.

[01:05:00] It's going to be great. Jeff, what do you got coming up? Well, I'll tell you, uh, aside from doing what we typically do, which is, uh, talk about, uh, directors and their underrated hits, uh, I mentioned those limited series that we've had a lot of fun with in the past. We have a couple, uh, that are poised to start, uh, here very soon.

[01:05:18] We will, uh, be bringing back our, a film at 45 series, uh, for one more year where we'll celebrate the 45th anniversary of some of. 1979s iconic films. We will also be, uh, doing our new limited series 1996. So we had a blast talking about movies from 1986. Uh, we kind of dropped back, uh, 10 years and did a 1976, uh, last season.

[01:05:46] And this season we're jumping forward. Uh, we're going to finish this. Trilogy if you will we're gonna be talking about films of 1996 and we've got a lot of great great people lined up So we're gonna have some fun.

[01:05:58] F&G: Very cool. Jeff. Thanks for moderating this and MD congratulations.

[01:06:02] SYCBS: You guys did a great job.

[01:06:03] I had a blast. So thanks for having me. The question is Did did we get it? Right is Gary Oldman the IMDb MVP, or did you have another choice in mind? Did you have someone in mind that maybe we didn't even discuss? Please let us know, reach out. You can find the social media channels and websites for Famous and Gravy, the Shirley, You Can't Be Serious podcast.

[01:06:28] And a phone by podcast in the show notes, uh, we would love to hear from you and find out, uh, what your thoughts were.

[01:06:36] F&G: Thanks so much again to Jason and D from the surely you can't be serious podcast. Thanks also to Jeff Johnson from a film by podcast. We will link to all of their social handles and their podcasts in the show notes, really recommend checking them out.

[01:06:52] Thanks so much to Jacob Weiss for helping to edit this episode. If you are interested in participating in an upcoming. Famous and gravy quiz. Give us an email. Hello at famous and gravy. com famous and gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. We will return to our usual format on the next episode.

[01:07:10] Thank you for listening to this. Hope you enjoyed it. See you next time.