‘Die Hard With a Vengeance’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan
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Higher learning. It happened. You somehow got invited to higher learning before me. On Juneteenth. On Juneteenth. Very special. Best episode of the year? For sure. Did Rachel know who Chris Ryan was? She wasn't there. Rachel wasn't there. She didn't know who he was before. Does Rachel know who Chris Ryan is? She doesn't. No, she doesn't. Well, she will know on Monday as we crown the face of the ringer. The face of the ringer is happening. The face of the ringer argument. Chris Ryan was a part of it. You're one of the four finalists. Yeah, congratulations. That's great. Yeah.

For what it's worth, I said you're the face of the ringer. Oh, thanks, Chris. Yeah. You got just 10% more Boston. Yeah. Right now. Oh, yeah, I'm on face of the ringer. Am I? Yeah. You can also hear Van on the ringerverse. On the midnight boys. And sometimes here. My name is Bill Simmons and it is still New York month.

Very few New York movies, more New York than Die Hard with the Vengeance. And that's what we're covering next. John McClane, NYPD. On a good day, he's a great cop. You don't like me because I'm... I don't like you because you're going to get me killed. On a bad day, he's the best there is. On May 19th, McClane is back.

You got a triple A card? Bruce Willis. Die hard. This time with a vengeance. Rated R. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented to you by Amazon Prime. Prime is more than just fast delivery. It's also where you can dive deep into your favorite movie genres with Prime Video and get what you need.

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The Wikipedia description of this movie. That like the grok thing that tells you like the AI spits it out. Okay. Detective John McClain, parentheses, Bruce Willis, is now divorced, alcoholic, and jobless after getting fired for his reckless behavior and bad attitude. That's the first sentence. Reckless, divorced, and an alcoholic, and no job.

injected into my veins. The quadruple crown. When has it ever not worked? In real life? It's like, yeah, having the birthday party. John McClane's coming over. Don't let him drive.

In a movie, he can just defuse a terrorist attack and it's fine. Yeah, in real life, John's getting drunk at the birthday party, whipping out his 9mm. Boom, boom, boom. But in a movie, it's perfect. Has John McClane ever come to a birthday party not covered in grease and blood, wearing a tank top? In real life, John McClane is hanging out with the guy who was killed that led to the Karen Reid trial. He's on the third floor.

Wait a second. It is literally 110 seconds. It's like, oh, no, John McQuaid's here. Oh, he's getting into it with John O'Keefe. He's texting his buddies being like, make sure you plant the evidence. How long does it take a body to freeze? Anyway, John McQuaid in movies, it's fine. Yeah. His life really fell apart.

Here's my first question. Let's start here before we get into the movie. So John McClane saves the Nakatomi building, prevents an incredible terrorist attack, and then doubles down and saves everybody in the airport in Chicago. How is this guy not at least Captain Sully at this point? What else did he have to do? Do you think that this is one of the greatest testaments to the power of the internet to create celebrities out of nothing? I mean, to be fair...

This guy would have a documentary made about him in 2000 or whatever. Yeah. What is his, in real life, if you do those two things, what do your next 30 years look like? I feel like you have a ton. Like you're at least, what was that guy, John Walsh, the America's Most Wanted guy? You're at least hosting a show like that, just getting massive paychecks. Do you have a morning talk show? You probably do. Fox News is starting to...

bubble at that time he's probably got a show on there he's their law enforcement guy but you have to remember he's smoking on fox news him and bill o'reilly were bringing john mcclain to tell us but you have to remember also this was the era of remember eddie murphy left axel foley left detroit and went and basically solved two gigantic capers right but he was uh

outcast. Right. So maybe they look at John McClane as somebody who went against the grain too much by saving people's lives in Los Angeles. Yeah. He should have been done it. It was out of his jurisdiction. You saved us too much money. Yeah. Right. Isn't this actually, we could really map this out. All of the sequels find our favorite characters in a place in their lives. You'd never guess. Like how is Pete Mitchell? Not at least Chuck Yeager.

by Top Gun Maverick. Instead, he's like, I'm fixing old planes. No, you would be probably like, he would be on the cover of a Wheaties box. Yeah, like Val Kilmer would have happened to him with Iceman. Should have at least happened with Maverick. But see, that is, I guess, why our protagonists are our protagonists. Because they're complicated. Right. They're complicated and flawed in a way that keep them in the bubble that we need them to be in to make the movies work. All right. Counter. Captain Sully. Random pilot.

lands the plane in the water.

That's it. They make a Tom Hanks movie about him. Like, that's one of the things with these movies. Nobody makes a movie about John McClane. Yeah. That actually would have been a better Die Hard 3 is them making the John McClane movie about Die Hard 1 and then there's a terrorist. I'll take it a step further. Why can't Holly move back from Los Angeles? Yeah. Has this guy not been through enough? That's one of my picky nits. I will say something about Sully, though, is that actually happened in real life. So he actually saved, like, actual, like, 200 people. Yeah. So...

John McClane is a fictional character. So noted. So, so, so he's celebrity actually comes from, but this is what happens in real life. If somebody does something like that, right. John McClane's at least doing $75,000 speaking gigs all over the world about the,

The two times you saved the world. If this was a contemporary story, what would happen is John McClane would do this. We would all get like, God damn, this is really what we need for America right now. And then somebody would discover his weird Facebook posts from 2021. Where he's like, I'm not wearing a fucking mask! You know, like...

And we'd be like, no, John McClane's not allowed to even be a security guard. In war tapes. Zeus is one of my best friends. Right. Yeah. So after you save Chicago, it turns out there's some frat photo of him in 1978. Yeah. That's not good. And then that kind of- Dressed as Richard Pryor. Is that what you're trying to say? My biggest pet peeve with all these movies we love is that, especially with the sequels, that they just discount how amazing it would be for somebody to have pulled off the feat they did. Yeah.

Isn't there also a chance that John, this is the only time that John is competent because when we first see John, he can't even get his shit together. He's got, but then as soon as the adventure is on, he's like really Jason Bourne in this movie. Yeah.

In this movie, he's one. I mean, obviously, the original Die Hard as well. He's one step ahead of them at all time. He's making evaluations. He when Zeus has his John is like, oh, real quick. Boom, boom. Mix the thing. Yeah. The thing up. He is really. He's got jokes. Yeah. But the best part about Bruce Willis is he still gets scared. Yeah. The best part about Bruce Willis is like when he's getting out of that police van in the beginning in Harlem.

He's like, don't worry, I'll be dead in four minutes. Right. Like he's like, I'm still like sweating out beer and I need a cigarette and I need aspirin and I'm I know I'm going to die. Like this kind of character needs to have almost nothing to lose to do the things that they do. Or one of my favorite small parts of the movie is when they get to the park.

And the bomb's there. And he goes, yeah, there's a bomb there. Why don't you go ahead and grab it? He says to Zeus, why don't you go ahead and grab the bomb? Zeus goes, why would I grab it? He goes, yo, Simon said you're supposed to be helping out. He told you to help me go grab the bomb. It's funny. He doesn't want to grab it. It's funny. Did you see this in the theater? Yeah. I saw it in the theater this weekend, actually. But I saw it in the theater when it came out. Yeah. Yeah, I remember my excitement level was a 10 out of 10.

And I remember being slightly disappointed by the last like half hour. Sure. It helps that being like first hour. Great. Fell apart near the end. Still had a good time. Not as good as diehard. And then I think over the next 30 years, the first 75, 80 minutes is so rewatchable that

It just kind of took another life. I think like literally like up through the school evacuation, it's like one of the best blockbusters ever made. Yeah. It's one of the best action movies ever made. One of the best New York movies ever made. One of the best summer movies ever made. It's it just checks all the boxes. The first 80 minutes is unassailable. And like so many other great ones, it can't sustain it. Yeah.

And we'll go into some of the alternate ending and stuff like that. But holy, I love that it just starts. We're just going. Yeah. We have an explosion within 90 seconds and we're off and they don't spend a lot of time with McClane. It's just clear he's a complete fuck up and his life is falling apart and then we're off. Let's go. Yeah. Premise heavy. Like this guy is fucking with McClane. We don't know why, but that doesn't matter because he's

McClane is in imminent danger in every single scene. He has to find his way out of it. And the story kind of orients itself around that. I went to see it in the theater, but I remember not being as excited.

Because I was kind of getting off the old action star guys. I think it's After the Last Action Hero. This is the tail end of that era. Yeah. And so I remember going to see the movie and being like, oh my God. That was much, much better than I expected it to be. It had the same kinetic energy of the first film. But, you know, Eraser and other movies like that. Maybe Eraser is a year after this or maybe it's the same. It is. No, it's True Lies was right before this. Well, True Lies was...

cliffhanger was right before this we had like the the action guys from the 80s and early 90s had like one last run here through 95 and then 96 it starts to flip we get daylight with Stallone we get a racer Van Damme kind of falls apart

who uh uh arnold's pretty much done and then uh stallone after daylight then he gains the weight for cop land so it's just this is kind of the last movie i gotta say i was i was actually where you were probably like you know and then the second die hard is done by renny harlan and it's like it's really really good we've and if you watch it over and over again it's awesome we did the rewatchables it's discounted but

The crucial movie for Die Hard with a Vengeance is Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Because when you find out Sam Jackson's going to be in this movie and you find out Bruce Willis is going to be in this movie and then you see the trailer and you watch it and you're like, oh, it's this kind of movie. And it's funny and it's referential and it's like fast paced, but it's like, it feels the most real of all the Die Hards because of the way that people interact. It's a crucial point. And the Sam Jackson is the crucial part of this movie because-

He's bouncing around for years and years. Pulp happens. And then within a year, he's in this movie.

And that was the appeal for me in 1995. One of my worst years. Being like, Bruce. One of your worst years? Not a lot going on. Say more. Just like, you know. Tending bar? Wait a minute. Just trying to get shit going. Who was she? No, trying to get shit going. This is my last year at the Herald. Trying to think like maybe this sports writing thing is not going to work out.

We talked about this in other pods. Who was coaching the Celtics? Reggie Lewis is dead. Celts are a mess. Red Sox are a mess. This is when Boston became Loserville. But it was like, Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson, this would be fun on a Friday. Could have hit you hard right there. I let it go. Boston-Loserville thing. It was bad. The 90s were bad. Sam Jackson has this run from Pulp.

Where he just is in like five movies a year. But some of those movies were Die Hard 3, Time to Kill. Yes, it deserves to die! I hope to burn in hell! All right, Bill. Long kiss, good night. June 10th was yesterday. Jackie Brown, Star Wars remake. All of a sudden, he's like an A-plus list. Sequel, not a remake, but yeah. Whatever. Sequel. What was it? Keep doing the thing. Well...

It's just that was it. All of a sudden he was an A-plus lister. Yeah. And it made perfect sense that he was right next to Bruce Willis in what basically is Lethal Weapon. We got to at least address that this is basically Lethal Weapon. This script was acquired to be a Lethal Weapon movie. It was supposed to be Lethal Weapon 4. It somehow went and turned around. 20th Century Fox bought it. It became this movie. But you could easily have seen Gibson and Glover in this. I think. I could, but...

I'm glad that it's this. And I would put these guys up against those guys. On Sam Jackson. Has anyone taken advantage and rode the kinetic energy into the beginning of a career, not the beginning of a career into the Renaissance of a career like him, he was able to balance taking parts where he was with more established actors like Bruce Willis. Yeah. Um,

really weighty secondary roles with new stars like Matthew McConaughey,

like Star Wars, he seemingly had a complete vision of how he wanted to start his golden era. And it really what kind of solidified him for the next like 30 or 40, like every single movie was something interesting and had some kind of quality. Yeah. Maybe it's because it didn't happen early for him. So he just like knew when the window opened, I'm jumping through it. Right. So, and I know exactly how to do this now. He's the toughest one for the rewatchables actor rankings. Yeah.

Because I think this is like his 10th rewatchables. But like six of them, he's barely in the movie. Right, like Goodfellas. Yeah. Not only is he in Goodfellas, he's in Coming to America as Hold Up Man. He's in Do the Right Thing. We did that one. He's in Sea of Love in 1989 as Black Guy. Yeah. That's what he's credited as? He's Black Guy. You go through his things. Magic sticks. Is that what you credit me as? Yeah.

Is that what I am? He's like in Magic Sticks. He plays bum. You go, like, it's just. But anyway. But seriously, though, by the time Pulp Fiction comes, it kind of, and this doesn't happen as much as it used to, at least not for me. By the time Pulp Fiction comes, you go, oh, okay, it's time for him now.

But by the time that, because I had seen him. But it was improbable though. This is like an NBA player at age 30 becoming a star. I'm not saying that it wasn't improbable, but I had seen him. You leave like Jungle Fever. He was in almost everything that Spike had done. Exercise, Exorcist 3. He plays Dream Blind Man. But yeah, Jungle Fever. He's actually quite good in Exorcist 3. It's a brief part. Yeah. But Jungle Fever is when I think he goes on the radar in 91.

where people are like, oh, this guy. Death by Temptation, one of my favorite horror movies. He's in all of these films. Juice. Juice. One scene in Juice. He's in Patriot's Game in 92. When's Fresh?

A little bit later. So that's like 95, 94, 95, maybe even 96. Then in 93, Menace to Society, Jurassic Park, True Romance, Fresh in 94. 94. And then Pulp Fiction. But he's been in like nine or 10 rewatchables movies. I can't remember whether Fresh came out before or after Pulp Fiction, but I remember being blown away by him in Fresh. Yeah. So it's, so, and you know, everyone knows the story. He had a lot of issues. He had a lot of drug stuff and then cleaned up.

And by the 90s, and then all of a sudden he's... I mean, I can't even imagine how much money he's made. He's been in so many movies. He's been in 30 plus years of movies constantly. A lot of big blockbusters. He's always figured out a way to get an Iron Man or a Star Wars in there. Plus he's been the lead in stuff. He was in like...

every Marvel movie for 10 years. Yeah. Right. The through line. Yeah. He's it's, it's a little like half Snoop Dogg just kept going and going and seems like he's as relevant in 2025. I still feel like Sam Jackson's as relevant now. Well, he's become more than an actor. He's become a cultural figure. Totally. Like, like Snoop. Same thing. Whereas like you've seen a lot of these actors, uh,

I think it's really hard to keep that going for more than 15 years. You know, like even you watch somebody like Cruz who,

Eventually couldn't keep it going. And then it's just like, I guess I'm just Mission Impossible Top Gun guy and that's it. Well, the thing that I've always loved about Jackson is that he seems to operate under the idea of like, I want to make movies that I would want to go see. And so many actors probably are like, I want to make a movie to win an award or I want to make a movie because it's specifically going to make me a lot of money. But he just is like...

I like shark movies. Yeah. I'm going to be in deep blue speed. I like, I like this kind of movie. I like that kind of movie. And he makes them a lot. He's prolific. He doesn't take a lot of time off and you know, and part of it is not shouldering the load of having all of these movies riding on your back. Yeah. When that happens, that means a flop or a movie that's not critically well received. Doesn't ding you as much as it does somebody else.

So you get to move on. Good point. His loss is just kind of coming. You get to do cool stuff. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't because they're not these, it's not like, Oh my God, I didn't like days of thunder is Tom Cruise over, you know, the big thing with him. I think he had a little more trouble carrying a movie.

But if he was part of the movie, almost like a basketball player, like if I can just be on the right team, I'm awesome. And he's figured out a way like he can be like kind of the kind of the cool collected brain Sam Jackson character. Or he could be like the bombastic character or the character like Zeus, which I probably think is what a top three, top four Sam Jackson character like for me.

Just for pure Like Jules is number one Yeah Jules is number one I really enjoyed Deep Blue Sea Sam Jackson We still haven't done that In rewatchables But I think he's great In that movie I'd probably say Ordell From Jackie Brown Is up there Oh fuck yeah Fresh

Fresh is up there. Just, I love, Fresh came out around the same time that Searching for Bobby Fischer came out. So I was going through a chess thing. Yeah. And to see the two different, it was really cool. I'm trying to think who else. So Ordell is definitely up there. Ordell, for me, Jules is the number one, but Ordell is very close to Jules. I love that character. I'll actually love that movie. I'm trying to think of what else. Nick Fury for me.

There's an amazing sliding doors that we covered when Tarantino was on. What was that? The King of New York? The King of New York. Yeah. With Sam Jackson and Lawrence Fishburne. This is actually like for all the sliding doors that we throw around. It's the best one. This is the sliding doors. And we didn't, I didn't know it when he told the story. Lawrence Fishburne, he's trying to get in for Pulp Fiction. Wrote the role for him. Please do it. Please do it. Please do it. And Fishburne's agents go crazy.

He wants leads. It's a smaller part. It's a smaller part. You have to be a lead. So he turns it down. Which, by the way, those people are fucking morons. There's no lead in fucking Pulp Fiction. You could argue that Travolta's the lead, but there's no lead in the movie. The movie... It's an ensemble movie. It's an ensemble movie that has a weird circular narrative. They had a plan for him. All right.

They just were like, you can't be in ensembles anymore. You have to be a lead in the movie. So I think he did deep cover with Ellen Barker instead. Which is also awesome. It's a great movie. So Sam gets Jules. Now Fishburne is negotiating for Die Hard 3. And they want him. And they basically agreed that he's going to do it. He wants a lot of money. And they're arguing. They're going back and forth. They can't agree on the money. The producer, Andrew Vajna. Yeah.

unfortunate name. Oh, Vajna. He goes to Cannes because Bruce Willis is about to make Die Hard 3 with him and he goes to Cannes to support Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction.

sees Sam Jackson in Pulp Fiction. He's like, what am I doing with Laurence Fishburne? And he's like, fuck Laurence Fishburne. He locks down Sam. Now Fishburne's out. Yeah. So he loses Pulp Fiction and Die Hard 3. Sam flips spots with him and becomes Sam Jackson. And this is the biggest movie of 95, right?

Yeah, if you throw in the global stuff. And then Fishburne sues, and they actually had to pay Fishburne $750K because they had a verbal agreement. I saw that when I was doing some research, which that is actually pretty awesome. And then they also had to option a script that he wrote.

but he ends up in the matrix at all. Yeah. I guess belatedly works out, but holy, like the same Jackson happened the same way. But that whole point, like, yeah, he's in the matrix and it's cool, but he's in a, he's basically like this white man is Jesus for the entire Pulp Fiction. Right. By the way, that's 99. Yeah. And there, and there was a,

between 95 and 99 i mean laurence was working but there's like fled and there's other movies like that you could argue that this that he was a a tad cold not he wasn't cold he's laurence fucking fishburne but you could argue that he was a tad cold until morpheus kind of gets him back on the right track or whatever you could argue the only other example in history of this sam jackson um

Laurence Fishburne alternate universe flip-flop is Dominique Wilkins and James Worthy in the 1982 first pick of the draft where the Lakers take Worthy over Dominique Wilkins. And if they take Dominique Wilkins and he's with Magic Johnson on the Showtime Lakers doing all the stuff Dominique Wilkins would do anyway and all the above the rim stuff, he becomes the biggest star in the league. Yeah.

And instead he goes to Atlanta, has a great career as a hall of famer. Um, some good battles. So like the Hawks, but he could have been on the magic on the Lakers with magic winning titles, posters, shoes, most famous person in the league. And it didn't happen. Oh,

Hoodlum was in 97, by the way. I like Hoodlum. I lost fan with my Dominic Wilkins thing. It just wasn't interesting. That was interesting. It was like... Second Bruce Willis peak? That's a Bill thing, though. Second Bruce Willis peak? Yeah. You just wear a neat guy. I like him. I like neat. We just found out. Bruce Willis, two Die Hard movies, makes a couple stinkers. Hey, what's going on with them? Let's do Die Hard 3.

Rips off Pulp Fiction, Die Hard 3, 12 Monkeys, Armageddon, Fifth Element, The Siege, Sixth Sense, and a whole nine yards over the next seven years. It's a great job by him. And he's married to Demi Moore. Great job by him. I just want to throw one idea out here at you guys. So one thing that's worth noting for everybody, for the listeners, is that when they make this movie, Die Hard has become a genre unto itself.

Right, Die Hard has created the... Die Hard on a... I'll talk more about this later, but I just also want to... One of the things that really hit me when I was looking at, like, when this movie came out in 90s action movie context is that these guys not only had to top Die Hard 2 and Die Hard, but they had to top Under Siege and Speed and everything else that was, like, around it. Right? Like...

Yeah, what were the other ones? Under Siege, Speed. I mean, Speed was the most recent one. That was 94. Yeah. Die Hard in a Blank became one of the most influential premises. And Speed is the Die Hard cinematographer goes off and makes his own kind of movie. And it's crazy how good it is. But they were able to cobble together a script that had been written for...

other purposes, you know, rejigger it so that it's in the diehard world and then figure out that the one thing that these movies hadn't had before is a sidekick or a partner for McLean that was on his level. Like Reginald Val Johnson's good. People are good in these movies, but like he's never had like

a running mate through the entire movie. But they also moved him around too in this movie, which they hadn't done in the first two. He's just trapped in his spot. Well, that changes the dynamic. Like Reginald Vell Johnson was a guy in the chair. He's on the radio. Because he was stuck inside of Nakatomi Towers. This one, New York, is a character in the film. Like there's so much about this. Like when I was watching it, I had never been to New York before, but they're talking to me as if I had been.

Oh my God. New York traffic is a part of it. The parks are a part of it. If you call like now, like if it'll be a different hospital that the ambulance goes to. So we need to wait till we get below 14th street or, you know, like all that. Like, how did you feel living in New York city with the New York city stuff in this movie?

I didn't move to New York until five years later. No, but you saw the city. You used all the parts of it. So when you watch this movie now... It's incredible. I mean, the grid system that they adopt, you know, I mean, there's like funny, like, how the fuck did you guys get up here or down there that fast? But like the fact that essentially the movie goes south

the entire chase down the island is so ingenious because you can kind of track them like Harlem, 72nd Street. Now they're at Wall Street. Now they got to go back up to Tompkins Square Park. Like it's actually very, very like you can visualize it really easily. What does Wall Street not have? Schools. Yeah. What do they have a ton of? Banks.

That was the first time I ever had that information. I didn't know what they had. I didn't know. They might've been a Wall Street elementary. I didn't know Wall Street didn't have schools either. Yeah, it could have been a Wall Street elementary for all I know. I have no clue what's going on. But like all of that stuff is like part of the script. Pretty sure you can't get to Yankee Stadium that fast. I mean, there's a lot of nitpicks for this. To get a window of fucking Bronx? We can get into that. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I'm just going to head down to Yankee Stadium. I'll see you guys in a second. Not sure that's how it goes. John McTiernan?

What a run for him, man. Jesus Christ. From 87 to 99, he does Predator, Die Hard, Hunt for Red October. I've heard that's good. Is that a good one? Yeah. Who's in that? Sean Connery. Alec Baldwin. Yeah. Oh, okay. Medicine Man. Don't really remember that one. Last Action Hero. Medicine Man. That's with Sean Connery where they're down in South America. With Madeline Stone. He's got the cure to cancer. I don't remember that one. Or something like that. That was actually a good...

That was a good movie. Only saw it once. Okay, cool. Last Action Hero, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and then an Amanda Dobbins favorite, The Thomas Crown Affair in 1999. Oh, I like that movie too. And then The Wheels Come Off. He does Rollerball remake. That sucks. And it sucks so bad. And that's it for John McTierney. Well, he also gets caught up in the Anthony Pelicano stuff, right? I don't remember that. Yeah. Is that true? He was basically in the, he went to jail, I think. Yeah. For all the wiretapping stuff. I know about the story, but I didn't know that it hit him. Yeah.

Written by Jonathan Hensley, who we're going to talk about later in a different category. $90 million budget, made $366 million. Seventh biggest movie of 1995. A great movie year. So if you look at the top 10 films from that year, the fact that Die Hard with a Vengeance is the number one global moneymaker of that year is amazing. With some of the sequel stuff...

Some of the movies that it made more money than when I looked them up. Yeah. Was it incredibly impressive that that film was able to outgross some of these movies like Batman forever. Batman forever. Like Batman. Which was that Val Kilmer? That's Val. Val Kilmer. Yeah. That's the first Joe Schumacher one. A Toy Story.

Apollo 13, GoldenEye. It's a Bond movie. Ace Ventura. Ace Ventura. Crimson Tide. This might be the most Chris Ryan year ever. Seven. Seven. Get shorty. Dangerous Minds. Seven could make $327 million worldwide. If they make seven today, that's going on Netflix. Bad Boy Species, Clueless. What are we doing?

Why can't we have years like this anymore? $327 million. You go after the top 15 and we're looking at Outbreak, Bad Boys, Species, Clueless, The Net, The American President. Fucking A. Disclosure. Higher learning. Honestly, I give Under Siege 2 Dark Territory a spin every once in a while. I like it. More chestnut. Under Siege 2? Yeah. It's a fucking classic. I'm just saying. Under Siege, Die Hard on a Train. Money Train. A movie that I feel like if it comes out,

in other years, maybe does better, but there's so many good movies. You don't love it? I like Money Train. Well, I like it for two reasons. Tommy Boy? Heat? A little movie called Heat? Casino? Come on. Money Train, getting the band back together from White Man Can't Jump, and then that is J-Lo. That's the... Yeah, that's her arrival. That's the J-Lo 35-point game. Like, oh my God, this guy off the bench could score.

That's the 48-point LeBron-Detroit game. You like that? I tried to throw it back to do some NBA stuff. J-Lo scored 25 points in a row against the Pistons. Roger Ebert, our guy, three stars. Fair. I think three stars is fair. If we're giving stars to Roger's reviews...

I give this a two-star review. I just feel like he took a couple miles per hour off the fastball. Maybe it was hot. Didn't really check a lot of the Raj boxes. Yeah. He did say Die Hard with a Vengeance is basically a wind-up action toy cleverly made, delivered with high energy. It delivers what it just advertises with a vengeance. But,

If the plot's just going to go sideways in the last 40% of a movie, Raj is not going to sign off. That's not going to get him three stars. I don't know about 40%. Do you guys still feel that way? Like when you watch the movie now, do you still feel like it loses itself? I don't know why we go to Yankee Stadium and then from every moment on feels like they were just trying to figure out how to end the movie. Yeah. I was going to talk about this at another point. I mean, we have a lot of nitpicks. We'll save them. There's some nitpicks. We'll take a quick break and we'll do the categories.

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? That's happened to me. Like I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting. Have you done that, Sierra? I have, yeah. Or buying the soundtrack on vinyl. Kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, Prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to amazon.com slash prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes.

Most rewatchable scene. This is one of the fun movies where I think every scene is in my list. You just wrote down all the scenes. Up until the boat. Yeah. Yeah. I have starting opening scene right in Assignment Says, which also gets the Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award Best Needle Drop for... Somewhere in the City? Hot time! Somewhere in the City! Cool town, meeting in the city. Just so fine looking, so titty. Till I'm wheezing like a...

And just an awesome swerve where you're like, oh, this would be nice. Just shots of New York and the song. And then all of a sudden, Bonwit Tower's exploding. Yeah. And you're like, what the fuck? We've started? Yeah. And then Simon, we only hear the Jeremy Irons voice. Should have mentioned Jeremy Irons in the first segment. Should have, yeah. I'm not saying he was DDL, but was...

For that era, he had the respect. It was meaningful that he was in this movie. He was one of the best actors in the world. Yeah. We were talking about Laurence Olivier last time on Marathon Man and the British actor coming in to play the villain in an American blockbuster that started with Marathon Man. This is a great example of that. Yeah. And if you're going to do Hans Gruber's brother as a character...

It's Alan Rickman, the best villain ever in an action movie, probably. You're going to have to bring in a real actor. I do feel like that these guys...

When I see Jeremy Irons, I feel like he just went, you know what? I just want to be in a fucking movie in a tank top. I can fucking be. I'm going to work out. Yeah. I can be the fucking heavy. I can be physical. I can be cool. I can be sexy. And when you see him in this movie, he's playing with different accents. He's taking it serious. I can have violent sex with a chick with a throat scar. She's got a sickle. I could throw her on a desk.

It's interesting. So he wins the Oscar in 1990, right? For Reverso Fortune. Klaus von Bulow. Not a great hang, Klaus. Killed his wife. Maybe. While he got away with it. Probably. But you look at his IMDb and it's just all over the place. Like Dead Ringers was a really interesting movie. But for the most part, it was not a commercial actor. Like he...

He was in Damage and Butterfly. He played the Lion King. He played Scar's voice. But for the most part, was kind of over here. And then just kind of flies into an iconic action movie. But this is what they did so well in the 90s, where they would just be like, Malkovich, now you're a supervillain in Con Air. You're the best. You know what I mean? Like, Ed Harris, come play in The Rock. With that said, I don't think DDL at any point in his career does this movie. Maybe to his detriment. Yeah.

But that's the thing. It would have been amazing if DDL was in a version of Die Hard 3. Hey, Daniel Day-Lewis, you think you're too good for this? Now, did you guys hear? It's funny that you bring this up. First of all, DDL learns fluent German to play this part. Oh, he goes so fucking deep. He might scar his own face. No, he learns how to drive the dump trucks himself. Yeah.

He's going all in. Now, did you guys hear... He learns how to make gold. Flood... Gets flooded in an aqueduct just to know what he's doing. Marvel wants DDF. For what? Maybe to play Doom after...

Everyone has a price. Yeah. Well, he's working with his son, so he is out of retirement. He's going to be in his son's movie. Robert Day-Lewis? Johnny Day-Lewis? What's his son's name? I think it's Sam, actually. Sam Day-Lewis? I can't remember, though. All right. But he is back-ish. I just don't know if he's going to do a PTA movie, and I really, really hope he doesn't do Doctor Doom. There's no fucking chance that Marvel can get him. Are you a fan of Thread Guy?

Yeah. I thought you said you're a fan of Threat. Sean and I are going to do that on Rewatch. I saw it twice in the theater. I thought it was just like mesmerizing. Mesmerizing how good he was in that movie. The only thing I'd say about him is on the DDL before we leave is his reputation as being the best actor in the world

is so cemented and ironclad that he might care enough not to fuck with it to ever give us

a simon gruber or something where we just like watch him go wacky it's really the history of all these guys is at some point they come back as they get older like ah fuck it yeah like olivier was like that all of a sudden we talked about that marathon man he's just grabbing gigs i mean hopkins is fucking odin right you know he's he's old yeah the hopkins would like show up for a fedex commercial at a certain point yeah uh next rewatchable scene

I have a lot on the Simon Says gimmick, but it's for a later topic. John McClane puts the sign on and we meet Sam Jackson. What did the sign say? I don't know. You tell us, Van. By the way, this was really controversial in 1995. Honestly, so I saw this in a theater on Sunday. And there were a bunch of people who hadn't seen it before. And it was a lot of younger people. And there was a little bit of like, oh.

Yeah, like when we saw the verdict and Newman hit Charlotte. Slaps Rampley, yeah. Rampling and you could, the crowd like gasped. Yeah. Like they couldn't believe it. So it was like that? Kind of. So it's one of those interesting scenes to me because. This is just Van's wheelhouse. It is because it's actually not. He just can't wait. He's been waiting. It's not the most racist thing that happens in the scene. And I love it when that happens. Should we guess what the most racist thing is? What's the most racist thing in the scene?

I feel like somehow we both lose if we don't guess the right thing. I might do the DDL and just abstain. Oh, yeah. You're going to retire from podcasting on me. Just retiring. So the most racist thing in the scene is, so he's standing there with that. Is it the depiction of the guys on the stoop? Yes. Just 10 guys hanging out on a stoop? But no, they're throwing shirtless and throwing a basketball around.

Go look at it. Ten guys on a stoop, crowded together. With no hoop. No hoop. They're just tossing the basketball around. They got guns. They got liquor. Knives. They got knives. They got no shirts. And they have a basketball. And it's like 8.30 in the morning. So I heard this as a pick and pick. And they have a basketball. The kids are going to school. So school in New York City starts, I would say, either 8 or 9. Yeah. I would say 8.

So multiple picking nits here. Why are all these guys just outside at 745 in the morning? Why is Sam Jackson opening his pawn shop for the early eight o'clock rush? I think it's more of an electronic store. Yeah.

Is that what it is? Yeah, I think they're asking if he would take that boom box, but I don't think he's a pawn shop. I think he's an electrician. Oh, I couldn't tell what the store was. Yeah, he's an electrician. He's fixing shit. So it's like an electrician shop? Yeah, he'll fix your TV, he'll fix your stereo. Just opening at 7.50 in the morning for no reason? Look, early bird gets the worm. And just that, like, it's a little too alive for 7.45 in the morning, I would say. Yeah.

I guess I agree. Yeah. I think that scene is, I'll be honest with you though.

I think that scene is hysterical. Like, even when Sam Jackson looks and goes, call the police, tell them somebody's about to get killed. He walks out there and they're talking. I remember being in the theater and all of a sudden you hear, what the fuck? Right. No, when he has to walk by the old lady and he's just like, yeah. That scene is funny to me, man. I'm like, who do we not want to help us? He says to the two kids and they're like, white people.

I also think they get in the cab and he keeps on Jesus. He's like, stop calling me Jesus! Do I look Puerto Rican to you? All of it's great. The mean mugs on the guys. I'm just going to assume he never makes it in the cab in real life. He doesn't get there? Yeah, because they hit him over the head with a bottle. There's 10 of them. I don't know. Yeah, it would be tough. I think it would be tough. I will say that

When Zeus's character gives the rationale for why he had to save him. Yeah. Number one, he knows he's a police officer. He identifies himself as a police officer. He says, hey, I'm a cop. Some guy made me do this. And the moment that he says, I'm a cop, Zeus changes. He probably would have protected him anyway. But he's like, I definitely can't let the police get killed up here because if they get killed, then. Yeah, it's a free for all. Right.

Next one. Simon negotiates with John and John gets his badge back. My chair with me in it. That's really great. I know.

That's also a great introduction to all the other cops. Well, that's my favorite part is when Walter, the guy with the mustache, like his boss, he's like, he tells Simon he's negotiating. Believe me, the jerk isn't worth it. You stepped on so many toes in this department by the time next month, he's going to be a security guard. His own wife wants nothing to do with him. And he's two steps shy of becoming a full-blown alcoholic.

kind of crossed the line. I felt like you should do that. Maybe a little too much information. You should be like, believe me, Chris Ryan's all used up. I was, I was going to do this later in the pod, but he doesn't take my real estate advice. Hey, you don't want to work van. He's nothing but a porn addict.

No, with Chris, like I was thinking like if Chris, like Chris gets divorced and becomes an alcoholic, we're still doing pods with them. And it's like, I don't know if CR, I don't know if we can count on him. Tell him 11 o'clock call time. Can I get an aspirin? It's an indictment of you that if I was in that condition, you'd be like, fuck him. We're still wheeling him out there. Yeah. A hundred percent.

Chris, like, on a John McClane bender in the tank top, hair fucked up, popping aspirin the whole night. It would be amazing if ZR just had an alcoholic binge just for like a year. Just the wheels came off. ZR showed up. He's wearing like a Ben Simmons torn sixers jersey. I didn't watch that yet, but I'm here anyway. Saw it once.

Could be a good gimmick for next year. Phantom Threat! Did I read that wrong? I really like that when he gets the badge back. Next one. Have we gotten away from the trope of you losing your badge, but your superior keeps it in his desk? It's so good. Hey, you're back. The badge hits his hand like fucking Thor's hammer. He's like, fuck, I'm the mannequin.

I'm a cop. You're telling me I could be a cop again? Being a cop was like the most important thing. Absolutely. The gun and the badge trope is just one of the great things. Give me your gun and badge. Yeah. The hungover cop thing too. So where was he drinking? What was he up to the night before? Like the gentleman on the stoop in Harlem, he might have just been out all night. You know what I mean? New York City, you can really push the limits. He really tested Holly over the years. Is Walter in love with Holly? How many times is Walter going to bring up this man's ex-wife?

It would be so weird. You think he was getting in with Holly? Maybe, or he's in love with Holly. How many times, if I came in here and every time I did something wrong, you went, Van Kalika deserves better. I'd be like, yo, what the fuck you doing? Get out of my business. Yeah, why do you keep bringing her up? Yeah. Yeah. It's between you and I. Mm-hmm.

Can I just, two more things from The Office when that happens. I love Charlie coming in and setting off a minor bomb and calling camp and like, Charlie, you're going to be wearing that chair up your ass! And yeah, just Graham Greene and it's really funny that like, this was a run in movies where I still feel like

we were making fun of the act of getting therapy. So the therapist guy, everybody's just like, yeah, fuck you, man. Who are you? Yeah, you're a fucking shrink. Piece of shit. I do miss that era. I also, we've talked about this before, but the 70s, 80s, just the police stations just moved in a way more fun way.

And they just seem to capture it way better than now. It's all printed out papers, hard paper and landlines. Just people busting each other's balls. Nobody likes each other. Everybody's like, you going to get coffee? The fucking pricks from IA are here again. You know, the whole fucking thing. Right. The fucking pricks from IA.

I mean, the whole thing is like in every cop movie. It's the same shit. 48 Hours, I still think, is the best with that. All of those guys are getting paid like 32 grand a year. They're just skimming coke out of the evidence room. All right. So I'm going to go most rewatchable for this next part, which I think...

It's multiple scenes, but I feel like it all ties together. The phone game with the seven wives. Into the cab ride, driving through Central Park, cutting through New York City, and then him jumping on the train and the train bomb going up. I just feel like that's one scene. Wall Street is south! Man, stop yelling at me. I got a bad headache. And the best way south is not 9-5. It was through the park. Oh, dear. Yes!

I told you the park drive is always jammed. I didn't say park drive. I said through the park. Is that fair? I think it's like 15 minutes. It's 15 of the most electrifying minutes in action movie history. It's just so good. Every piece of it is good. And one of my favorite parts about it is that the moment when McClane goes into the park...

is the moment that Zeus realizes he's in an action movie. Yeah. Where he's just like, oh shit. And this is like that kind of 90s meta, like a character is almost aware of the absurdity of their thing. Like most action movies now are like, no, it's the accountant and it's normal that Ben Affleck will kill 35 guys. Yeah. And nobody ever comments on it. You know what I mean? But in this movie, Zeus is us and is like,

what the fuck are you doing? We're driving through. Are you aiming at these people? You know? And he said, he did say he was aiming at the mind. That was a great line. He's in it. He's in it with a crazy white boy. He's with a crazy white boy, taking them on a crazy white mission, crazy white problems. He keeps coming back to that. He never loses his worldview. I honestly think that there's a couple of really unintended funny scenes or maybe intended funny scenes, but the scene where,

where Simon's fucking with them at the phone booth and they dive. I don't know why that is so hysterical to me. No, no. He has a bomb. And they jump on it. It's hysterical to me. To your point also, this has got Grace Papaya in the background of the 72nd Street payphone. Then they go and they do like traffic talk.

oh, you want to take Ninth Avenue to get south? No, the fastest way south is through the park. Yeah. And then it's like... Through the park. Then there's the ambulance blocking scheme, which is based entirely on him knowing what hospital responds to which call at a certain point in the city. And it's just like the whole thing. And then it's the whole getting into the subway part.

It's so New York that you are so grounded in this experience. You're so like, I'm right here in this city. And it really feels like they're filming in New York, which they are. I really genuinely feel like people were in danger. We were talking about it when we saw it on Sony. This movie would cost a billion and a half dollars because you have to shut down so many parts of New York. Then there's another New York thing that they're doing and I see my New York friends do all the time is they're arguing over who's more New York.

Like they're arguing over who has the right way to get to this place. Who knows this? Who knows that? No, that's not what you do. You go there. Nah, you don't know. This is what you do. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, that's my introduction to all of that type of shit. It was a great spot for a name drop there, but you avoided it. I'm trying to be your New York friends. And then you could just listed like three people to impress us, but you didn't do it because you're not that kind of guy. Not anymore. The central park piece.

There's a couple how the fuck did they do that moments in this movie? Even the Bond with Teller blowing up. I was rewinding and watching. I'm like, did they actually blow up Bond with Teller? Like, how'd they do this?

Because I don't feel like CGI was good enough in 95. I don't know how they did it. Also, like so many funny visual sight gags, like when Walsh, the cop, is following them and he loses them as they come out of the park and he just sees like fucking cafe tables exploding. And he's just like, ah, I lost them. We always talk about the concept of the rewatchables as if it's on and you're like, oh my God, I'm getting sucked in.

And sometimes there are movies you can come in halfway through and be like, yes, I'm going to fucking ride right now. Or like Boogie Nights, like when Dirk shows up at Jack Horner's house, like, oh, this is going to be amazing. Or World of Warcraft. Yeah, or the World of Warcraft, whatever you want. This is the part. You want to catch the opening. It's like Die Hard 3 starting right now. Yeah, can we push that reservation to 7.30? Just give me like an hour here. But if they are in that cap,

Like if they are in that cab, I'm multi-viewing it, whatever sports I'm watching. I am just, you just want to see finishing the fuck. Yeah. Um, if you, Oh, this also has Sam with the phone ringing. One of my favorite gimmicks, the nervous cop, the phone ringing. And he's like, if you want to shoot me right now, but first he was like, I was here first, bro. Yeah. Yeah.

Yuppies take a beating in this movie. There's multiple bad ones. That whole scene's great. I do feel like, nitpick, I do feel like the bomb would have caused a lot more damage. But I feel like some people are dying. It's worth mentioning that this is when we were a nation.

And we would blow up a subway train for a movie and it would travel at 45 miles per hour within there. And like the entire film crew was actually like running for their lives. And the film crew was like, I'm really glad no one died when we, like when we made that. Speed was like that too. It was another one where it was like, poof, thank God no casualties for that scene. They would never, they would just CGI it. Simon breaks into Fort Knox.

A very hot entrance from Chris's girlfriend in this movie. I don't know. Do you want to save it? Okay. Yeah. Thanks. This really seems like it's Fort Knox. They do a good job of like, I don't know what Fort Knox is actually like, but it's actually not for not. Well, but you know what I mean? Like where all the gold would be. Sure. It's just like, is this what it would be like? You're just all these gold with different countries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's one scene where they bring out that gigantic drill.

You know that big drill that they're drilling through the thing? When I watch the movie, I'm like, they really have that drill drilling into the shit. There's a lot of stuff like that. A lot of care. Ah, the elevator scene. I have a breakout here. What was the lottery number last night? You mean like I had to turn the TikTok camera on thing? No, it's not. When I see the elevator scene, you know what I thought? Fucking Captain America Winter Soldier. Yeah, they stole it. They stole the scene. Yeah.

I mean, sure. Is that a movie? I'm sure it's been done. You know what? You got to stop. Because it makes the ringer verse feel orphaned when you do that. Captain America, Winter Soldier? Captain America, the Winter Soldier. Is it Captain America, like, colon Winter Soldier? Yeah. Who's the Winter Soldier? Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier. Oh, I forgot about him. Captain America's best friend. And then he, whatever. So they steal shit from back home. There's an iconic...

There's an iconic elevator scene where Captain America is on the elevator and all these people behind him are actually Hydra agents. Yeah. And he realizes that he doesn't know that the Hydra agents yet, but he realizes that they're trying to capture him.

And so he looks around and he goes, before we get started, does anybody want to get off the elevator? And then he proceeds to fuck all of these people up. And that's essentially the same scene. It's the exact same thing that happens at Die Hard with a Viggo. Yeah, except John McClane puts a gun in a guy's head and is just like, I got the fucking gun! This is fucking Reservoir Dogs, right? I slow-mo'd it to figure out how he did it. And my wife was just in the...

in the TV room with me doing on her iPad and just looking over at me like, wow, this is just never going to end. You're deranged. You're just like a deranged human being. Yeah. But he's got the two people behind him. They edit it really fast so you almost don't know what's happening but he takes the gun and he shoots through his coat behind him at the two guys and somehow nails both of them. Then turns it around, somehow kills the third guy and then is in the standoff with the fourth guy. But I'm going to say the degree of difficulty is about an 11.2 out of 9. Yeah.

I don't think John's getting out of there, but it's a great line when Zeus is like, are you okay? And he's like, oh yeah, it's not my blood. Yeah, it's not my blood. It's a classic. That elevator scene's great. I like when the guy, he calls it a lift. Yeah, they fuck up. A little tip off. Calls it a lift. He also says it's raining like dogs and cats. Yeah.

And then nobody knows the lottery number, which is like the number one. And he's wearing Walsh's badge. He sees Walsh's badge number. So all of you are going to die. John, by the way, he's policing. He doesn't say, hey. You're under arrest. No, John just, he notices that you're a bad guy and then he kills you. I think that scene could have been longer where he could have just done more things to realize those guys weren't real. Like be like.

What's up with Patrick Ewing? Is he ever going to get over the top? Tino Martinez got a soft glove. Can you believe that Mattingly is Yankee? Just could have kept going for me. But Wade Boggs, I mean. A couple more quick ones. Wade Boggs. The kid saying, look around, man. All the cops are into something. It's Christmas. You could steal City Hall. It's just a great voila moment.

John McQueen, good at the voila moments. One of his signature things. I like on the boat just when Irons takes the...

gun from Sam and just shoots him in the leg. Yeah. That's the whole scene. While he's eating the egg. He's eating the egg. He is never afraid of him. He realizes guys it's not combat tested. Yeah. Let me see that real quick. Gotta take the safety off. Where's McClane? That's like cool villain shit. And then the ending is ridiculous but I do enjoy say hello to your brother. What do you got for most rewatchable CR? I have the same sequence that you're talking about. If I had to pick one I'd probably go cab ride downtown. Van? Exactly same thing. Okay.

What's the most 1995 thing about this movie, CR? I got pay phones. I had those as well. I had crucial scenes with pay phones. Crucial pay phones and crucial taxi cabs. World Trade Center is there. And Rodney King references. Rodney King references. There were only 42 presidents. Yeah. That's a good one. So that's a big part of it. I'm going to add that one. And the look of New York City.

This is one of the last movies because when you get movies filmed or set in New York now, it's a...

I guess, post-Giuliani New York cleanup. So you get a different version of New York almost. I know this is New York month, but New York existing as the Warriors New York or as the New York that was in all of these different movies, kind of gone now. Happier, sunnier New York. Happier, sunnier. No internet yet. No bikes. It's more corporatized now instead of like no electric bikes. No pot. If you do this...

If you do, if you smoke everywhere now, all right, Pam Bondi, relax, maybe clean up the pot a little bit. New York, but in New York, when I go there now, you drive by places, there are activations everywhere. There's all kinds of stuff. You can tell that the city has kind of a different ethos to it now, but this is one of the movies where you could still have that New York as a character in the film. I have the lady saying, and I'm going to marry Donald Trump. Yeah.

And a Hillary Clinton reference in this one too. I have the Twin Towers that you mentioned, but I blew it out. Bruce and Sam jogging both with hair with the Twin Towers behind them. Very 1995. And then Bonwit Teller. Yeah. Department stores. Jack, you have any idea what Bonwit Teller is? Absolutely not. I don't know either. What was the big Boston department store?

I mean, they were all the same. We have Wanamakers, JCPenney's, all those. I mean, the big one in Connecticut was Caldor's. Okay. Or Caldor's. Caldor's? Yeah. We had Gotchaw's. Yeah. I don't know what happened to Caldor's. Yeah, Gotchaw's. It lasted through the 80s into the 90s. But then they had Macy's Bottom or something like that. Gotchaw's was like a Louisiana thing.

Department store. Department store chain, yeah. Gotcha. Bloomingdale's was big in Boston, but I think that's... Bloomingdale's is all around. It's all around. Yeah. It is funny when you only live in one place for a while and then you go to other places. They have a Bloomingdale's here? It's just like completely shocking. Did you guys have Dillard's? No. No. We had Dillard's in the South. Yeah. Love Dillard's. We don't always do this category, but did this movie need a better title?

Can we talk about the Die Hard with a Vengeance thing for a second? Yeah, I mean, is there a New York thing that we could have... I mean, if you just call it Die Hard in New York, that's pretty good. How about Die Hard 3, Simon Says? Well... Is that just a better title or am I crazy? Here's the thing, is... By the way, why can't this be Die Hard 3 colon something? Why did we get away from that? Well... I call it Die Hard 3. Honestly, when I said that I wasn't super...

jazzed about going to see it. I went to see it. I was seeing movies so much at that time. It was kind of because of the title a little bit. I mean, there is a title. It's Simon's Vengeance. It is Simon's Vengeance. Die Hard 3, Simon says. I don't know. It's just better. Or just call it Die Hard 3. Die Hard 3, the other Gruber? Second Gruber. We'll take one more break and we'll do What Saves the Best.

This episode is supported by FX's The Bear. The Emmy Award winning series returns following Carmi, Sydney, and Richie as they push forward determined not only to survive but also to take The Bear to the next level. This season, the pursuit of excellence isn't just about getting better. It's about deciding what's worth holding on to. FX's The Bear. All right.

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Clinical enamel strength toothpaste right now. All right, what's aged the best? I have a bunch. What do you have, CR? I got to say, I have a bunch as well. I fucking love a black guy and a white guy working together. You know what? Sometimes we've been at odds, but Jesus Christ, when it clicks, it clicks. That is my what's aged the best by far. The first thing you learn about Zeus is we don't need no help from white people.

Really, the movie is about a racial reckoning where white people and black people help each other. White people and black people help against each

Like when they're in Toscan Square Park, he's like, say it! He's like, I'm going to call you an asshole! I'm like, yo, yo, that's actually the center of the movie. And it's against the crazy Europeans. The crazy Europeans are the enemy. As the OJ trial is happening in real life. That's what's aged the best. That's the lesson of this movie. McClane always has, well, went away from it, but McClane is with us. He always has a brother that's helping him out. It's funny, 48 Hours basically starts that.

And it just keeps going in that thread. So this movie is both ripping off 48 hours and ripping off itself because it's a diehard movie. But that, but this movie doesn't, a lot of those other films, they play the racial differences. Like it's subtext, right? It's jokes. It's whatever 48 hours is obviously. But in this one, you have the, the Zeus character who has a direct way of looking at things.

And that's kind of the times were a little fraught. So it's kind of McClane who just wants to get to mission accomplishment and Zeus who has all of these other, uh,

views on society. Well, the shoot the gun thing is funny where he goes, look, all brothers don't know how to shoot guns, you racist motherfucker. Right. Yeah. It has a lot of moments sprinkled like that that just work. Even when Zeus at the payphone is like, police business, hang the fuck, get a new fucking phone or whatever. And he's like, don't do that shit. Like, you're here like as like my assistant, basically. You're not a cop. And he's like, I'm going to fucking walk away then. How about that? Yeah. You need me more than I need you. Like, it's got like,

power dynamics in a really cool way. Anyway, it's just like, I think every five years we got to have this. So Zeus says all brothers don't know how to use the gun and then he does exactly what McClane tells him to do. He does exactly what McClane asks him to do. What else do you have? Can I do Katya now? Save it for the end. Okay. What do you have for what's the best? Hangovers.

Yeah, it's one of the great hangover movies. One of the great hangover movies ever. He just needs a couple of aspirin. Yeah, a couple of aspirin, but then... His head's really hurting him. Yeah, hangovers. Filming this bunch of New York we mentioned. I have for Wood Sage the best. Anytime a character, the phone rings and somebody in the police station answers and the cop doesn't want any part of it and they go, I think you better take this. Walter! I think you better take this. It's always good.

I like when evil brothers turn out to be the one wreaking the revenge. Yep. Which had mixed results. Another 48 hours. Sure. Gans' brother. Didn't totally work, but it's just fun. What this movie does great is they hide Simon like the shark from Jaws. Shows up at minute 50. Yeah. And when he shows up and you're like, God damn, Jeremy Irons is blonde and he's fucking killing people? This is crazy. Then they let him rip for a little while. Then you get him acting like somebody else.

You get the moment where one of my favorite moments in the movie. Mr. Vander fluke. Yeah. Vander fluke. And then at the end of the movie where McClane thinks he's going to die and he just goes, your brother was an asshole. Yeah. And it hurts Simon. Sure. And you could tell. And so, you know, no one's going with that. If fantasy had been murdered at the Braves game. Jesus Christ. And then, then CR. Yeah.

He becomes the Simon Gruber. He goes to Atlanta for revenge. He goes to a Hawks game. He's trying to blow up a Hawks Hornets game to get revenge for Sean. That's basically... I'm just doing action movie premises. Why are you staring at me like that? You're a sick motherfucker, bro. Hungarian Army. Hungarian Army. Explosive expert. Now working for the Iranians. Targo. A quote actually said in this movie. Yeah.

Hungarian Army Explosive Expert Network. It looks like he might have gotten the last draft pick of the bullets. I really like when they do the, does the name Gruber mean anything to you? And they do the flashback of Hans falling. Yeah. This is my biggest pick, but yes. What? That reveal. Oh, you wish...

When the therapist is like, he spoke with a German accent, you'd be like, yeah, I know a German guy. Oh, you think you would have caught that earlier. Good point. Good point, CR. Any experience with German people in your past? Yeah. Here's another what's aged the best. When we have an action film and a car chase, but somebody's in a cab,

And then just a random passenger gets in the cab thinking it's entering a cab. 100% success rate. It's never not worked ever in the history of movies. Also love when they steal their Mercedes. Commandeering people's vehicles. And they're like, who is the 42nd president? And he's like, go fuck yourself. Commandeering vehicles seems like it would be the single most fun thing about being a police officer. Be like, I'm just going to take your car. I think it's a slightly more controversial act now, but yeah. Alcoholic hero cops who have people say to them,

Jesus, you look like shit. Can't be honest. This... Every pod you start with me, you look like shit, Chris. You look like shit. But like, out of a place of concern. Yeah. Like, what the fuck is going on with you? By the way, that

Bruce, that's Bruce Willis's place in the action movie panther. Yeah. That's his place. Yeah. The everyman cop who looks like shit but can rise to the occasion because stuff's at stake. I have two storytelling mechanisms that have aged the best. Yeah. There is a constant ticking clock in this movie, a series of ticking clocks basically because every task they have to do is you have 15 minutes, you have this. Sometimes they actually keep the action to 15

The amount of time that they have to get there. They go real time. They go real time. So that plus the changeover in the middle of the movie where they can't use the radios anymore. And everybody is now... We're in the dark. We can't call. We can't... And it's like, you have to use the switchboard. I also love the switchboard. So you're like, the whole fucking world just called 911. Also, the fact... This movie gets into dueling plots because Die Hard is...

intimate right yeah but not this one this is not an intimate diehard and obviously the subsequent sequels which we haven't talked about at all they're not intimate at all right but this one is yeah not for your diehards pretty tough yeah but like this one is justin long is a tech hacker this one is uh mclean's dummy mission that he's actually on

Then the existential threat of the bombs at the school with the guy trying to defuse the bombs. There's multi-front wars and then the heist going on at the same time. So it's kind of a blueprint to a contemporary action movie where it's just not about the thing. There's four or five different things happening. I think this is a What's Aged the Best. You tell me, because everyone does same Jackson impersonations, right? Does it come from this movie or Pulp? Pulp Fiction. Pulp.

You could argue he's doing more of the Sam Jackson impression of Sam Jackson in this movie than in Pulp. No, you couldn't. I think you could. It's Pulp. This is like on the level of my Joe Pesci was better in Lethal Weapon 2 than Goodfellas State. This is on the same level as Pulp Fiction. Okay. Yeah.

On my way to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Every wife has seven sacks. Every sack had seven cats. Every cat had seven kittens. Kittens, cats, sacks, and wives. How many were going to St. Ives? John just nails it. There's no way I'm nailing that. No, Zeus nails it. Zeus nails it, I mean. No way I'm figuring that out. Just one. If you just hear it once, there's no way. It's hard. It's hard. So Zeus nailing it is what's aged the best because I'm just so impressed that

It's cool that he's like, I'm good at puzzles. Like, let me think about this for a second. That's too fucking hard. The movie is, Zeus is kind of the brains of the operation when it comes to that whole thing. It's another little thing that the movie is doing, subverting expectations. But that's a nitpick for me is some of these things that they have to do, I just don't have any faith they would have figured them out. The question is whether or not they were supposed to or not. True.

And then any action movie villain playing Simon Says, sign me up. Oh, go ahead. Can I talk about Katya now? I thought for sure you would use that as your CR flex category. You want to just do that here? Go ahead, do it. You want it so badly. Katya is played by the country music singer Sam Phillips. Yeah. Her entrance in this film is among the three or four greatest character entrances of all time.

She's wearing... The cigarette in her mouth? Popped collar, green army shirt. Her blonde hair is slicked back. She's got sunglasses on and she's got a cigarette dangling from her mouth. And then she cuts a guy to pieces so that she's covered in his own blood. And it's the hottest thing I've ever seen in my life. Save Edie Falco Copeland. Even better than Edie Falco Copeland? This is really the heyday for you. Those movies are a year apart. These are the two... This is like...

Olly Frazier of blonde smoking. Is Edie Falco in this episode? Does she ever actually smoke or she just has the cigarette in her mouth? She's got it dangling out of her mouth. I think he's dead, my dear. She's mute. And the Israelis tried to kill her. It's funny that she's a country western singer who just by mere body language and a smear in her face looks like a German. I didn't learn this until I started doing research last night. I would have bet anything

that she was an Eastern European. Yeah. And that didn't speak any English at all. She was like Bulgarian. No. Yeah. She's like a critically adored country music song. She was married to fucking the guy. T-Bone Burnett. T-Bone Burnett. I literally looked that up last night.

I mean, this does lead to the Mally Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene? It would have been nice. Because they said they threw that in because McTiernan's like, we're getting an R anyway. Let's get a little. Also, can I just say. We could have maybe unleashed her a little bit. That's the kind of vision we need. Exactly. Guys who are like, I'm getting an R anyway. We're getting an R anyway is the greatest sentence any director could say. We're putting in more headshots and there's going to be some fucking. Yeah, I love that. But you know what?

killed that remember when we Craig Craig was not here today but remember when we talked to Craig

a little while ago, like last year, two years ago, and he was like, this movie had unneeded boobs. Like, why did this movie need boobs? Remember when we were having that conversation? You know why the movie needs boobs, Craig? Generational. Because this is fucking America. That's why the movie fucking needs boobs. Couldn't there have been a bomb and a strip club in this movie? Exactly. Like, that's why the movie needs boobs. What's the name of Cheetah's? What was the... Scores. In the 90s. Scores was the famous one. Oh, in New York? Yeah. I'm trying to think what...

You know, my wife might be watching. What was the one? 90s? Pandas? You think Carrie is like... But yeah, scores. Yeah, scores. They could have put a bomb in scores over the school. Don't give away free IP. All right, sorry. What do you have for Big Kahuna Burger Award for Best Use of Food and Drink? Aspirin. Aspirin, yeah. Great Shot Gorda Award, Most Cinematic Shot. For me, Bomb Whip Tower Exploding.

which is really good. Yeah. What do you have? That is actually, I was going to say the opening three or four shots of the sun coming up in New York City and you're just like, I'm now hot. Great stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Chess Rockwell Brocklanders Hold on I have one for Great Shot Gordo What's here? The fucking guy getting cut in half Oh from the wire The wire That is when I realized Oh fuck it They said fuck it I like when they drag him too We should put that in One Stage of the Best When they're pulling the two different parts Yeah you get the legs There's intestines everywhere by the way That's way messier Chess Rockwell Brocklanders were our best character names Zeus Carver is pretty tough to beat Yeah it's up there

What do you have for flex category, CR? Okay, I got two. One that's pre-existing. It's when would I have died and it would have been water jugs. I still don't understand it. I've read extensive explanations to how they figure it out and it's just... My brain just figures this shit out. I couldn't do it. So,

So you would be able to do water jugs. Yeah. But you wouldn't, you wouldn't have gotten through St. Ives. I just, he said it so fast. I don't think I could have remembered it. Water jugs I would have gotten. But I did make up a new category for my flex here. Yeah. It's the rat. New category. Yeah. Ratso Rizzo. I'm walking here. Most New York quote.

Nice. We did. Why keep calling me Jesus? Do I look Puerto Rican to you? The Wall Street guy saying your lights are on. Look, I'll make this very simple. 112 Wall Street or I'll have your medallion. What? You don't like white people?

I like Zeus going, I'm not jumping through hoops for some psycho. That's a white man with white problems. You deal with him when he crosses 110th Street. And then Walter saying, get a hold of Musson in Triborough. Tell him to close the East River bridges north of 59th Street looking for dump trucks. And Connie goes, dump trucks?

And Walter's like, McClane says they're dump trucks headed up the FDR loaded with gold. Connie, Walter, they don't allow dump trucks on the FDR. So I like that one the most. That's a good category. I wish we had that three episodes ago. All right. Butch's girlfriend, a word for what we think of the film. So this movie has the Apocalypse Now, Flight of the Valkyries problem where like the action in the beginning of the movie is so good. There's no way to have a finale.

It's like the helicopter is an apocalypse. So it's like the first 113 minutes of this movie are fucking perfect. And you just can't top it. You can't top the subway car with the end of this film. And they, they kind of, they kind of give up. They kind of shrug their shoulders. Yeah. We'll go when we do half-ass, we'll go into the, uh, the alternate ending. I had the, basically the same thing, but I'll even go a little more precise. Um,

Why is Zeus involved in the last 40 minutes of this movie? It's fucking ridiculous. He's, he's a normal person. There's a moment in this movie where it's like, all right, Zeus, thanks for everything. Yeah. Maybe you should go back to your store and your family. And this is now like a police matter. Simon no longer needs you. Simon, you're not involved. You're not, this isn't a buddy cop movie anymore. Thank you for everything.

But instead he's just now a cop. He's in a chopper leading the attack. He's shot in the leg. He's fine. You're doing Windhorse fingers. Yeah. Because I was going to fucking get at Bill, but there's no reason to. It's a good point. You know what? This happens so often in these mid-90s action movies. Do you remember how Erica Eleniak becomes a fucking commando? Yeah.

Under She's, she pops out to one of the great, great adolescent Van Lathan moments of Milk of the early 1990s. It's just, bro, I'm not even going to fucking try to act like I wasn't like, oh shit, when that happened. Then by the end of the movie, she a fucking Navy SEAL. Yeah. So that does happen in these films and it's something that they've gotten away from. They don't do that that much anymore. No, that is probably for the best.

I mean, 48 hours invented it. Reggie Hammond goes from he's on a 48 hour, you know, whatever. By the end of the movie, he's shooting guns, trying to find guns. Did you have a weak link or no? I did. Holly got sick of it. The wife. No more mention of her. Hey, McLean, call your wife right now. Go call Holly. Man, fuck all that.

We got to get to the end of the mission here. Stop bringing Holly back into the movie. I know she was a big presence in terms of the driving narrative force of particularly the first Die Hard. And you could say second to two. She's on the plane. She's on the plane. But like at this point, it's over. He saved basically two different cities and Holly still not fucking with him. Can I can I give you I had this for casting couch.

a twist that would have made this movie better. The Colleen Camp character. We make her Annabelle Shiora.

And John McClane's involved with her post-divorce. But she's dumped him because he's an alcoholic. But she works in the police department with him. And now we have a little sexual tension and she's pissed and blah, blah, blah. And the movie's just better. You take the phone call. We have the meeting. Yeah. It's just a better movie. And then it gives it a little more stakes. Oh, I got to call Holly. Oh, now I got to call her. Is Bedelia in any other Die Hard movies? I don't think so, right? No.

And honestly, probably we talked about this. You could talk yourself into her not being in Die Hard 2. I know they shoehorn her in. I think it's sort of like they basically make it. That's why John isn't like, I'm just going to turn this over to airport cops. It's a little shoehorned in. Die Hard 3 is ridiculous. What's aged the worst? We get it. McClane has a bad headache. He mentions it 42 times.

by like the ninth reference little stale what else do you have uh i mean explosions in the new york city financial district are a little touchy uh and then this whole thing came out around the oklahoma bombing yep um so they had to do a lot of like basically like preemptive press to say like it had nothing you know obviously we're not making light of this but we're also willis does the

pressed toward for it and they're like there will be no bombing questions we're just talking about the movie we made it a year ago so probably that I would say the two each the worst so McClane's policing John gets to the point to where he just if he thinks to it he just kills you okay yeah like doesn't give a fuck yeah if you have an Eastern European accent you're dead you're dead like particularly when he walks up on the guys and the thing just boom boom boom I get it though he's in a combat situation and

Although I like it aesthetically, the heist where there's been an explosion and there are five or ten dump trucks that are going down there and taking all of that gold and the cops are just like, oh, okay, this guy's sick. That just doesn't make that much sense. That's something that you have to believe in order for the movie to work. Do you know what actually also has aged the worst is probably the reputation of city services. Because in this movie...

When they're like, we're going to have to find the bomb ourselves. And it's like the sanitation workers and the librarians and the firefighters are all just like, we're going to fucking walk into schools. There might be a bomb. We got to do it. And now it's kind of like everybody's like, I don't know. These guys that take too long to respond. Who needs libraries? What's age worse? Well, they even McTiernan has acknowledged this. The gold is just way heavier.

than this movie presents it. They would need like 100 dump trucks, right? They would have needed 480 dump trucks to take out as much gold as they took out. Each gold bar weighs 25 pounds. One of the funny things is that they just completely fucked it up. In the Fed, the Federal Reserve, there's only apparently a billion and a half dollars or something like that. Oh, so where did they get the other 300 million? Oh, it was 174 million. Yeah, they took some liberties. Okay. But it's like...

That's not even a piece of the Lakers at this point. Because the Lakers sold for $10 billion. $10 billion. Valuable franchise. Of all time. Ever. $10 billion valuation. $10 billion. $4.8 billion for it. $4.8 billion check, actually. $10 billion bucks. And by the way, the...

The Minnesota championships don't count thing is absurd. It's absurd. Okay, so if OKC wins on Sunday, we're taping this before game seven. We should have a... Is OKC like, we've won our second title. Honestly, this is what you should do. If OKC wins on Sunday, you should do like a live pod from Seattle congratulating them. Yeah, congratulating the Sonics fans for pulling off their second title. If the Sonics fans want to say that's our franchise, they can.

But it's the same franchise, right? You won 11 titles. That's fine. You've still won a shitload. They've won 17 titles? You've won five titles in Minneapolis when then they moved to LA. But it's the same franchise. And they just kept the name Lakers. It's not the bus family. What are you talking about? But they're the Lakers, though. They're still the Lakers, though. Bullshit. You win a title in a city, that's where you won the title. 17 championships. Minus. $10 billion valuation. $10 billion. 16 championships. 16. 16 championships.

Wait, now you made me screw up my... Boston blitzed your mind. No. The ending stinks. Yeah. It's bad. This is the flaw of the movie. It's the what's aged the worst. And then you can see the alternate movie, the alternate ending on the special edition, all the stuff. And it's on YouTube. I sent it to you guys. The actual ending of this movie didn't happen.

McClane goes and finds him in Hungary and plays, McClane says, with Jeremy Irons and eventually kills him with a rocket launcher. And it's really interesting. It's the most interesting John McClane scene of the first three movies. And of course, the studio's like, this is too dark. We can't end the movie this way. It's like he's a vigilante. Yeah. So they basically hustle this reshoot. They spend a lot of money on it. Oh, it's like, oh, it turns out because he has...

The location on that aspirin. It's crazy. You're like, so there's like a idiotic, like a Quebec bottle of aspirin means, you know, he's going to be back there now, like literally at that location. And then there's a helicopter and then they shoot him. And then it's like, Zeus is just sitting on the sidewalk. Why is he in Quebec? If I'm Zeus,

I've had enough. Yeah. I'm not going to Quebec. I know how it turns out. Yeah. Or when we get to Quebec, we're not going to go jump this guy and put the spotlight on him when he's trying to have sex with Katya. We're going to just go arrest him. Yeah. Or send in SWAT. This is like, my leg's fucked up. Yeah. I'm going to skip Quebec. I've walked with a limp now. Where's my money for all of this? It's really dumb. So, all right. So we're going to go now to

My flex category. The Ruff, Lohan, and Ruben Eckpartcher job acting award? Or that. I mean... Sam dials it up a couple times. Sam dials it up and Irons dials it up a couple of times. Dan, what's your flex category? It's the Ed Norton reverse dunk award that this movie needed a random sports scene.

You don't consider the brothers on the stoop to be a sports team? Yankee Stadium should have had a game going on. Well, yeah. Yankee Stadium should have had a game going on. There should have been a game going on. You know what I think happened? Wade Boggs, Don Mattingly, Paul O'Neill, Danny Tartable, all of those Yankees. I have the answer for you. What? I think the lockout had happened. The strike. I think that's how they were able to film in the stadium. So was Yankee Stadium just available for people to drop by and check it out? I think it was. I think it was.

I don't think there were games. Should have been mentioned in the movie, though. I look back at that era, because that's right before the Yankee Golden Era starts. Right, year before. Year before. They're in the 95 playoffs against Seattle. So, you know, some of these guys that would go on to become, you know, mainstays, it's pre-Jeter. It's a good call. Yeah, but there should have been a game going on. Could have gone to, yeah, or they could have done, the Met Stadium probably makes more sense for this movie. Yeah, probably. Yeah.

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Not sure how hot this is. Okay. How hot is it to say it's the best diehard movie? And to go along with your points earlier, how hot is it to say that it's perhaps improved by not imperiling Holly, by not having that kind of like, like weight on McClane, that it's really just more about him trying to save the city and save himself.

Die Hard's one of the best movies of all time. I'm just, I just, the hottest take award. I think everybody needs to calm down on that take. No, because I think there are people out there who are like, Die Hard 3 is the best Die Hard movie. And not even hottest taking it. Like they actually genuinely believe it. So it's interesting. I wanted to say it, but I didn't have the nuts for it. But this is my favorite one.

That's fine. I'm not saying that this is better than Die Hard, right? Because Die Hard is too groundbreaking. I think that's okay. It has a perfect ending, whereas this ending is not. Rocky IV is my favorite Rocky movie. This is my Rocky III. I can't even remember. This is my favorite. One of those two is my favorite. It changes all the time. It's not the best one, but this is my... I could see how people would... It's the most entertaining. It's my favorite one. I think it's fair.

All right, I'm going full hot. Good. I think they blew it using the Simon Says gimmick for this movie. And I think it was a franchise. And I think it was just sitting there. And I don't know why. Initially, it was a script called Simon Says written by the same screenwriter. Lethal Weapon grabbed it, couldn't figure it out. They kind of give it to Die Hard 3 and they use it.

I think it's either an action movie franchise or a horror movie franchise. And I actually think you could say it's a better horror movie franchise. I mean, it's basically Saw. Yeah. Yeah. It did Saw. But the whole Simon Says gimmick, I didn't say Simon that time. I think I just see murders, blood, and sequels with it. Wouldn't it be crazy if we found out that Trump has been getting Simon Says for like years?

And like, like every, every day he gets a phone call. It's like, Simon says, you got to do this. And he's like, fuck. All right. I got to tweet this out. Right. Well, so that's actually kind of the plot. Yeah. Well, so Simon says it was supposed to be a Brandon Lee movie and then he died. He passed away. Yeah. So if he doesn't die,

And Simon Says just because like, could they have made like five Simon Says? It's been 30 years. We literally could probably get Simon Says going right now. They could probably get it made. Bring our film. Jack, does your generation care about Simon Says? Sure. Okay. Oh yeah. I played that. Oh yeah. Interesting. Um, you know what I didn't see? And maybe I missed this. Why did Joel Silver not produce this movie?

They had a falling out. They had a falling out. Yeah. Who had a falling out? I think him and Willis. Oh, him and Willis. Okay, cool. You know, Willis was feeling it a little bit. He's married to Demi Moore. Joel, a combative personality, I think. Yeah, I think Joel wasn't. I think because that was, there was a piece in the research about like Shane Black was maybe going to write this when it was Joel Silver. And then... Interesting that Joel Silver, this movie does not get made with Lawrence Fishburne. And he goes on to make The Matrix with him. I...

I think this is true. I'm not positive for casting what ifs. We did Fishburne, but that Sean Connery was their first choice for Simon Cooper. Yeah, I saw it. So we think that's true? I mean, I think he makes the phone. I saw that in the research, but Sean said he didn't want to play like a villain. But then he... Remember they did Medicine Man though. Remember the Medicine Man movie? I just think that movie bombs if he's... I don't think it's the same movie. I don't think it works. Yeah.

I don't buy him as like an evil. Plus him trying to do a German accent. Also, Iron's the one he takes the, he's like got the tank top on. He's ripped. It just doesn't work. When did Sean, has Sean gone bad in anything? Fantasy? No. Atlanta. Connery. Has Connery gone bad in anything? Besides. He in like the 70s and stuff. He's like, I mean. I haven't seen Hunt for Red October, but is he a bad guy in that? He defects to, no. He defects.

so does that count no he defects to the Americans the Americans is that on is that streaming dude come on what is this Hunt for October thing I'm not in on this it's a white whale for CR it's like one of the most obvious you've never seen that before no I've seen it oh I was about to I like it we just haven't done it yet and CR and he keeps giving me like he's Simon Sessing me he's like Simon Sess if you want to do Hunt for October you gotta watch Insight a phenomenal I'm waiting until CR becomes a divorced alcoholic then we're gonna do it

Showed up just fucking smoking cigs. God, CR, you look like shit. He's bringing this little airport liquor bottles with him, pouring his coffee. McTiernan turned down Batman Forever so he could do this. That's a good casting winner. Best That Guy Award. Is Colleen Camp count or is she Colleen Camp? I think she's Colleen Camp. Kevin Chamberlain as bomb expert Charles Weiss. Yeah. The bald guy with the glasses. Yeah. Just if you saw him after that, it would be this. But I think the answer...

Is Walter Cobb. Larry Brinkman. Larry Brinkman. Never knew what his name was. Big time New York theater actor.

He's in the Al Pacino Richard III movie that got made a little bit after this, but in that movie, you can see he's a big time. And he's in Injustice for Odd. Yes. I had Anthony Peck as Walsh is up there. He's also in Hunt for October. John Doman, who's Rawls from The Wire, is the construction foreman when they go into the tunnels. And I don't know if this is a that guy, but it's a that guy, like if you know, you know, is Elvis Duran. Oh yeah, radio guy.

Young Elvis Duran. Yeah. Young Elvis Duran. I have Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, the black lady who says in the movie, who says, everybody just called 911 at the same time. A mainstay. You see her everywhere. She's Malcolm X. All different types of roles. Shout out to her. I don't want to call her. She's a fantastic career. I just wanted to shout her out. I'd never do this, but I have to go back to a movie we did last week because I messed up a Best That Guy award. Okay. And it really bothered me all week.

Because I didn't realize it was the same person. Best marathon man, that guy? So the guy who recognizes Zell but doesn't recognize him right away and then follows him on the sidewalk was also the gardener at the beginning of Bad News Bears Breaking Training. Oh, shit. Who was like mentally- What was up with marathon man and Bad News Bears Breaking Training? In Bad News, they use him. He's like basically the special needs gardener and they pretend he's the coach and Kelly Lake teaches him

had to say, hello, how are you? How bad do you want to do Bad News Bears breaking training? I just can't believe, I love that movie and I can't believe I missed it. Is that the Astroworld one? Astrodome. Astrodome one? Astroworld. Kelly Leak drives, he's 13. I'm sorry. That was controversial Bad News Bears when they went to Astroworld. When Travis Scott takes over the league team. They lose a couple of the kids. Kelly Leak drives the van to the Astrodome.

Yeah, they go play. Yeah. Against the Houston Toros. The Houston Toros, yeah. And then there's another one where they play against the Japanese team. We don't talk about that. That's a sequel we don't discuss. Dion Waiter's award? It's Sam Phillips. It's Sam Phillips, without a doubt. That's easy. Or there's only one more person. The Chester A. Arthur truck driver. Oh, Jerry. Yeah. Jerry comes in. Played by Joe Zalum. Cooks for a little bit.

Solves a riddle. Gets the fuck out of Dodge. We did. I already did my recasting couch of Annabelle's. You are in Colin camp with some history of John McClane. If Joe Pantoliano is in here as Walter Cobb, I'm not, I'm not going to argue. I mean, Graham Green's really good. In the movie. I'm not going to argue. This is like peak Joey pants. I feel like we could have snuck them in somewhere, but him as Walter Cobb, just getting mad at McClane and calling him a drunk. I don't think the movie's worse. Yeah.

What do you have? For recasting? I was thinking more about city. Could this have been in any other city? San Francisco. Because LA, it's just, you're just in traffic and you're dead. Simon wins. Simon says, do the collateral drive of LAX to downtown in 20 minutes. You're done. Simon says, go to Eagle Rock. Fuck! It's going to take three hours. Well, they're putting in a bike lane in Hollywood Boulevard. I'm dead.

Half-assed internet research. So they were trying to make Die Hard 3 for a couple of years. And Bruce is just rejecting scripts left and right. And especially because there'd been so many Die Hard ripoffs. But one of the scripts was called Troubleshooter, which had McClane fighting terrorists on a Caribbean cruise line. Speed 2. And Bruce Willis said, no thanks. Sounds too much like Under Siege. They repurpose it, make it Speed 2. Yeah.

Can I do a little number here? Because I was looking at IMDB. Yeah, that's Speed 2. It literally became Speed 2. And one of the issues with them developing this at the time was that there were so many studios had so many scripts in development that were just diehard in a, you know, like they were just basically. So here are some of the ones that they had going at the time. Some of them got made, some didn't. Sandblast, which was diehard in a sandstorm. No Safe Haven, diehard on Martha's Vineyard.

Russillo, let's go. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Track down. Die hard in an English channel tunnel. Wait, what was the... Sandblast. No, Safe Haven was Die Hard on Mother's Vineyard. Can we make that now with Russillo? Russillo is...

He's John McClane. He's got the sports podcast. They're like hanging out Martha's Vineyard. He's on the vineyard. Him and Chris Long go out for a really long night on Martha's Vineyard. They're hung over. And then it's like the fairies. They're not running. So track down is diehard in the English Channel Tunnel. Suspension diehard on the George Washington Bridge. Platform and rig.

were both diehard on oil rig movies. High Roller was diehard in Vegas, which is basically Con Air at the end, I guess, right? Yeah, but they never...

Vegas was still sitting there in the 90s as a full action movie. You could have done Die Hard. By the way, sitting there right now. Yeah. What else? In Contempt, Die Hard in a Courthouse, He Who Dares, Die Hard in the British Embassy in the United States. I feel like you're making these up. No, these are all from IMDb. L4, Die Hard at the Center for Disease Control. And a bunch of Die Hard in Hurricanes. Die Hard in Hurricanes. Yeah. Die Hard. I can't do it.

Gotta keep the virus in That's actually You gotta kill the terrorists But you gotta keep the virus in Diehard Wuhan is pretty good Diehard Wuhan is pretty good They're gonna release this If we don't stop them Damn Man that Martha's Vineyard one What a great location For an action movie There's no way in No way out And you could have like Maybe Russillo Like over the course Of the movie He falls in love With like a yuppie girl Who's only there For the summer Right Diehard Catalina Is sitting there too

Driving around with buggies. Yeah, just like waiting at Catalina. Oh my God, such a pain in the ass to get there. And then it's just the, you know. The screenwriter, Jonathan Hensley, was detained by the FBI because the Federal Gold Reserve stuff in this movie was so accurate that they thought he had like inside intel.

actually brought him in for questioning. What was his research? Where'd he get it from? Where'd he get his stuff? He just said he read everything in the New York Times. Bruce Willis' sandwich board was blank. Yeah. They didn't want to take the chance. They CGI'd it. Yeah, they didn't want paparazzi. They thought it was offensive. Yeah. And then, Van, how did they do the four-gallon jug thing? Just want to see if you could do this right now. I can't. The four-gallon jug thing, I really don't know how you would do it.

I told you I would die during that. I have no idea. Like if the idea is that you can't subtract, you can't be off by a couple of ounces, then I wouldn't be able to do it. You take the three gallon jug, you pour Alvin in the five gallon. So now there's three in there. You take the three gallon jug again.

You pour all of it into the five gallon jug, but only two of the gallons go. One gallon stays in the three gallon jug. But how do you know you only got one gallon left? So you keep that one gallon in the three gallon jug because you've poured five of the six gallons into the five. Oh, okay. Yeah. Then you pour out the five gallon jug. You take the one gallon that's left in the three gallon jug. You pour that into the five gallon jug. So now that has one gallon. Then you do the three gallon pour it in the fourth.

That's actually pretty smart. Okay. Well, how about this? Since it's so easy. What we'll do, because you're talking your shit right now. That's fine. I'm not talking my shit. I'm just saying it actually wasn't that hard. The other one I think was way harder. There's a room over there. Get FanDuel to fucking sponsor it. The Bill Simmons Jug Challenge.

for the ringer network and i i will take odds and we'll make bets about whether or not you can get this done but we have to switch it up well yeah we switch up the numbers because he's obviously nailed figure this out yeah but if you really feel like you can do this i'm actually said i could i already said how to do it we'll figure out a different one the bill simmons jug challenge you just want to do the bill simmons jug challenge

That's where that was all going. Apex Mountain. Bruce Willis? No. Well, you could say that these couple of years are, but I don't know, man. I think there's a case. It's right here. I think you make a case. It's right here. Okay. Okay. I mean, I want to hear the case. Well, so he's red hot as an actor. Yeah. Then it dies down. Then he has pulp in 94 and this in 95. And that leads to the 12 monkeys Armageddon Fifth Element Siege Sixth Sense whole nine yards.

This is his run. I feel like he's kind of the number one call in 95 for anything with action or kind of cool anything, right? Like Hanks is like, Hanks has the Hanks corner. Yeah. I just think Bruce, this is it. Yeah. I think he has, I think if you're making a movie, it's like, can we get Hanks? Can we get Bruce? Can we get Cruz? Right. Those are the first three calls. That's what you mean. And then Denzel's probably fourth. Yeah. And when you talk about like,

Culturally, the Demi Moore. Yeah. Yeah. Also, Demi Moore, this was right around when she got the $20 million for striptease. I think it was $12 million, but yeah. As a couple. Well, you just Lakers valuationed him. Yeah, exactly. As a couple, it's about as good as it gets for a couple. He's a huge, huge star. Sam Jackson, I don't think so, but I also couldn't tell you when it was. Maybe Jackie Brown?

No, I think it's... Later? I think it's this... This area? This area doing pulp and die hard with a vengeance? I still feel like it's like, how long is this guy going to be up here? And then at some point that flipped. Yeah.

he's just done so many different types of movies. It would be difficult to pin down like when he was the most relevant and most at the peak of his powers because he maintained- It's somewhere in the 90s though. We can agree on that, right? Maybe. But then- Like at some point he became like, oh, Sam Jackson's just here now and that's how it's going to be. Maybe, but you didn't argue that it's Nick Fury. Yeah. You know. So maybe when he gets Star Wars. That's 99. Yeah. So turn around there. Yeah. Jeremy Irons probably winning the Oscar.

Or Merchant Call. How about Harlem as a movie location? Shit, no. What would you have? Harlem as a movie location? Yeah, in a movie. I mean, I said that so quickly and now... What about Harlem Nights? I mean, not very well-liked movie. But I think it's had a re-reckoning. No, I know. But it was a bomb when it came out. So, you got Harlem Nights, you got The Cotton Club, you got Hoodlum. These are all going to be black movies. You got...

I don't know. I just wouldn't think about Harlem as a movie location, Die Hard with a Vengeance being... It's only in Harlem briefly. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't think. What about movies set during the summer? Like summer movie? Action movies maybe. Okay. That needed the summer as part of what they were doing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair. The Wall Street school system? Yeah, for sure. Apex Mountain? Yeah. Never discussed before since? No.

Gold Reserve. Bond with Teller, 100%. For sure. 100%. Maybe the first and last time it's been mentioned in a film. Colleen Camp, Who's Your Girl, The Cigarette Smoker, Sam. Sam Phillips. Sam Phillips, all of them. Cruiser Hanks for this. Oh, I got a couple of other Apex models. Go. Let's hear it. Die Hard sequels? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

John McClane sidekicks. Yes. Yes. Easily. So this is bigger than Dale Johnson, bigger than Justin Long. Who's the dude in 2 that helps him with the air traffic control? He barely has a partner in that movie. Yeah. So John McClane sidekicks. This is definitely an apex mountain of John McClane sidekicks. Cruise or Hanks? To me, easy Cruise. The running? Cruise as McClane? Yeah. I could also see Cruise as Simon. Oh. Yeah.

Oh, OCR. Now we're talking fucking rock CR. Can you do a German accent? Say OCR one more time. And it's a gigantic boss. Um, all right. Bill Simmons, drugs movie. Uh, uh, no, that's actually awesome. Yeah. So cruise with the collateral hair. Yeah. It just goes blonde.

He tries a German accent. Like Valkyrie. He tries it for like 10 minutes and then he's like, I forget it. What thing would Cruise have learned how to do? He probably learned how to do all the construction stuff. He's like, we don't need Targo. I can do all that. I've actually studied gold. What if you drop the racial component? Cruise is Zeus. It's Cruise and Hanks together. Why drop the racial component? Why not have Cruise running an electronics store in Harlem?

Just be like, hey, I'm the first gentrifier. Yeah, I'm the guy. Everybody knows him. They love me here. Scorsese or Spielberg? I would say Scorsese. Yeah, Marty. New York City. What role would Phil Hoffman have played? Simon. Good. Good Simon. Walk through the weed cop with a mustache. Or you could have done maybe the Graham Greene part. Yeah. Oh, that would have been funny.

Picking nits. John. We mentioned everything being open at 745 in this neighborhood is a little dicey. Zeus leaves the store, doesn't lock up, nothing. Just leaves it open.

Well, I mean, it's not like that. I think he tries to get back to his store multiple times. Yeah. Never says at any point. We hear about Holly 45 times. We never hear Zeus stay over the next 15 hours. Shit, I left my store open. He's also a staple in the community, so maybe they're not going to run. Doesn't he think his store is getting destroyed, though? Yeah. Oh, he said those guys are... Oh, he does say that. Yeah. Because...

He does. Actually, he does say that because I feel like he'd be a little beyond his mind a tiny bit more that his entire livelihood is about because he's stuck up for McLean and he says what those guys are doing to my store right now. Yeah, I say that. How did Simon know that McLean wore the sign? He's it seems like they are watching them at any moment. Like he knows like when they're in the van with the FBI. He's watching. Yeah, he's looking at the NSA guy that they're like, are you still, you know, putting your glasses in your mouth? Let's talk this out. Simon's playing in this whole thing.

He's got a hundred people working for him because we see them all at the end. He's got two football teams of people. Well, yeah. Is there like a Mike Vrabel meet the group moment in three months before the heist? Hey guys, I'm Simon Gruber. So you guys are going to do this? There's some kind of paramilitary organization or something like that. Yeah, they're all like mercenaries. But you're asking to

Does Simon Gruber have a Connor Stallions who's constantly on rooftops looking at McLean? Yeah, it's like... Well, the dude's in Yankee Stadium. He's like, Luther, you're going to drive the truck with me and Bobby, you're going to be in Harlem making sure McLean's going to wear that sign. Yeah. Or did they just put a camera there? Well, my unanswerable question for this, which is tied directly to this, is how many of these tasks did Gruber reasonably expect McLean to do?

And how did he know they were being completed? Uh,

I mean, whatever he was doing, he was obviously keeping them busy until. But if they fucked the St. Ives thing up, was there even a bomb in the trash can? Well, you know, at the end when they ask him, they go, there was never any bomb in the school where he goes, I'm not a soldier. I'm not a monster. Right. So I don't know how many. But he does blow up the train. And the train, if it stayed on the train, would it kill thousands or hundreds? Yeah. So I'm going to go. Maybe you were a monster. You're about to blow up 200 people. Right.

But he had to blow them up to achieve his goal because he needed to go in there. So, yeah, definitely a monster, though. We mentioned the 480 dump trucks. Minor nitpick for me. I think movies fuck this up a lot. I just think McClane is just covered in blood. Yeah, I had our main characters. I think blood is every I think he's had sprains. I think about Marvin getting his brains all over like Sam Jackson's hair and Pulp Fiction getting shot point blank.

There's four Marvins in the elevator. There's just stuff all over John McClane. So let's take it a step further. If I bang my shin in the middle of the night, like getting back into bed, I'm limping for like a day.

They get a train derailment. They get shot. Zeus gets shot. They get splinters from a winch wire struck, stuck in shoulders. They get trapped in a flood, then shot through a manhole cover, flip a Mercedes traveling at high speed, fall halfway off a bridge onto a hard surface. And they're more or less like walking around. Excuse me. And McClane gets hit and headed with a bottle. Yeah.

this character, the John McClane character is the same character from Unbreakable. That's him in Unbreakable. Because he is so fucked up. There's actually one scene where he's all fucked up, blood everywhere. And it's almost as if the water rejuvenates him because he takes the water, he wipes the blood off and then he's ready to go back in the game. It's hung over. Just needs some aspirin. I got a couple of picking nits. Go. So McClane doesn't even think about taking the $12 billion. Yeah.

Right. Or even just being like, what's important is we each get a gold bar here. Right. So the gold bars are everywhere. He says, we'll make a deal. There's 12. Think about the stakes here. People are going to look at Van like he's an asshole, but I have to just put it out there. This is not like, hey, we got a suitcase full of a half a million for you, $200,000. It's 12 billion bucks. McLean,

Boy Scout doesn't even think about it. Doesn't go, ah, or even doesn't even tell Zeus or somebody else. They did offer us $12 billion. This happened in Marathon Man last week. Hoffman just could have left with all the diamonds. He's like, nah, I'm too good for the diamonds. Or a diamond. Yeah. A diamond. Just put two in your pocket. Jesus Christ. Secondly, the henchmen that are in this.

are all six foot four German dudes with crew cuts. Yeah. There's just no fucking way you're going to believe that these guys are cops or guys that work on Wall Street. Yeah, Walsh fucks this up when they all arrive. Yeah. And all these guys get off and Simon gets off the truck. He's like, hey there, partner. And it's like, why is there like a fake German Texan man

Who's in charge of city services here? Like who's going to do all the like demolition work? Simon was like Sam Presti. Like he liked length and athleticism. Right. A lot of three and D guys. We didn't talk about the biggest pick and knit McLean. First of all, he drowns in the tunnel, but even if you're going to say he doesn't, and the thing shoots him out, he gets shot up in the air.

Who's driving by Zeus Carver coming back from Yankee Stadium? Hey! What's up? It's fucking ridiculous. That's where, to me, that's the jump the shark moment of this movie. You're like, all right, this is now getting stupid. I do, for the same way that you were talking about how you'd like to test yourself with the water jug thing,

I do want to do the move that McLean does where he's like, take the anti-lock brakes off. That's a badass fucking shot, bro. Yeah, that was good. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Every time I see him, I'm like, yeah, man, our anti-lock brakes holding me back. Last one is a big one. Did you have any more? No, no.

Oh, just the German thing. The second you hear a German accent, you're like, wait a second. Right. Simon's this mastermind. Yeah. Planned everything out meticulously and then just gives McClane the aspirin bottle that has the address of where you got the aspirin bottle. Well, also, how did Simon think he was going to get away with all the dumpsters being full of metal pieces on Targo?

Just wouldn't be like, sorry about your headache, John. Yeah. Tells him to keep the bottle. Basically tells him, hey, there's the bottle. Why don't you check it out? It's like he wanted to get caught. Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TBL, Black Caster, Untouchable, where they did multiple sequels.

You guys didn't like Live Free or Die Hard, not even a little bit. I thought Oliphant's good in it. I thought it was pretty cool. If I'm on an airplane and I don't have a lot of choices, maybe. I just don't think hacking is a good Die Hard thing. No. I saw it in theaters. Me too. Oh, I did too. I saw it the day of the NBA draft. What a day for you. Well, I was trying to get ready to write the running diary. Went to like an 11 o'clock meeting.

die hard for it, The Grove, to kind of take my mind off it and was disappointed. I'm sorry you heard that. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harling Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs,

or Wilford Brimley in the firm. Got to do one more DB before the, you know, as we end the NBA season. And I, I fucked up by never mentioning that earlier in the playoffs, she said, Bonjour, Mr. Hartenstein. So I would probably go DB saying, Oh, Peter Shins. Simon Gruber.

Just a mastermind. You've played through headaches, but we see you. He sees the whole city as a launching pad. Just one Oscar who gets it. Man. McTiernan. Yeah. Direction. Is there an Irons case? No. Nah. Doesn't do enough. Out of curiosity, what was this Oscars year like? No chance for anything. Yeah. 95 was rough. Unanswerable questions.

What's the next day like with the newspaper coverage? What's the lead story? Is it the subway explosion? That's a fucking awesome question. Subway explosion? Is it the water thing going on? Can we be specific about how does the New York Post cover it versus how the New York Times covers it? New York's under attack. What are the headlines? You have multiple explosions. You have the flood. You have McClain himself.

Then you have somebody getting cut in half on a boat. You have a boat blowing up. You have a school. You have three things blowing up. Because a lot of stuff doesn't quite happen. I think the number one story is the subway crash. Subway crash is on the front page of the New York Post. I think it's almost a New York under attack. Kind of. Because the bombs in the school. Madman gets away. Finding a bomb in a school is a fucking crazy story. But they didn't. You know what I mean? It's an almost story. Yeah, it is. It's a part of the narrative.

Then Simon dies, so they got his face on the deal. This is the mastermind of the New York. - It would have been cool if Simon had made it a multi-day thing so that we could have had New York Post, Simon says we're dead. - Headlines every day. - Simon says the headline. - Could have been like an eight day thing. And then the other thing I was thinking was 1994, which was an amazing time in New York City, 'cause you had the Rangers, you had the Knicks, you had the heyday of Mike and the Dog.

And then you have Die Hard filming in New York, probably Apex Mountain. Wait, you're skipping a very important question. How do Mike and the dog react to this? Well, so that was my third thing. If this is really New York City, what is the next day Mike and the dog? Well, so is it 1995 Mike and the dog or 1994? I don't know. What is it? We have, because they're filming this in 94, but I, because the movie came out in May 95.

We have to assume it happened in May 95. So the Knicks are in the playoffs. And I think Doug's like, Mike, we got to talk about what's going on in New York City later. But first game three, Knicks paces. Let's talk about what is here we got to do. Later on, we're going to talk about all the things blowing up, Mike. It was a huge day in New York. I just went to Bonwit last week. I went to Bonwit three weeks ago. It's a staple of the city.

but driving through Central Park dog is just crazy I just can't believe they did that um yeah I think they get to it in the second hour take some calls yeah and then we gotta talk Rangers Mike yeah uh what piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie

I want her knife. The scythe? The little scythe that she has. That's good. I thought I wanted a gold bar, but it's going to be a fake gold bar. How much does one of those gold bars worth? I'd want one of the bricks. Like a game-used, diehard gold brick. Bricked up. Movie-used. How much would one actual gold bar like that, for real? So apparently they're 25 pounds. But how much is it worth? A 25-pound gold bar? Depends on the price of gold. Yeah, at any given moment. I know...

I understand financial shit, but what's the ballpark of them? It would depend on gold by the pound. So what is it by the pound? If it's like $100 by the pound, then that's the price. So it's a brick. They always say buy gold. Gold never goes down. I can't figure this out. I'm sure somebody will email us. It's $108 by the gram today. By the gram? $3,300 by the ounce. $3,300 by the ounce? That's what it said.

How many ounces in a pound? Fucking math. Gold price per ounce, $3,367 right now. So each brick was like over $100,000. Yeah. Look at you. Jugs. Coach Finstock Award for best life lesson. What do you got? If we can beat racism, we can beat Europe. They work together. They beat racism. And then they beat the Germans just like we did in fucking 44, baby.

I love it. I was going to say, just don't count out the divorced alcoholics in your life. They never know when they're going to surprise you. I was going to say for the piece of memorabilia that I would want is the packaged shirt they hand John McClane at the police station to be like, here, you got to put something else on. And then I would wear that shirt for my entire alcoholic era of podcasting.

If the sandwich board wasn't like shit. Get the fuck out of here. I don't want to have to defend you. And you're at somebody's house and you're like, yo, I have the sandwich board. Do you want it? You know what's funny? If he wore that in Boston, people would be like, hey man, how's it going? What the hell? Can I get one of those? Would you want the blank sandwich board? No.

No, I don't want the blank sandwich board. Pretty good artifact from the 90s movies. I wouldn't want it either. Best double feature choice. I'm going to go with Die Hard. Oh, okay. Go Die Hard right to Die Hard 3. That's good. Skip Die Hard 2, which is kind of in its own universe. You know what I got? Under Siege? I got The Siege.

Oh, because it's another New York. It's another New York all whatever with Bruce Willis who kind of starts off like he's going to be the hero and that ends up being an asshole. I still haven't decided whether I like that movie and it came out like almost 30 years ago. It gets better fucking every time I look at it. I might have to watch it again. Yeah. My dad's here all weekend. Maybe I'll make him watch it. It gets better every time I look at it. It's really good Denzel and it's really good Willis. Like an off-kilter kind of Annette Bening? I would probably I'll just go Pulp Fiction.

Who won the movie? I'm going to say Sam Jacks. Oh. Because I think... I had Sam as well. It's the breath of fresh air that the franchise needed.

It's one of those rare moments when you can tell, I don't know if this is literally true, but at least on screen, you can tell that the star is happy to share the screen with the person and is like, you got this scene. You can make fun of me. You can make me look stupid. You can make me look small-minded or whatever. I love acting with you. And I think he just gives this movie a new life. I'm going to go Willis. It's just hard to beat the character of Willis.

of John McClane. I think Sam Jackson wins because Pulp Fiction no longer becomes a fluke. I see what you mean. He is now there. He can help carry a major, major movie and now the rest of his career falls into place. And the movie stands the test of time. People love it. Like CR was at what theater were you at? Vidiot's. Vidiot's, yeah. On Sunday. How many people? Packed house. People loving it. Yeah, on a Sunday night. Have you guys done, have we done The Last Boy Scout?

Yeah. Left-handed throw is tough. Don't know why they had to sink that in. Let me ask you, what is more intriguing to you? Florida Keys month or New Orleans month? What do we got for the Keys? Yeah, what's in there? Out of Time? Oh, shit. Out of Time is that shit. What's the Hackman movie? When I say I've been scouting out of time, it's like the fucking Mavericks studying Cooper flag tape at this point. It's going to happen this summer. Just telling you. Here's the only thing about New Orleans month.

versus Florida Keys Month. It really comes down to, in my opinion, a battle between Angel Heart and Out of Time. And like, which movie do you want to do more? And that is a tough decision to make. And Angel Heart- New Orleans has Heaven's Prisoner. Fucking unhinged. It's on the list. Heaven's Prisoners, Angel Heart. What are the other two New Orleans movies? Big Easy-

I mean, I would say we should do it. Can I throw a Florida Keys? Let's do it again. Have you ever watched it? Which one? Let's do it again. What movie? Let's do it again. Oh, let's do it again. Uptown Saturday Night with Bill Cosby. Oh, you're going way back. And then Let's Do It Again. How about Tightrope with Clint Eastwood? Tightrope with Clint Eastwood. Going through the French Quarter looking for a sexual assaulter and kind of gets pulled in. How's Into Deep? He's getting into the dark side. Maybe we should do Into Deep Month.

Into deep month is good. Crossing the line month. Tightrope's a good one. He's like, you know what? I kind of like the dark side of the French Quarter. We could re-8mm. Well, that would be a good time to do the re-Miami Vice. We're doing that live in L.A.

My favorite Florida Keys, I think, is Night Moves, which is about Hackman plays an ex-football player turned private eye who has to go search for the teenage daughter of a B-movie actress in the Keys. Wild Things is Keys too, right? Wild Things is Keys. Wait, Wild Things might just be Miami. I think it's the Keys. Is it?

We could do South Florida. We could do South Florida month and get Scarface in finally. South Florida month. South Florida month will be Scarface, Wild Things, My Enterprise. South Florida month. South Florida month, yeah. Scarface, Wild Things. That gets a little more interesting. I feel like the Keys are the most underrated movie location. Miami Blues. Movie TV. What was that Netflix show? Bloodline.

Really use the keys nicely. Good first season, yeah. I just can't think of that many movies that are set in the Keys besides the ones that we talked about earlier. I'm upset that New Orleans hasn't been in more movies. It stands in for everything. They shoot so much there. But there's a ton that we're forgetting. There's obviously the movie The Big Easy. Did you like that movie? I did, but it hasn't aged great. What's the Alex Baldwin? It's pretty dated. The Heaven's Prisoner is a classic. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, there's films on it. We're not thinking about them. And then there are a lot of movies that go down. I knew you'd be here, Robichaud! Hey, can I tell you something about that? That movie is the movie where I realized that it wasn't quite going to happen for Alec Baldwin. Is Angel Heart New Orleans? It is. Come on, CR. That's what I thought. Louis Seifert. Because Heaven's... That's the movie that gets the rewatchables canceled from Spotify. They're like...

We'd no longer like to be true. Can I be real? When you go back and you look at that movie, there was a lot of scandal around it during that time. It ages actually better than some of the other films that, I mean, obviously she's doing wild shit in the movie, but,

Cliff Huxtable's daughter being in that movie was the single craziest thing that happened in the 1980s. I would put it against anything else that happened in the 80s. It was a conversation. I can't even understand what that was like. My mother was like, what is that girl doing? Because the movie was set in New Orleans, so it was a big deal. My mother was like, what is that girl doing? Because it was like Angel Heart was a devil worshiping movie and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. That was America's Family. Yeah.

Still can't believe it. You could also do... Like, just hearing rumors about, oh, there's a big sex scene in this movie. It's like, with Lisa Bonet? Covered in blood. And then you go to the movie and you actually see it and you're like, ah! I just... You could also do Controversy Month. Movies that went crazy with controversy. Oh, really controversial films. Really controversial films. Yeah, it could almost be like, holy fuck, this was a big deal month. Yeah.

Yeah, Angel Heart was one of those. Well, then there was the whole thing with Angel Heart about whether they actually had sex or not. That would be a good month. Did they actually have sex or not? Don't look. Yeah. Monsters Ball. There's some talk. There's some talk. There's talk. Don't look now with Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland. That was a famous one. Last Hangover in Paris. Was there talk?

Can't remember that one. Yeah. That one was problematic. Yeah. Yeah. That became a problematic one later. There's been, there's been over the years, there's been, there was one where the couple, Oh, Al Baldwin and Kim Basinger in the getaway. Maybe they, maybe they took some liberties. See, this is my thing with Alec Baldwin. I don't know. I know we've got to wrap up, but all of these movies mean something to me. The getaway. I fucking loved heaven's prisoners. I loved, I liked these movies, but people just,

They weren't fucking with him. Like, it just wasn't. I think they were fucking with him. I think Alec was like making some weird choices. Yeah. I mean, he talked his way out of Jack Ryan. It's not like they were like, you know, this fuck run for October. We got to get. Where do you stand on the Mexican? The Brad Pitt one? Yeah. Julia Roberts. Gandolfini. Sorry, once or twice. Don't really have a real. It's not very good, but Gandolfini is great in that movie. Yeah.

Dane O'Faney was just great for the entire 90s and nobody was kind of on it. Get Shorty, True Romance. 8mm. He was so demented in True Romance, yeah. Yeah, whatever. But he was fantastic. And then, once again, kind of gets to that point

I don't know. It doesn't happen as much anymore to me where by the time Tony Soprano comes around, you go, oh, so it's his turn now. They're finally giving them something. Good. Watched Swingers with my wife and my daughter and her boyfriend who is in town. And it was my wife was insisting that they would like it. And he's like, all right, they're not going to like it. And we watch it. They both loved it. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Swingers still like really solid.

The movie's almost 30 years old. We did it on the rewatchables a million years ago, but I was surprised how much they liked it. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. You never know what's going to age and not age. Yeah. I wonder if they would let go, for instance. Go. We let go. We let go.

Love swingers. But I always think about the scene where Favreau's character calls that girl like 90 times. That's what they were going nuts. What a loser he was. And that, that, that is so tough to watch. He has like three or four scenes in that movie. Like my daughter was like, Oh my God, what's wrong with this guy? But she kind of liked it, but it's a really fun snapshot of LA.

Even as the years pass and LA has changed since we've even been here. Just what LA was like back then, pre-internet. Last thing I'll say, there's no defining piece of whatever of LA culture like now. And that's what some of these things kind of miss. During that time, it was like, oh my God, I want to go to LA because it's like...

I mean, there's Beverly Hills 90210. There's Melrose Place. There's Swingers. There's even Entourage. And then Entourage. There's indie movies happening. Yeah, Entourage. Like a generation. And now cities having personalities like that, everything's so homogenous. It's kind of like doesn't exist unless I'm missing some stuff. No, I mean, I think the last big L.A. thing was probably Insecure. Listen, I hope Joanna. Insecure is great. Hopefully Joanna didn't hear that because we're trying to convince her to move to L.A. I mean.

LA is great. It's so cool here. There's so many different awesome pockets. It's very politically active. It's really a special place. They got great cats here. Yeah. I liked your point about diehard with a vengeance, just ending 30 minutes in because somebody couldn't have gotten from Manhattan beach to Brentwood. Fuck. How do I get to Brentwood? All right. Chris Ryan. Thank you. Ben Latham. Thank you. Jack Sanders.

Is your mic on or no? It is. What was your take on Die Hard with a Vengeance? I think when Bruce Willis found out that Sam Jackson was going to be his co-star in this film, it was the closest any person on the planet Earth has felt to the moment when LeBron James found out the Cavs traded for Kevin Love. Oh, shit. Wow. Look at Jack. I just think like this is my favorite Die Hard. I think it's better than the original one, personally, even though I think there are plenty of nicks to pit. Yeah. Um...

But when Sam Jackson shows up in the beginning of the movie, you're locked in. He elevates the movie so much. It's called 9-1-1. It's amazing. Somebody's about to get killed. Tell somebody to get down here. Somebody's about to get killed. I was afraid to even go to Jack after the Mets got annihilated by the Braves. I didn't know what kind of state of mind he was, but I thought that was pretty cool. It's a long season. Yeah. All right, guys. Great seeing you. Great seeing you.