Talking Pondo: The Party Animal and Bad Day At Black Rock

 In this episode, Marty gives Clif the movie The Party Animal to watch and Clif gives Marty the movie Bad Day At Black Rock to watch. 

This week on Talking Pondo, Marty and Clif take on two films that couldn’t be more different, yet somehow define everything about the show.

First up is Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), a tight, 82-minute neo-western starring Spencer Tracy. The conversation digs into its post-WWII paranoia, small-town hostility, and why the film’s restraint and structure still feel refreshing nearly 70 years later.

Then it’s time for the main event: The Party Animal (1984), the movie that quite literally gave birth to Pondo. Marty and Clif break down the cult college comedy that shaped their sense of humor, introduced them to punk music, and inspired the name Pondo’s Children Productions. From its skit-based structure and mock-documentary style to its outrageous gags, bizarre musical numbers, and infamous dream sequence, The Party Animal is examined both lovingly and mercilessly.

#FilmPodcast #MovieDiscussion #CultClassic #80sMovies #ClassicFilm #TalkingPondo #ThePartyAnimal #BadDayAtBlackRock #CultMovies

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Oh, the 50s. The 50s. I mean, we're we're gonna make a a a really hard liberal movie about how bad we were to Japanese people and not have one Japanese person in the movie. Oh, the fifties. And we're gonna have one woman in the movie and she gets killed. Of course. Of course.

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Welcome to season three of Talking Pondo. Talking Pondo is a podcast where Cliff and Marty give each other a film to watch and talk about them in detail. Some episodes will include a special guest.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Pondo Sinatra goes to BlackRock and is very disappointed because there is only one woman there, and she's mean, will not be seen this week, so we may bring you the following property claim.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

And she's mean.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Yeah, he'd be very disappointed showing up there. Yes. Pondo just fell off the turnup truck in BlackRock, and you are not having sex here, bro.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:12

With anyone. You went from the sexualized movie to the movie that has no sex going on anywhere that I can tell.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

No. Uh Talking Pondo. We're back once again. I'm Marty Catola. I'm Cliff Campbell. And we're talking about two more films this week. Two more films that probably couldn't be more separate from each other, but boy, was it nice to have two kind of short movies for a change. It was Bad Day at Black Rock from 1955. Wow, that movie's 83 years old.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

73?

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Oh, yeah. I was thinking of uh that Abbott and Costello movie I was watching last night. That's the 83-year-old movie. This movie's still getting up there, like 70. It's 70. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then also going back to 1983 again, because we just can't seem to get away from that year. It's the origin of Pondo itself, the party animal.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Ah, this was a long time coming. I'm very excited about it. Um, I think I have a lot to say. Yeah. And I have some notes, um, but and I need to grab those while you do some viewer mail.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

So a year ago, approximately, the first show of last year was uh My Chauffeur, which is another movie from the director of the party animals. So I figured, hey, let's pull another one of his movies out to start the year, but let's go into the viewer mail here.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Uh we got a we got a big chunk this time, people.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

It's uh it's nice to see more engagement happen, you know, from week to week. You never know, you never know what movies are gonna get people's attention.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

And uh sure we're gonna we're gonna reply.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah, we have a variety of them. Uh um in no particular order. Uh my cousin Vinny got a little feedback. Oh, okay. Uh long time uh listeners. So yeah, I gotta start saying listener mail. It's not viewer mail, nobody's watching this. They're listening to it. You don't want to see us. It's listener mail. Well, I I watch on YouTube. Okay, we're not getting into semantics this week. It's my cousin Vinny, truth justice in the Gambini way, and longtime listeners. Uh remember Ray Daniel from uh Call Me Crazy show and all of our old public access stuff, and more recently the GMR podcast. He writes in, he comes out of obscurity to write in about my cousin Vinny, and he says, I have never seen this movie in its entirety. You know, that's funny because that's what I said too.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

It's one of those movies you catch at the beginning or you and you get dragged away from on cable, or you catch with 45 minutes left. Which, but yeah, I know what you mean.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

So hopefully it's a yeah, glad you're listening. Hopefully, it gets them to maybe sit down and watch my cousin Vinny. And if you're watching it with the family, get that TV cut.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Get that TV cut, get that cable cut, yes. But either way, watch it. It's a good movie, it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Uh and then the last waltz got some significant feedback. Ah. Uh Joe Palmer writes in. Ah, uh, from our Talking Math Al episode a few weeks. Right. So Joe joined us. And uh he says, Ooh, my favorite part of Thanksgiving. I hope you played it loud. It says in the beginning, there.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Joe and I do not agree on this movie at all.

SPEAKER_02 4:49

I knew he's a classic rock fan. And it's funny because uh you said you were gonna you were gonna get some shit about this. Yep, yep. And so Ray wrote in about The Last Waltz as well. Uh uh, some of uh some of his thoughts were like he thought it was quite possibly the best music documentary. It's definitely up there. And did the band have too many egos? But of course, that's the magic.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

Hmm.

unknown 5:17

Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

Yeah. I mean uh he also wrote me uh privately about it, the last waltz, and went off quite a bit. Oh, I thought he was gonna go off on me. No, no, but more like he liked the movie, and uh he he was kind of surprised that you didn't like it was one of the things. You know it's a it's a taste of of the music thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

It's it's like you know, I told you, Marty, it's like that when you say, you know, I'm in the brown times again, I'm in the brown, I'm in the hospital waiting, and that that's what that film does for me. I just don't it I something I am associating from my past that is probably even in my subconscious at this point just m makes my skin crawl when I hear that music.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

And he he writes the fact that the band don't talk about their drug use is endearing in a sense of who hasn't in one point of their lives were fooling themselves. So it's like, oh, I can I can see that aspect too. What do you mean? We're not we're not on drugs, no, yeah, yes, you yes, you are.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Everyone, every one of you are cocaine sugar burger.

SPEAKER_02 6:24

And uh then let's go a little bit further back to our Star Wars episode. Oh it's kind of neat now because just yesterday, as of this recording, it was announced that the original Untouched Star Wars is coming back to theaters for its 50th anniversary, and all the people online are just going completely ridiculous about it. And you know, I saw as to slightly digress, I saw a video the other day about things after you're 50 years old you shouldn't waste time on doing, and one part of it really stuck with me, and that was the uh engagement with people about arguing about things online. You know, it is fun because in Jane's silent Bob Strike Back, they say the internet, it's there to argue about movies, right? But you get to a point where you realize, like the guy in this video said, they're not interested in the truth, they just want to win or argue. And it's like, oh yeah, so even if I see the most ridiculous statement about are they gonna put Jabba back in? Well, obviously it's not, it's the original. You just have to see Mad Max in your head going, that's bait, and just roll along. So my New Year's resolution before the year has even started is to implement less of interacting with that type of nonsense. But the fact that Star Wars is coming back out again has made people just go completely insane online. But from what I can tell, it's gonna be that original version without any of the bullshit. And I've been seeing a lot more comments about he didn't want to pay his ex-wife, that's why these cuts went away. And and I hadn't seen anybody talking about that for ages.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I saw um I saw some some of it online about it, and they they were basically trying to pull the you know, it it's what happens with nerds, and I love you guys. But you know, you begin to think that because you have some sort of finer detailed knowledge over something that you're somehow right in a way. I know facts are facts and so on, but you don't know what he's releasing until he tells you what he's releasing. You don't know what Dizzy's gonna put out, right? Yes, there's a 97 cut. Yes, there's a you know, there's the cut with no a new hope on it, which came out after a you know Empire, I think it was either Empire or Jedi, one of the two, you know, and when he started to number them and all that type of shit. We yes, we all know this, guys, but we don't know which one. You may get a mix, it may just mess with you. There's no telling, right? But if it says original, I'm willing to bet it's one the one from 77. That's supposed to be the whole big deal. And if if if it is, then great. I because I'm going.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:07

I will I will have my tickets for that and watch the son of a bitch, watch the son of a bitch do serious numbers. Oh, of course. It's gonna be fucking funny.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

I witnessed I witnessed an argument between two people, or at least I think they were people, they might have been bots for all I know. Dead internet theory online just yesterday complaining about when I saw it, it had the scene where Luke looked up in the sky and saw the ships fighting, and then the other person's like, no, that was from the storybook, and then they're like, Well, then how did Marvel Comics adapt the Jabba scene if the Jabba scene wasn't in there? Because you know, they write those after the movie's been written. Well, no, because of the blah blah. And I'm thinking, guys, there's such a thing as a screenplay, and that never came into and I'm just like, don't do not comment. Do not comment. Do not comment. Don't do it, don't do it. And I didn't. I brought it to the podcast and said so we can all laugh together about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

There was also the um, there was also the um the motion picture adaptation, the book that's that you know, the book that was uh uh you know they saw bigs and tattooings, that book. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

No, it isn't because there's a job a mask on the okay, you're disengagement farming.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

What wasn't engagement farming was this letter we received about Star Wars. See, I found it's like jazz.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

You wait for that to go out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, jazz has corners. And then I stop and explain. I mean spirals.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

It's about jazz spirals. So explaining a punchline or something. Speaking of spiraling, Star Wars, buckle up. This is from uh Jim from over at Bravo with the B side. He wrote us a letter about Star Trek, and now he wrote us a letter about Star Wars. I didn't want to read them both on the same episode because that was already a long one. Hello, gentlemen. You know, you had to know this was coming. Listen to the episode love coverage on both films, just some nerdy random bits for you. The thing I remember the most, the title, Star Wars Hitting with Full Orchestra. Star Wars was the first sci-fi film that did not have a studio orchestra. That's why it does not have hints of 70s music, a synthesizer, or any of the post-60s psychedelic riffs. You know, like the Barbarella music you enjoyed so much. When those words, he did not say the Barbarella thing. That's my addition there. When those words hit with that hard full chord ensemble, it was commanding me to pay attention, much like Cliff at the drive-in not saying a word. I saw this opening weekend when I was seven. I saw it all summer long. There was nothing even close to this. My favorite movie until that point was Forbidden Planet, which, hmm, I think that ties into one of our things, doesn't it? Isn't that a nice little spiral? Rocky horror picture show. All the rest, including the Flash Gordon serials, were just go, go, go, go action with Snidley whiplash villains and quick plot shuffles to get to the end scene. Forbidden Planet gave us stuff to think on while watching the movie. Star Wars brought Old West action, girl in distress basics into space, and Lucas basically said, Here it is, follow along. Groundbreaking. Han and Greedo. Well, Han shot first, always. And the lore that vanished in favor of Disney and others. Han solo wore a red stripe on the side of his pants, a Karillian blood stripe, earned by being hard and hard times. Greedo threatened him at gunpoint. There is no question that Han would have taken care of that situation with minimal fuss. In Empire, Lucas turned the stripe yellow, signifying his departure from that life.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

I think they're I think they're building I think the backstory gets built around the wardrobe change, in my opinion, there. But I'm gonna have to look for that though. I think that's where the that's the nerds going, well see, he has the yellow stripe now, so he's not a he's not a blood Carillion anymore, that type of thing. I remember the case. Or maybe it's in a book. Maybe it's in like a book or something. But I think that that's I don't I I would be shocked if if that's actually in the screenplay, or that was Lucas. I think that's you know, a lot of this lore gets built up around Lucas' original work, right? Because you get all these writers coming in and writing and adding things and putting things in, and you know, you have the Han Solo, you know, the the the book trilogy, you have the Boba Fett book trilogy, you have Shadows of the Empire with Prince Zor and all these different you know things that are part of Star Wars lore and canon, but they're not really they're not really Lucas's. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Mm-hmm. You had the toy line. I had Han Solo and Best Ben outfit. Did that have the yellow stripe? I don't have the figure anymore. I'd have to like look up a picture, but I'm very curious now.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Bestbin, yeah, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

Because it's a different outfit than the Han figure from the first movie. Uh you touched on Lucas's wife doing the editing. Without her, we would never have seen it. Scorsese and Spielberg were embarrassed to have to tell George that it was a hot mess. What they saw after her editing blew their minds. You also talked pacing. Star Wars success, I think, was based on its fast pace and the complete abandonment of trying to explain all this weird and wacky shit, and instead just pushing further along the roller coaster. On the roller coaster. I heartily agree with you on the later films, Disney era. They lack all the heart and passion that Star Wars through Jedi had. It's painful to see how this magical franchise just fell down the tubes production after production, reducing it to a meh level series. Like everybody a mixed nuts. I could go on and on, but I will spare you. Oh, Rogue One. In spite of the nightmare production issues, it got hammered into a 70s-style Star Wars. It did well because of that, I think. In Andor, the series, same thing.

SPEAKER_03 15:26

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Luthien was the most powerful, enigmatic, mysterious, tragic, and sorrowful character in the Star Wars universe.

SPEAKER_03 15:33

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

Just a man, no force, no fuss, just a man who wants to change the nightmare they are all living in. Oh, Stormtroopers, dead on. I love the fact that they made fun of their aim in The Mandalorian. Yeah. Uh see, kept it short. It was an excellent episode. Laughed a lot. So that was good to hear from Jim again.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Yeah, we we love hearing from Jim and Danny. Uh big fans of uh the Bravo from the B side podcast. And if you haven't heard it, you should jump over there. Um they had one uh oh man, it was their uh Sherlock Holmes episode. Oh my god, that's worth it's the most recent Sherlock Holmes episode where they're talking about I mean, they dissect that movie, and and Danny in particular is very annoyed and pissed off, and it's quite funny. Anyway, uh totally worth a totally worth a listen.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

But this week we have uh we have some movies for you. Yeah, and there's there's some there's some uh good ones.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Might even learn a little about a bit a little bit about us in the process.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

I would hope so.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

So which one do you want to do first? You want to you want to go bad day at Black Rock first, or do you want to go party animal first?

SPEAKER_02 16:56

I want to go bad day at black rock first. I thought so.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Switching my notes over right now. Bad day at Black Rock and Five. I want the M5!

SPEAKER_02 17:11

You don't want that kid. So here's another movie that I had heard the title, didn't know what it was, thought it was like an old West thing with a title like that. Same. So what is uh this movie that features Anne Francis of Mazes and Monsters fame? And Forbidden Planet. Well, we know her most as Tom Hanks' mother of Maze and Monsters, which we just fucking watched. That's insane. So I did think that was strange. Bad day Bad Day at Backrock.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

It's almost like I'm it's almost like I'm planning it, but I swear to god I'm not. Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955, approved, one hour twenty-one minutes. Uh following short. Yeah, really nice. Following World War II, a one-armed stranger arrives in a tiny California desert but finds the residents hostile and protecting a terrible secret they want to keep hidden by violent means if necessary. Uh directed by John Sturgis, written by Millard Kaufman, Don McGuire, Howard Breslin, stars Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, and Francis. Um, and a host of others. Let's see, storyline. From the time John J. McCready steps off the train in BlackRock, he feels a chill from the local residents. The town is only a speck on the map, and few strangers ever come to the place. McCready himself is tight-lipped about the purpose of his trip, and he finds that the hotel refuses him a room, the local garage refuses to rent him a car, and the sheriff is a useless drunkard. It's apparent that the locals have something to hide, but when he finally tells them that he is there to speak to a Japanese American farmer named Komoko, he touches his nerve so sensitive that he will spend the next twenty-four hours fighting for his life.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

Boy, I hope you watch the movie. I really do. Because if you're listening to this and and you don't like spoilers.

SPEAKER_03 19:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

They because these these summaries they like to tell you things you don't find out for a significant amount of time into the movie.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Well, and to be fair, we've told you before, we're gonna spoil these movies talking about them.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

I just hope that that's not written on the back of a DVD box somewhere.

unknown 19:20

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

That's just too much. I would assume that it's the I would assume that it's probably that top part that I read to you. Following World War II or One Armed Stranger Rise in a tiny California Deserton.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

So I I know we've we've had to have seen a couple movies with people named McCready, right? Is it just me or or has this name been the character name in like three or four movies we've covered?

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I would think so. I I mean I I yeah, I you know, I I caught me off guard there. I'm honestly not sure, yeah. But it just seems so familiar.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Uh John Sturgis. Uh Mistys Know Him Best is the director of Marooned, which was Space Travelers on Mystery Science Theater, season four, episode one. A long movie that's trimmed down so much that it it starts to not make as much sense, but he holds on shots in this one, and it's still an 81-minute movie, but that one he's really holding on shots. But that's like in the 70s. He had been making movies for a significant longer period than. But here is this nice little concise movie. Two short ones this week. It's really it really is appreciated. We've taken in some really long movies, and they're good, but it's it is nice to mix it up where you're like, oh, I could watch both of these in a row and breezy.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

So um Macreddy is um Kurt Russell's character in the thing. And we haven't watched that yet. And and McCready is also a character from Disney's film Super Dad. I just kind of googled it here. Um so I'm just you know, other than that, I don't I don't know, maybe it's either way. So um so yeah, the film I gotta wonder what train and what line this is. You know, the film opens with that train just barreling into the shot, and and you you're suddenly followed, you're dragged along, the camera is dragged along with the train, and you see this really awesome kind of 1950s train barreling through the southwest of California. And it's it's you know, not the California that you kind of it's not the beaches and the Arizona, isn't it? It's it's the it's the Southwest, but it's it's that border where California and Arizona and that type of stuff meet, right? Because they're still supposed to be in California, it's a California town. Really? I thought it was an Arizona town. No, I mean it's well, I mean, it says a tiny California desert town in the in the butt but I think it's Really close to like Mesa Phoenix Tucson, which is why he mentioned it.

SPEAKER_02 22:03

Yeah, I think the story it was based on was probably the an Arizona talent.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

But it's definitely southwestern, dry, desert, not a lot of not a lot of water. So it feels very familiar in that respect. And uh but it that I I I was really happy to see like this is an 82-minute movie and it's in cinema scope and it's in Technicolor, like, oh, it's gonna look great. And it does. It looks fucking great. Yeah, you don't want to pull the curbed screen, that would look good. Yeah, and you know, those even when they're inside in the hotel lobby and stuff like that, the the backgrounds through the windows are done really well. Like those mountains and stuff really pop and it really looks good on screen, I thought. I'd really like to see a really nice ver like a 4K version. This would probably look really cool. But fucking Walter Brennan. That guy's the classic. He's in one of the, I think he's in either Rio Bravo or El Dorado, the John Wayne movie, he plays that guy. Shout out him with my boo, you know that guy. Um But it's uh I never realized Spencer was so short, like he walks up to one of the other actors and he's like, he's a little guy, you know. That's that's some actors.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

That's why it's like, why are you giving him so much shit? You know, well, he's gonna karate chop the fuck out of you.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

So Lee Marvin and Ernie Borge are in this, you know, beside the reference there, you know.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

So who was the first actor you ever met?

SPEAKER_00 23:34

Ever in my life, ever.

SPEAKER_02 23:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Um geez, that's tough. It's probably gonna be um. I think it was at the movie theater where we worked together. Really? It was that long. I think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't remember having met anybody else from the movies unless I'm just kind of blanking completely on it. But yeah, I think it would have been um the dude who played Furious Styles, Lawrence Fishburne.

SPEAKER_02 24:16

Oh wow.

unknown 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

But you had run into like musicians and stuff when you were a kid, so I guess it's a good thing. Sure, yeah, we're gonna have to have those brushes. But so the first actor I ever met people like that, yeah, was Lee Marvin. Oh, really? I met Lee Marvin when I was 10 years old, because he lived here in Tucson. He retired here, and he would frequent the restaurant that my mom worked at, or the cafe or whatever it was. And I remember my stepdad introducing him to me, and I still remember him wearing his denim jacket and being quite tall and shaking my hand. And I didn't know who he was because I'm 10 years old. And and my stepdad's like, oh, this guy's been in a lot of movies, you know, and one day you're gonna know basically. I'm like, Oh, cool, it's nice to meet you and everything. And it's a trip because two years later, the Delta Force comes out. So two years later, I would have been like, You're that guy from the Delta Force of Chuck Norris, right? But he was in that little interim. And so this is the dude from fucking uh Dirty Dozen. Yeah, this is yeah, so I'm watching this movie and not even recognizing him because he's so young.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

And then I go, wait a minute, that's Lee Marvin. Oh, that's a trip. And so I'm just fixating on like I met somebody who was in a movie with Spencer Tracy. You did, dude. We've been around for a long time, haven't we? We're getting up there. It just blew my mind, you know, and it was it it added this extra level to it. And he was tall. He was probably I mean, you could look up his height to see exactly how tall Lee Marvin was, but I I seem to remember him being above six foot tall, but all I really cared about at the time was the candy I had in my pocket, I think. But I still have this vivid memory of that, you know, bright Tucson afternoon in the mid-80s. It's still very vivid of that. Another one was the second person I met was Michael Landon, because he used to do that tennis tournament out here. Oh my god, that's and all I remember about him is he was very tan and the hair was big. And he seemed happy, but that was a very brief because it's like here, take your Polaroid next, next type situation. But he was on his highway to heaven at that time. That Lee Marvin thing always trips me out. Now the more we delve into these older films, and it's just like, holy shit, you know, just weird, man. Just just fucking weird how how these things work out. That's that's cool that you meant Lee Marvin like that. That's really awesome. Now I would have been like, bad day at BlackRock. He'd be like, How do you know that, 10-year-old kid? I'd be like, you were an asshole in that movie. He probably would have laughed at me.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

So let me let me jump back to the movie here. Um, first off, the movie's kind of weird. Like, I I I want to say, first off, I I enjoyed it. Um, it was it's its premise is is very cool. It's like this idea of going to a small town and sort of you know encountering this weird group and and realizing that you know something's going on, and you don't have all the pieces, and you finally get to put the pieces together and you understand it finally. I liked all that. Um But this is like the long shot of this town is like nine buildings. And I've been to small towns, and it's like at first in this small town with nine buildings, there's like it seems like there's five people, right? But yet there's a bar and grill, and there's a garage, and there's a jail, and there's a hotel, and there's a and there's a you know, it's like every building has a purpose, and it's all kind of thriving in this weird small town, which like to me, like when I'm used to small towns, it's usually like three buildings are falling over and they're abandoned, and the general store is also the mail room, and there is no fucking jail. There'd never be a sheriff in a town that freaking small. He, you know, and if he was, he'd serve the entire county. So there's you know, I kind of have to suspend some of my disbelief going in with it, but I really once you do and get into it, you start going, why are they fucking with this dude? You know, what's wrong with everybody in this town?

SPEAKER_02 28:26

Yeah, just what is wrong with everybody in this town?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, just leave him alone. And he's and it and and and uh you also kind of go, I get that you only have one arm, but how much of this are you gonna take?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

You know, because we've seen this premise so many times since, but this has got to be one of the first ones to do it.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

One of those kind of quiet men type of, you know, because once he judo chops that guy and then kicks the crap out of him, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

And I was just like, yeah, you know, he beats the crap out of Ernie Borgie. Oh, fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 28:54

The 50s. I mean, we're we're gonna make uh a a really hard liberal movie about how bad we were to Japanese people and not have one Japanese person in the movie. Oh, the 50s. And we're gonna have one woman in the movie and she gets killed. Of course.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Of course, she gets shot, boom, and shotgun, right in the chest.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

When we look at these decades, you know there's always gonna be a couple of moments where it's just that is the time. You know, it's it doesn't really detract from the movie. It's just kind of fun to find.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

No, that's a perfect example of like if you want to know what the 50s movies are like, it's where they do a liberal the liberal movie is about how bad it was for the Japanese, yet there are no Japanese in the movie. Yeah. That's just brilliant. Oh man. So at one point, when he meets the girl and he's and so after after he takes the Jeep, right? And the bad, the main bad guy who's played by um, oh, who's he played by? Uh Robert Ryan. He goes to talk to her, goes to talk to her, uh, Ann Francis, and and she's kind of doing this like it's this weird kind of like, well, I will, but what if I don't? And I won't, but maybe I will. It's just it's like, what? It and it goes on for a good solid minute. And I almost wrote the dialogue down because it was so freaking weird and kind of silly. But it was like, um, well, what if I do? You won't. I could, you know, could do it so easily. Oh, Tim, you don't know what you are talking about. Maybe I don't, or do I? And it was just like, what in the fuck is going on? But uh at the same time, it kind of evens itself after that, and you get the rest of the scene. It was just so I felt like I was in quicksand for a second.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

The thing about this movie is it's funny that it's so regarded as super classic. It got like Oscars and nominations, and you look at it now and you go, Oh, if they made this anytime in the last 20, 30 years, it wouldn't be Spencer Tracy. It'd be Jean-Claude Van Damme. Yeah, it'd be well, you do this, you do this. It's an action movie in disguise. Why are they fucking with that guy? But you don't expect Spencer Tracy to start karate chopping Ernest Borgnine in one of the best parts of the movie. Very true. That was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

My favorite is where he makes the uh he makes the Molotov cocktail out of the gas in the Jeep. And uh because I really like the fact that it there's you need to you would need to turn that engine over to get the fuel pump to to move to pump the gas. You can't just take it out of the line, right? So I thought that was really cool that they were doing that, and then he makes the bomb and you know throws it at him. I thought that was pretty awesome.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Yeah, part of the movie's really fast wrap-up. But you could tell, I think it's based on like a short story that was in a magazine or something, so they don't have a whole lot of source material to work with, so that's why the movie's so short, which makes it good, but at the same time, you go, like I said, it's a it's it's a Van Damme movie from the 50s, so don't expect it to be like extremely intellectual. Think of it as one of these they fucked with the wrong guy in the wrong town, stranger, neo-western. It it's more of like a proto-action movie of the eighties than than like some kind of pop boiler drama. I thought. It's fun.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

It's a fun movie. I yeah, I agree. I I agree. It's um you know, again, you're not gonna get um I don't know, some sort of realistic accuracy. It's sort of that silly 1950s sort of logic and action, but it's also a lot of fun. There's a lot of big acting in it, you know, watching Borgnine and Marvin kind of uh just kind of I mean harass him for like 45 minutes to to where you're just like, dude, are you gonna do anything about this or what? Like, get off your come on, man. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 33:01

Um it's like it's like kung fu or uh the movies we talked about last week, Inner the Dragon, you know, where they're they were fucking with Bruce Lee for so long and he was playing that game of no game, you know. But instead it's like we push you until you reach the breaking point.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

I like the my I think my favorite early line from it was in the name of well-adjusted manhood, get a hold of yourself. I thought that was pretty funny. Um and Spencer just keeping his left hand in his coat pocket, and then everybody kind of talks about how he's a cripple. Like that's the whole sell. Like they don't they don't even pad the coat or try to make him strap his arm in or anything. It's just just tuck your arm into your pocket there and walk around and you're fine. Oh, the fifth.

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Looks like you lost your arm, right? That's uh at least two movies from the 50s we've watched where they say cripple like it ain't nothing. That's that was the times, cripple.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

Well, I mean, that's that's before you know there were other words that they had to use, I guess. I mean, at one point, the that you know, moron and idiot, those were actual scales that people that doctors used to classify people based upon their level of intelligence. You know, it's insane. Um it town the town seems to have a never-ending supply of new buildings to visit, even though there's only nine of them. There's always some new building interior. If they're not back at the hotel, they're always at some new building going, oh, okay, well, what's this now? Oh, it's this is the garage. Okay, where's what's this? This is the jail. Okay, what's this? Oh, it's Dr. Brennan's uh burial parlor. Why do you need a burial parlor and a in a hearse in a town with nine people? And then at the end of the movie, there's like after they've arrested these guys and the cops are there, there's like 150 people standing in the town watching.

SPEAKER_03 34:55

Like, where have you all been?

SPEAKER_02 34:57

Well, it's the it's the Master Ninja A team wrap-up, right? Yeah. Well, now you've brought it over to justice. What town are you going to next? And the reason I think that is because so many TV shows redid this type of plot. Sure. We were raised on those shows. Sure. And then you go back to this and it kind of lessens its impact because the sugar's been dissolved into the solution so much over the years of it being retreaded, but you can still appreciate, okay, this is one of the more origin points of silent person comes to town.

SPEAKER_03 35:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

But boy, did they do that? I mean, every every bottled show where it was I go from town to town helping out somebody, and then I go on, they would always do that. What are you doing in our town, stranger? And then they hook up with the people who are getting hurt. It's it's not quite seven samurai, because it's just one person, but it yeah. Sometimes it's more, it's the eight, it'd be four people or you know.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

It's sometimes it's it reminds me of the of the spaghetti westerns, too, the call me trinities and the the hang 'em highs and high noons and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

That's why they call this a Neo, right? The Neo, yeah. Because it's set in 45, it's not an Old West. Right. Right. And yet they still have the remnants, because you gotta think, well, shit, the Old West was only 50 years before then, so that's like uh the party animal is to right now almost.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

The I I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I love how the train brings him in, then the train takes him out. You know what I mean? And that's your movie. Bang bang. I love that it's 82 minutes. I love that they didn't pat it. I love that there was no romance storyline. I love that Spencer Tracy wasn't Spencer Tracy wasn't trying to get into her pants. I love that we didn't have to watch him and her and Robert Ryan in some sort of tryst like they would have done in the 80s or 90s. No, you know. I mean, look.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

We watched Warlock, and that was very gay-coded, right? And then you watch this movie, and there's only one woman in it, but there's no sexuality in this film. There's no coding of anything. That's why I said Pondo's not happy showing up in this town because nobody's getting laid here. That's probably why they're so frustrated. But yet the numbers would say that somebody in there's in the closet amongst those characters, but it is never anything that is in a subtext or anything. Nope. And it's just not what this movie is. And usually when we watch these movies, that it's just all dudes, well, there's more than meets the eye going on, but this this isn't. No, I didn't have very many notes on this one. It's a short movie.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah. You know? Merci mercifully short, well, well made, just compact, tight, got its point across, did what it needed to do, did it really well, and it was entertaining. Yeah. And uh I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

I think it got the Oscars because sometimes they give people Oscars for movies because they didn't give them Oscars for their best work, so they get it for some of their other work. Uh, one of the stories is Spencer Tracy was gonna quit the production right before it started. So those had its share of issues, apparently, but they still ended up making a good movie, though.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Well, I mean it won Best Actor, Best Director, or no, I'm sorry, it was nominated for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. It didn't say it won anything for those, but you know. Yeah, I um I liked it. I give it um I'm gonna give it three and a half stars.

SPEAKER_03 38:32

Alright. I give it three.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

It for even being 82 minutes, there were some parts towards the third act where it's like, okay, you've kind of run out of uh story and you're flailing to wrap it up. But I still liked it though. I did too. You know, I can only be critical because unfortunately, it's 2025 and I was raised watching all the things that ripped this off. So I've seen the story already.

SPEAKER_00 38:59

But this one does that story very well. Well, and we've I think we've come across that we on the waterfront is another example of that where it's just like this movie is everywhere. Yeah, it is. The more you realize it, you you go, oh, okay. You know, Tootsie is got a lot of that. It's just weird how these movies are kind of everywhere. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's everywhere. That takes us to another movie that's everywhere. You just don't know it. It's in the background of your life, it's in your heart, it's in your mind, it's in your subconscious. Background of our life.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Look, if you're listening to this, it's in the background of your life.

SPEAKER_04 39:32

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Whether you like it or not. It's kind of like in a serious man where they say, You're getting Santana Abraxis, and the guy says, I don't want Santana Abraxis. Well, you're getting it anyway. Because you joined the Columbia House Record Club and you're getting an album every month until you pay us. Santana Abraxas. But let's go back to the era of when you could get 15 albums for a penny, but you couldn't get any of the songs that were in this kick-ass soundtrack. That's right. Columbia House, unfortunately. You had to go to like some off-beat record store, which a 10-year-old kid is not having access to. What is this movie that I saw probably within months of meeting Lee Marvin, the party animal?

SPEAKER_00 40:23

With with great songs by Cutting Gru, Devo, and Haircut 100. Oh, that's that's Dr. Detroit. That's an extra Detroit. Uh The Party Animal, 1984, rated R, one hour and 18 minutes. A farm boy arrives at college determined to lose his virginity, but has no luck with women until he discovers the secret formula to the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world and becomes the party animal. Oh, that's fucking description. This is directed by David Beard, written by David Beard, Nancy Fox, stars Matthew Cosby, woo, Timothy Carhartt, and Jerry Jones. Let me get a storyline going here. Jerry Jones of Dolmite fame. Pondo Sinatra is a college boy with a problem. Women will have nothing to do with him. It's not that he was raised on a chicken farm and literally came to school on the back of a turnip truck. It's not that he is a virgin and jinxed and every movie makes around a woman backfires. The problem is that God and heaven have set themselves against Pondo losing his virginity.

SPEAKER_02 41:17

Really?

SPEAKER_00 41:18

That is until Pondo discovers the secret formula to the most powerful aphrodisiac in the world it becomes the party animal. Someone's projecting IMDB.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Well, I mean, look, you can interpret it that way, but it never comes out and says it. See, what I thought you were going to say is he's got a problem with this pecker. Because that is the problem they say in the movie.

SPEAKER_00 41:38

The tagline is a chemical reaction. The tagline is going to get him some action. A chemical reaction got him some action.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

It's funny that you say that because I've noticed there's various poster art for this film. There's the uh original theatrical one that I saw in the video stores back in 85, where it's the guy holding the door back.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yes, that's the one I'm that's the one I'm familiar with, too.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

The UK one where it's Pondo with the Mohawk in between a butt and a pair of boobs. Yes, I remember that one. And I actually have that poster. I got it from somebody in the UK. So it was an actual. And then there's the uh it was actually hung in the theaters. It was just crazy to think. And there's a Canadian version where it's like Pondo is very small and he's on a chain, and there's all these legs, and he's like looking up.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

That's the one that's on IMDb. That's the main one, that's the one that's displayed on IMDb right now.

SPEAKER_02 42:37

Yeah, that's the that's the Canadian one. And then when they put it on DVD, it's the picture of like the Pondo head amidst all those like balloons. The legs. Yeah, the balloons, yeah. Which kind of looks like the shot when they're all chasing him out of the classroom when he looks back, kind of like, ah. But anyway, this movie is about a character named Pondo Sinatra. Now, you might have noticed that this show is called Talking Pondo. Well, not every week do we talk about Pondo Sinatra. We never talk about him at all. Matter of fact, I watched this movie again and I kept laughing to myself every time they said Pondo because I think of our company, because we've had the name so long. But why did you name your company Pondo? Well, back in the day we used to rent, you know, virtually everything. Apparently, we didn't rent Bad Day at BlackRock. I had never seen that before. Had you ever seen that before?

SPEAKER_00 43:29

Bad Day at Black Rock? I think I no, I I hadn't, but I and I think, especially back then, during the Duke's video days, when you and I were kids, when we were finally, there's a point when we were finally allowed to go to the video store on our own. Because your parents would take you to the video store when you were 12 and 13. But when you hit about 14 or 15, I was allowed to just go to the video store and I had money, and I would bring home tapes that I wasn't supposed to be watching.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

Yeah, I was gonna say we were more interested in. Running trash like that.

SPEAKER_00 44:01

Yeah, and so we were yeah, we were more interested, and especially if there was some nudity in it, that that was a big part of it too. But there was also just like, you know, I I love those kind of stupid Crown International pictures, you know, the the the jocks and the silly, you know, things like that. And I think that that stuff is kind of ridiculously dumb. And it was the stuff that I used to giggle my ass off to in the middle of the night when I was a kid and staying up late watching cable. So yeah, I I have a lot of affection for those type of movies, but I also understand that you know people today probably think they're pretty goddamn dumb. And I agree, they are.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

Well, this one's always been dumb. That was kind of the appeal of and and the fact that it came out in like 83, 84, whatever the year was, uh it was kind of the end of that cycle of the golden Porkies ripoffs. So in a way, this one's almost like a spoof of those type of movies because the way it has that airplane humor throughout, like, is this an intentional making fun? It's definitely not true. Yeah, it's it's definitely almost like a fairy tale in a weird way. Yeah, it's fantasy. Uh, even it's listed as comedy slash fantasy on Plex.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Uh that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 45:11

And I think I think the uh nature of it where you go, I can't tell if it's a complete spoof or not, is because David Bierard had a th theater background, the director of this movie. And so I think that gives that kind of that extra grounding to even as little of the characters that we have, you know. But also, uh the interesting thing about David Bierard is it seemed like his mission statement, because I've watched a bunch of his movies, not all of them, but most all, you know, the It Takes Two, My Chauffeur, Past the Ammo, uh, there's a handful of others, but he's usually showing the folly of men and women's relationships. And in this movie, I feel like this was the ultimate version of him pointing out just how ridiculous all genders are and their approach to hooking up and well and and in particular, I feel like you're right that he sort of I think you're right, he kind of leads into leans into this idea of like that a sex comedy like losing it, which I think comes out right around the same time, is kind of ridiculous.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Like he's doing it, but he's also sort of mocking the for the formula at the same time, right? Where he's like, all right, here because I mean I've got notes about that shit, but like it's like it's almost formulaic the way he's doing it. Where he's like, okay, it's almost like he's hitting a stopwatch and going, click, time for tits, go. Tits are over, go. It's ridiculous, it's insane. Time for music montage, click, okay, music montage over click.

SPEAKER_02 46:54

There's no fewer than like there's no fewer than like 18 montages in that.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

It's unfucking believable how many montages. I stopped counting. Yeah, it's unbelievable. I I never noticed it until now. How many fucking montages are in this movie? It's literally like half the movie.

SPEAKER_02 47:12

The really interesting thing about it is who is the third unit director of photography on this film? Peter Dimming. That's who was shooting all of those fucking montages, I bet you, because that's the third unit stuff, right? The shot where the woman's jogging down the stairs in slow motion for 45 fucking seconds, the most unnecessary shot in the movie. It's that type of stuff, right? I bet you he was the one who shot it. It all has kind of an artistic video style. That makes sense. That's hilarious. Even the sleazy stuff is shot in a really artistic manner, which sets it a little bit apart from, you know, it's the others. It's funny that you say the thing about the nudity. This movie's kind of quaint when you look at it today. It used to seem harsh, but you you realize now that okay. Well, let's let's just start at the beginning here. I'll I'll give you a second to gather your thoughts. Two minutes in No no, six minutes in this movie has the most obscene male stripper sequence I have ever seen in a movie. It goes on for two solid minutes, and it's the third montage in the film. Now take that in for a second.

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Okay, so I'm not okay, good. Because I'm not the only I'm not the only person who timed it. That's that's good.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

I timed a lot of things in this.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

Two and a half minute mail strip scene, David's on screen, uh, Mia Culpa, and to the women in the audience. Like, oh my, it's it's literally, it's literally David Beard's apology to all the women who got dragged to this freaking movie. He's like, look, here's something for you. You know, and I swear to God, there was literally, I have another note that's just what does it say? It says, um, okay, time to cut to our strip joint b-roll footage. Which one, which one do you want, David? Men's or women's? Eh, surprise me. Like, he doesn't that because that strip male strip scene could be anywhere and he could have put something else in its place. It's just wild.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Could I thought about it? If you place that scene later in the movie, it's really gonna fucking drag, right? Maybe, maybe. I I mean it's I don't know. Because he's Condo's already upped all of his every time he tries to go on a date, it's more absurd than the last. And so this is still that early on.

SPEAKER_00 49:41

It would have worked right around the time that they do that other workout montage where the dudes were coming to that too. It's pressing the girls.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

That's sixteen minutes into the movie. We're getting a reprise of the guys without shirts on, the fifth montage of the film, still no nudity. See, we always would think the movie has a shit ton of nudity in it. No nudity happens until almost a half hour in the film, and it's one really long strip poker sequence, and then there's no more nudity until the very end. It's kind of brief when Pondo finally gets laid, spoiler, and then when he's having that other montage where he's hooking up, but you think it's just tits through the whole movie, but it's really not. I think Porky's has more, and this focuses on the male nudity. It's not more because it's the 80s, because the 80s always have a bunch of greased up dudes in the film when you look back. It's like Top Gun and everything else. So it is it's almost quaint compared to today's standards. Bachelor Party.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

You gotta have a a stripper sequence in your 80s move movie, uh, Chippendales thing. This one just decides to bring it to you two minutes into the film. Well, and I think six minutes into the film.

SPEAKER_00 51:00

It's uh they special thanks to the city.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

We haven't even met the characters yet, and we're in the Chippendale scene.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

Yeah, they they special thanks to Mr. Filthy McNasty in the fire credits first, didn't they? And he yeah, he he owned a strip club called FM. And you'll see one of the girls in the film is wearing a shirt called FM. They're strippers. Um, and I mean, no, I'm no no judgment on on that, but that's that's how he got I think that's how he got the men and the women in the movie. But it's kind of like you notice you also notice that those scenes are almost all exclusively uh I think a few of the strippers made it into like the other nudity scenes, but they're exclusively not in anything else in the movie. They're completely removed and everything else is is shot like the actual Pondo Sinatra story at college.

SPEAKER_02 51:44

The actual actors do not get nudity. No, they don't get anywhere near that part.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Except for maybe Studley, and that's just in his, you know, and the the woman that Pondo first hooks up with. But it's still brief, but still yes. But yeah, you think it's just gonna be all, you know, but it's throughout the whole movie is nothing but nudity, and it's like, no, it's actually spread out. Uh, there's an equal amount, and it does, like you said, uh the timing aspect of it, it does kind of follow a pseudo-Roger Corman method of his crude thing was of the uh you have the the boobs at like 20 minutes and then like an hour and then like an hour and 20. But see, this one does the male thing instead for the first chunk, and then settles into the strip poker sequence, and then goes back to you know, virtually just a bunch of dumb jokes, is what this movie really is. It's it it I looked at it now and was like, oh, I'm not near there was times where I was like, why did we name the company Pondo? This movie's so ridiculous. But then you look back at it and you go, This movie's really not that bad compared to some other things. Some of the American Pie sequels are way more crude than this.

SPEAKER_00 52:59

It's it's just kind of right. It's not that it's it's not that it's you know, got more breach. It's raunchier. That's the what I was gonna say. It's not that it's got more breasts, it's not that it's got you know long, you know, full frontal nudity, it's not that it's got all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 53:15

It's just there's a level of full frontal, there's no push in this film.

SPEAKER_00 53:18

No, it's that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. No, there I don't think so. And um that so it it's just like the level, it's like the level of raunch is is really turned up. It reminds me of when the NPAA gave Henry Portrait of a serial killer NC17, and everybody's like, why? There's you know, there's very little cursing in it, and this, and there's very little nudity. What are you talking about? They're like tone. We just don't like the tone of the film, and party animal's tone is just kind of dirty. You know, it's uh even like even like hard bodies has kind of like a likable sort of tone to it where the party animals just kind of like this ridiculous raunch fest. So I think that maybe why people at the time it was when they think about it or talk about it or remember it, they have that because like you said, you're right with the nudity, it's not it's not at a level of like hard bodies or porkies or you know something like that, but yet it does I think have a reputation where it's like, oh, that that raunchy movie, that dirty movie. Right.

SPEAKER_02 54:15

So why did we call the company Pondo? Because it was always, well, if this got made, anything can get made. When you're 15, you don't realize this got made because it has tits in it. Yep, very true. That's it's just true. It's true. Well, in the morning, these type of movies are made, but still I I would not come back to this movie over and over again if it wasn't because I thought it was funny and it wasn't it didn't have the soundtrack, if it didn't have those songs in it, yeah, it would be like half as watchable, I think. It enhances it.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

It has a very kind of stupid charm in a weird way. I don't know how to explain it because it is it is an offensive raunchy movie. Like at one point he's kissing that girl on her ankles and then upper legs, and then he's trying to spread her legs at the knees, and his but yet his stupid comical face gets me laughing, you know, where he's just making these fucking faces and you know, and she says, I'm not that kind of girl, and he's like, Yes, you are, and I'm just like, Oh my god, you know, it's not no, you're not, you know, and it's he's he's roof, he's trying to roofie chicks, he's trying to roofie chicks, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:19

Yeah, and you go, Oh fuck, but then he roofies himself, uh-huh. And then the movie turns into perfume, right? And then everybody just kind of destroys him because he he has the the magical called ourselves Midas productions. There you go. Because it's kind of the same thing, you know, everything I touch turns to poontang is the line in the film.

SPEAKER_00 55:42

It's uh I think my one of my favorite bits, the one that made me really laugh out loud, was where he goes to get the Italian girl on the date and he immediately blows that blows that party favor in her face and she opens her mouth and he puts the shoves the pill down and and then massages her throat like she's a dog to make her swallow the pill. She's into it. Oh my god. She gets into the car and she's like, Oh, okay, let's go out. And I was just like, My God, this this fucking movie is ridiculous. Everybody's an NPC. But the movie also um does the old MasterCard interview trick. You remember that? Where you put the person slightly facing at an angle away from the camera, like they're talking to somebody.

SPEAKER_02 56:24

It's a documentary.

SPEAKER_00 56:26

Yeah, it's a might light them in a dark room, put the single spotlight on them, and then you've got your MasterCard commercial. I was in so-and-so when I couldn't find Baba, but I had my MasterCard. Well, it's just a documentary. Um well, MasterCard has a whole had a whole series of commercials that really had that look down, and people replicated it in the 80s for a while. Like it was just a weird look. Um the other thing about it was the uh the fucking headset microphone bit is so dumb because like I mean, he's six feet away, the continuity is yeah, he's he's talking into the microphone before Pondo's got his headset on. That's why it's a spoof. It's just it's so bad. Like, it's just wow. And to me, that's the other thing about this film. You we talk about what we what we got got from it and learned from it, and that's why we called it Pondo. You know, I learned a lot of things from this film, like what not to do, things that I like. I like musical montages. This thing's got like what is it, 20 of them, 18 of them, some shit like that. You know, 18 musical montages. Some have a little bit of dialogue, some don't. No wonder I like them. I like those, those are my favorite ones where they cut the music in the middle and they have some dialogue and then they bring the music back up and then they have a little more dialogue. I love that. That's my favorite.

SPEAKER_02 57:42

I mean, let's talk about 26 minutes into the movie. The same scene happens. I'd sell my soul for that part. But you're like, wait a minute, this is a slightly extended version of the scene we saw at the beginning of the movie. Yep. Wow. How many movies have you seen that show you itself twice?

SPEAKER_00 58:06

Absolutely. So here's another thing. I always forget that this movie opens up on the blonde. Oh, and it closes on the blind. And that and that she's the she's the the the I guess the div the devil, the evil device, the spirit woman that's gonna make sure that he's you know gets the gets what he wants and turns into the King Midas of Poontang, you know. And yet at the same time, she has a line where where she's talking to other girls about him. It's weird, it's it's like, and she looks like my my uh stepsister, kind of weirdly, and it's it's it's always weirded me out. It's just a it's a I always forget she's in the movie. I'm like, oh, that's right. It it opens with her, and she's kind of this weird, she's just like at one point, she's just in the film walking towards the camera in an outfit, and then she just stops and stares at the camera and they cut away. Yeah, I can hear the song playing right now. Is it she's just a girl?

SPEAKER_02 59:00

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:04

Just a stick, just a girl.

SPEAKER_02 59:06

I've seen the movie so many times that I can go into any point of it and you know, I know it in and out. Pondo Sinatra, no.

SPEAKER_04 59:15

It wasn't that bad.

SPEAKER_02 59:19

Let's talk about the stern map. This is the map of the that's that's the that's the Ferris Mueller reference. To the moon and back. And I'm like, oh, this is like in the right stuff. It turns out I think the stern map is made up. I couldn't find anything about that on Google. So I don't know if that's historically accurate or not. You let us know out there, listeners. Uh I am a pilgrim. Edit it on videotape. Really? That's an interesting credit. Fascinating. It looked like it was film tape film. That's the eighties for you. I always thought this was one of the first direct-to-video movies, but no, this had a theatrical run somewhere, but it was one of the first movies I remember seeing the poster of in the video store. In the Safeway grocery store when they were in it, movies. I saw that poster. I saw that poster in every video store back then, and I just actually thought, well, did they just make this for video? And then we started seeing made-for-video movies. So in my mind it was always one of the first, but not really.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:29

Yeah, that's interesting because you go from 24 frames to 30 and back to 24.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:34

Yeah, I wish I'd like to know a little bit more about that. Yeah, that's interesting. Using the blah blah method, it's one of the things in the end credits there when the song stops playing, because the credits were longer than the music at the end, which is always kind of funny when you see a movie like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

The sh the the montage of college girls. I was like, one of my notes is oh great, another montage of college girls. It's been too long. It's been too long. I don't know, whichever one. You know, like I said, it's hit him with the tits.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

Oh, I thought you were actually doing the song.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:13

It's just insane. The old hound dog's gonna eat it up. I mean, this movie, I swear, the white guy at the black party being obscenely racist and using the N-word. I mean, this movie is just hitting all the kind of trope comedy notes and making complete fun of them, like you said. You know, you know, he comes home with a giant pick shoved directly into his forehead.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

You know, if if they had made a soundtrack, which they never did and they never will, unfortunately, but I suspect the song Kill the White Man probably wouldn't have been on the soundtrack.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:45

I would I would have suspected.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:47

It might be the funniest song in the film.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:51

And then we get the then we get the strip poker, you know, smuddy animal house gag where you dress up as a woman and you infiltrate the sorority and you know, um take off your goddamn shirt. It's all for the gag at the you know. And then a music montage again.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:10

He had only one thing on his mind. He had a heart on. So you cut to that scene and you realize that that's you don't I like how it stops. The scene just that's no lady, and it just stops, and you imagine that he must have gotten the living shit made out of it. You don't see it happen. Right, right. I also like when he gets the punk makeover that, well, we got him in the costume, is how I imagine. So let's shoot a few more. It's like he's still wearing this fucking getup three days later or whatever, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's that's my thing. They do the they do the bullshit that's an animal bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

See, David Lynch is in this film too, sir. There's a little bit of elephant man right there. I am not an animal.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:51

Yep. And then of course it's the hunchback in Notre Dame bit. This movie is is just shameless. It's like And then, of course, Studley takes him to the whorehouse. And this is how this is how dumb the movie is, too. Which I kinda again, if I when I watch this movie, I learn things like don't do dumb shit like this where you go. It's the prostitutes, where he just takes him to the prostitutes and it's like, why not get him out of the Quasimoto outfit first? Well, sir, that would be my cousin Vinny's.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Then that would work and the movie would be over. That would be like, I I took the can of tuna fish. It's uh it's my cousin Vinny's stuff, where it's like, if you would just stop being ridiculous, we could get through this.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:36

It's the same thing, it's that bad, like that bad day at BlackRock dialogue I was telling you about, where it's like, I I'll do it, I swear. Oh, what if you do? Well, I won't. I will, I will, I will, I watch me. So you don't know what you don't know what you're into. I do what I do know what I'm into.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:50

If they had made the party animal in the 50s, it would have been an Abbott and Costello vehicle. Maybe. Right? Because he's still taking them to the whorehouse with the costume on. It's the perfect type of who's on first. Ridiculousness. And the straight man is is Bud Abbott. Oh man, this shit writes itself. But it makes sense because we learned about the Finn Man influence on my show first. So is there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:17

We're we're 32 minutes into this film and there's no plot at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

Well, yeah, the plot starts at 48 minutes in, and then it becomes the second movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

It's like a weird character piece with a lot of racy music montages and and you know, spray cheese on a Twinkie, by the way. That that that's the perfect metaphor for the 80s. It's like, well, that's maybe the first thing you stop doing is the advice. Yeah, the kids, if you want to know what the 80s were like, get a Twinkie and put spray cheese on it and eat it. And that's that's the 80s. And if you want to get a date, maybe not do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

Or find somebody who's into that. Exactly. But instead, Studley just says, drugs. Women love drugs. That's great advice. You know, this is a reverse rom-com. It's a dude who can't hook up who keeps getting bad advice from his friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:10

Again, I I I told you that's a trope. You keep getting, you know, the whole only this time Studley actually knows what he's talking about. It's just that he that they he can't follow the advice correctly. Or he's doing it in such a like a uh a fucking wily coyote and roadrunner ass type manner, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:30

It's the clothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:31

Clothes make the oh, I walk right by Dillinger Willinger's into Dillinger's, you know, and it's the same thing. But it the the drug ingestion scene is one of my favorites.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:40

Oh, that's yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:43

That's it's one of my favorites. It he does every you know, rolls the jet big old ass joint, and then he uh takes out a mirror and cuts cocaine with a meat cleaver.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:54

It's one of the best uh music cues in the movie where they just drop right into the solo of Harmony in my head. Cutting up those lines, and it's like, oh, that's whoever made these these uh music choices, my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:09

Yeah, yeah, it's really good. Uh my god, I'm purple. He eats all that acid.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

And it just suddenly just recovers in 20 seconds, and he's like, it's airplane.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

Just eating these giant bottles of pills and you know, Gar Swallet with some coke, you know, and oh my god. And it's actually that candy that's on paper. It's hilarious. 40 minutes. 40 minutes in, still no plot.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

No, that happens at 48 minutes when he uh is almost kicked out of school, but then hears about something called an aphrodisiac. Aphrodisiac, which means which means what according to the movie? Afro meaning large penis. And Disiac. From the Greek, which means want it bad. Right. So large penis and want it bad. Yes, yes, you got it. Aphrodisiac. Yes, you got it. We even have the uh crazy German professor who has one scene in the film but is memorable because it gives Pondo the idea. It's funny watching this movie again and watching it on a TV set that's modern where you see all the overscan. You can see Sudley sitting behind Pondo in that scene now, and he's just like non-acting. He's just kind of frozen back there because you're not supposed to see him. So it's kind of neat to notice those things. Now, I prefer the uh open mat full frame version, but I do like the widescreen copy as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:38

Full frame is the one I watched. Yes. Um the weird flicker of the black and white stock as we go into the porno store for the close-up of Pondo and the dildos is so strange. There's a weird, I think that's the the that's a problem with the stock of the film or or the processing of it, but you'll see as you watch him go into the porno store and he's playing with the dildos on the wall, every copy of the stock that way. The stock changes color. That's that's because that's the film. That was that's either the film from the lab, it's bad, or they did a bad job processing it, one of the two, or they used a badly processed piece. But yeah, it's uh you want to talk about the scene?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:15

Yeah, then we get into this scene. This scene is uh this scene is the origin of clerks, people in in my mind. Uh black and white scene in a sex shop happens in the middle of the movie, and you would think the weirdest scene in the movie is uh not Pondo and Chains in the dream sequence. That's not the weirdest scene. And you would think, is it this sex shop scene where they do the on the waterfront speech talking about I could have been a contender?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:48

America could have been somebody, could have been a contender.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:51

And I'm like right back to the before trilogy again where On the Waterfront was always playing in the movie theaters. Oh, Richard Link later, you're a crazy filmmaker. Yes, this movie is Raging Vol, also in black and white, which mentions I could have been a contender. For some reason, that Marlon Brando speech is in the middle of this film where this movie just stops dead in its tracks and becomes another movie about the SALT talks.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:22

Strategic Arms Limitation. Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Yes, that's very good. But we're gonna reenact this scene with dildos of the regular missiles until finally you're fucked. Fucked with a big old 10-inch dildo. Yeah, it blows my mind. It's one of the weirdest parts of the movie, but it is by proxy makes these other movies Pondo movies because of the on the waterfront connection.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:47

And so and so what happens, folks, is that Pondo goes to the porn store, I guess, to get himself a marital aid because he thinks that's going to help him with nobody gave him this advice. This advice this he came up with this is what the guy from Alabama has come up with. And so he goes into the store, and of course, as he's shopping around, the cameras cut to the the main clerk and his buddy who are behind the counter having this talk about, and and of course, the joke is they're having this deep discussion about nuclear war, and they're using the dildos to represent the global thermonuclear war theater that will happen. And then Pondo comes up and he and he's trying to buy something, and they're like, and they immediately, I guess, smell that he's a roux because they offer him what is the biggest, stupidest fucking thing that you could ever buy, and it's a giant, it's a giant dildo that's like eight feet long and has to be plugged in and it looks like a missile. And and somehow in the next scene, he's convinced another girl to come back to his place and he whips this thing out and lowers it at her.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

He's your suit Larry. He always messes it up at the last second if he goes too far with it. He thinks he has to go over the top, he can't just you know be normal. We wouldn't have a movie, but then that thing shorted out half the campus last night, and so that's one of the final draw uh straws to kick him out while he's uh creating the aphrodisiac and then discovers it. And uh so while he's trying to semi-roofy all of these people on dates, he's got a spray, he's got pills, he's got uh uh what else? It's uh one of my favorite parts of the movie is Blink and You'll Miss the Meta Luna mutant from This Island Earth. Kondo has turned somebody into a version of the Meta Luna mutant. That's right. And he also turned a woman into a gorilla. This movie is another one of the fine tradition of crazy gorilla films. One of the movies that features a person in a gorilla suit doing goofy shit. I didn't even realize that.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

One of them is uh is a smoking corpse, another one is bald, another one has a beard. I mean, he's he's he's really gone through the campus and done some serious fucking damage.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:16

One of them is dead on the on the Metaluna mutant, that's when he's like, oh man, I really messed that up. But then he makes up for it by roofing himself, becoming a party animal where he's the king Midas, where every woman cannot leave him alone, which leads to his demise. Because karma. The whole movie is about karma, as Elbo the Sage likes to tell.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:42

Corma. It's the other that's the other thing, too, that kind of I think I've said this to you the we the entire time we've known each other. The other all the other times he's using a spray, he's using pills, he's using something that he can control and repeat. And but when he finally but when he finally figures it out and it's working, and he knows it's working, he just drinks all of it. He just dumps it all over himself rather than kind of bottle it up and spray it when he needs it so he can live a normal life because he's an idiot.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:13

He came to the college on the back of a turnip truck. That's the truth. But the thing is, how did uh my head can and well he he was a what sixth year senior or whatever it was?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:26

Six-year senior.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:27

Apparently he's good at chemistry because when the second movie kicks in and he is suddenly a mad scientist and he can make aerosol cans. Somebody's funding all this shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:38

Then at the end where he's just got a he's got a bus tub from a restaurant and he's just dumping used chemicals into them. Like, oh that's that's safe. I'm sure that's the right way to do it. Here you go clean it up. Yeah, splash, splash, splash. Let's just put all these chemicals together. And that won't blow up. That's what did it, though.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

That was the that was the winning combination.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:59

It's uh it's a weird movie full of weird choices. At one point when she's farting in the car, rather than roll down a window, he just he keeps opening the door to fan it. And it's just like, dude, just roll the window down.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:12

If you don't like fart scenes, there's a scene towards the end of the movie that's it's gotta be like five minutes long of just if you're 10 years old, you're gonna be the tears. And then I just hear Charlie at the comic book shop saying, It's not really my kind of comedy, guys. And then we're thinking it must have been something. But it even as dumb as it is, it's still funny because like and she's like, ah, all the little yeah, it's just it's stupid, but they're having fun with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:49

Yeah, it it makes no sense. It's a bunch of skits wrapped up in a silly man metaphor, you know, Miranda. Oh, she's fate, the girl in white, you know, the blonde in white. And it's a, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a I give Beard credit, you know, he didn't Bob Clark it, right? Like he leaned into kind of like making it as sort of satirically stupid as he could and doing a lot of silly shit. Stuff that, again, if you're 10 years old, you'll find funny, and then later on in life maybe you'll realize, like, like we do, like, oh, you know, it's more like kind of making fun of the and of the metaphor than it is actually trying to reproduce it. Yeah, um, although I again I sound like I'm trying to defend the film, I'm not. I just I I've I've loved it for a long, long time, and I always get a laugh at it. My wife thinks it's the stupidest thing she's ever seen.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:40

Well, it is.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:41

That's what's that's what that's part of the best part about it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:44

Like, how did this well besides the obvious, you go deeper and you go, it's just so perfectly almost like remedial or simplified, right? Because it's like the Ramones of uh sex comedies, it's just a simple one, two, three, four, da da da da da. It's just a joke at its most core. And just in a sex comedy, yeah, it can be its most pure form. So that's why I've I've always registered it as the ultimate because it's kind of putting a cap on that genre. After '84, we didn't really get a lot of raunchy ones to kind of run a course. And this kind of was like, well, we're making fun of it and put a cap on it, you know, good night. Yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:32

Yeah. Well, they had a that whole kind of and yeah, you get you can point out others. You can point out the American Pies and the rebirth thing. But you know, it had a run. That that type of that type of film had a run of about six years and then it was over. Five or six years and then it was over, and then it popped back up with American Wedding, and you had some National Lampoon Van Wilder type stuff. And then it's died. It's also died out again.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

You know, it's because of the internet. People just go straight to porn. They don't have goofy movies. Yeah. I hear you. Uh it you know, speaking of it being a bunch of skits, uh, our first attempt at a movie was trying to remake this film. And what we did is we took a couple of scenes from it and shot those, and the rest were just skits we made up. You know, there's no copy, thank God, probably. But uh that's what we were and spelled like, well shit, we can just do that. I remember doing the porn shop scene. Yes, it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, but it was uh we were using like cardboard tubes instead of dildos, so people would not have known what the fuck we were even doing if we'd actually put the thing out. I just thought about that, like, but we were learning, right? We didn't care, we just wanted to shoot a skit and get some camera. Exactly. So for that alone, it it was worth the problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:52

We need we needed the we needed an idea to shoot. At that point, what we were doing was trying to figure out cameras and angles and audios and how to edit and put things together and tell story. And so we just needed something, and and the idea was okay, well, let's steal the couple scenes from the party animal, and then we'll write our own material, and it they'll be all a bunch of shorts, and we'll tie them together by making it look like somebody's flipping through the cable channels and watching watching TV, right? Kind of like kind of like a Kentucky Fried movie groove tube type of thing, exactly. And so we we we mixed all that together, trying to at least come up with a concept because you know, again, it was we we just weren't ready to write things at that point. Right. You know, I mean shit, we even wrote Steven Spielberg and asked him if we could make well Stephen King. Or Stephen King, sorry, and asked him if we could make um was it Rage, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:43

Rage, yeah. When Rage was still in print. And it's funny now is our our friend Richard Richard Chomps Thompson, who was on the show. I saw that, he made a little short. He made a Stephen King short. Yeah, good for him. And he knows dude over at the soundstage, so yeah. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:03

More to follow on that, folks.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:05

Yeah, because we tried to make Stephen King's short movie before they had the Stephen King short film thing. That was like 1990, but he wrote you back and it was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:15

Yeah, he did write me back and it was really nice. He basically said, Thanks for asking before just going into production, because most of the time I hear about my films, my books are being turned into movies after the fact, basically. Once they're already in production, they'll tell me. And then he told me he couldn't give me the rights to it because he'd already sold them.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:30

All right. So and it will never be a movie of Rage because that book is out of print because of Columbine. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:38

Uh you got anything else? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:42

Uh so the first time I saw this was uh my uh brother-in-law Eddie, as mentioned on the Fast Times episode, the guy who rented that movie, and I said, It's gonna be on cable next month, you know. And he's like, I rented it for you, and I felt so bad. But he came home one day with this movie, and we didn't know what it was, and we were just like the just blown away at the because the it's so dumb that you laugh harder in part. Yeah, and the first time seeing this when you're like 10 or 11, it's mind-boggling. And what always stood out to me was the music because I was just hearing pop on the radio. It was not easy for me to hear any kind of any smoke control. College punk, any of that shit. So I'm hearing all that Buzzcocks and and these other bands that I'll touch on here in a second, and just like, why isn't that on the radio? These should be these just as good as anything else, and then so this movie helps introduce me into uh punk music a little more. Uh it's funny because you know, just a few years before this, Jeff is getting hit in the head with a shoe at a Buzzcocks concert. We don't even know him yet. We're watching this, he's working on garbage pail kids, and eventually we all come together. It's really fucking crazy. Uh, so what what else here? Over time, the opinion of this movie has gotten better. When it was new, it you always get a turkey or a bomb in the movie books, and you look now, and it has a 71% on Rotten Tomatoes with the 54 uh audience score. So people have it up to this now. They figured it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:30

I think you're I think you're you're right. I mean, I again I think people get what we're talking about with it, where again, it it's it only seems like it's raunchy because of what it's saying and kind of doing at times, but the nudity is mild in comparison. Like, yeah, there's a point, there's a point at one point where where Pondo's got a gun in his mouth, and Studley and his two girlfriends are are begging him to stop, and he finally goes, Yeah. And then he borrows, and then he drops the gun and shoots one of the girls and she rolls off the bed, and he goes, Shit, Studley, I'm sorry. And what does Study do goes, don't worry about it. Like it's not a big deal, you just shot this girl, right? Like, so it's there's a level of kind of ridiculous raunch and stupidity going on that I think even amplifies the nudity to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:12

Where your jaw goes, What? Yeah, what the fuck? It's kind of like a scary movie or a naked gun with that, where you're like, that's they're not trying to be blatantly offensive. It's kind of like that's so offensive that it's gone beyond and it's funny because it's right. The folly of men and women is how I look at it. Uh what else do we have? Okay, let's do the soundtrack. Okay, so Soundtrack's killer. Soundtrack is killer. I mean, we got several Buzzcock songs. I finally got to see them last year, and they did play Why Can't I Touch It, which was awesome. They also did Harmony in My Head and I Don't Mind. No, everybody's happy nowadays at my show, but hey, three out of four is pretty damn good. I remember going and buying that CD of uh singles going steady because I finally found it in '93 of all things, and we would listen to it and everybody'd be like, What the fuck is this? It's Buzzcocks, and we listened to the whole album, got into more of that. Uh there's uh a Concrete Blonde song on this, but they were called Dream Six.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:27

Or no, Dream Six, you're right.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:29

Yeah, Dream Six. I guess it was an early version of them, and then Concrete Blonde does the song Rain on one of their later albums. It's a more fleshed-out version, but we found the Dream Six version of the song, like on the one of the earliest versions of Amazon music nearly 20 years ago when you could first download music. Very nice. We did a search for that. I don't know, but we found it somehow. It's very cool. Uh, the flesh tones have a couple of songs on this. I guess they're a genre called super rock that I was unaware of. It's not quite ska like the untouchables, another great band in the movie, who are also in Repo Man, one of our first films. See, it has an Alex Cox connection as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:14

Uh and uh there's you got Gasmo doing Goamental, you got the Convertibles doing She's Just a Girl.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:23

Those are the more like were I wonder if those were local or were they signed to IRS? Because we can't find those. We can't find those at all, yeah. But at least one of these. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:33

Go ahead. No, you go. Oh, go, go, go, go, go. Well, I was just gonna say one of the things I wanted to talk about was the um kill the white man.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

That's written by the fucking guy who wrote the movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:46

John Michael Michenaud. And in fact, uh his IMDB, he's he produced 52 movies and he was an actor in 29. He was a child actor who moved into producing later on in life. Um, he was in uh shit in 1964, 65, he was on doing television combat, rap patrol, wow, Virginian. He was on an episode of The Odd Couple in 72. Bad Day at BlackRock. Uh no. But he ended up but somehow he ended up being a line producer for a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, like Secrets of the Back to the Future trilogy, Star Trek A Captain's Log, William Shatner's Star Trek Memory Memories, uh Cheers Last Call, Bob Hope New Heart 19th Anniversary Special. Like he did a lot of stuff like that. And then at some point, and that he did that into the 2000s, I guess. But at some point he writes this film. Oh, I thought I thought David Beard wrote that song. No. Kill the White Man is could is is written and performed by him, by Gerald Michinon.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:57

Along with along with They Don't Like My Clothes. No, he David Beard wrote the lyrics with him. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:03

But pe but he performed it and and wrote the lyrics too. So it's uh it's I I just looked him up and I was like, okay, so here's the guy who's kind of I I in my opinion, probably teaming up with David to get everything done, right? Because he has a lot, he has a lot of experience making this, making pictures and being on stuff. So uh I don't know. It seemed like because uh when you look at other everybody else's credits, they have no fucking idea what they're doing for the most part.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:30

Which they are they are it's all early in their careers. Which leads us to the strangest soundtrack uh selection. Okay, this is a task if you're willing to accept it, listeners. Find us the UK version of this film. Find us the UK version of the party animal. Why? Because apparently that is the version that has the song by REM in it. Radio Free Europe is in the credits, but it is not in the movie. Now, throughout the years, doing various research on this film, I have concluded that it is in the European cut of the film during the male stripper sequence in the beginning of the movie. Which I can't quite picture, but I do want to see what that looks and sounds like. So if somebody can find that copy out there, we'd be very, very pleased.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:20

So do we so do we lose what what song is that being played?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

Roman gods, yeah. Okay, that's what I'm saying. Because that gets repeated several times throughout the film, so I guess for whatever reason.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:35

So this so this cinematographer did Weekend Pass, Young Lady Charterly to Hunk Cheerleader Camp, and then moved into a horror, basically. Like his stepmother he shot Jason Takes Manhattan.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:49

Oh, yeah, it's Brian England. Yeah, I was gonna talk about him. It's funny that uh you mentioned Weekend Pass because Peter Deming worked on that film too, right before this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:00

And it's worth a look. Weekend pass. Linkin you'll miss Phil Hartman in that movie. That's probably that's about sailors trying to get laid for the weekend. Probably how Deming got his uh probably how Deming got his job, too. I'm thinking, yeah. So those are probably movies early in his career he probably wouldn't want to talk about, but he has not met us yet. Uh speaking of uh Deming, I don't know if this is one of his shots, but I think the best shot in the movie is when Pondo's full riz happens. Now you know what I'm talking about when he says, hey, girly, over here. And over here. That one long shot. Girl, that Pondo, that girl's a mile, half a mile away. And it's just that single shot of her running across the field, slowly getting undressed until she runs right in the Pondo. And then you see that shot of suddenly, like, oh, like even he's surprised by you know the magnetism. But I was like, that's a good warner. And the song perfect over it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:05

I like the uh my other favorite part of that is where they they just cut to him and he's standing there with his scarf and he looks like Napoleon kind of.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:13

The movie had weird shots like that. Weird shots like that. It does it's a strange fucking movie. All the time. All the time. I'm sure people from Alabama get laid.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:25

So uh Timothy Carhartt is in this movie. He plays Studley. Yeah, we tracked his career throughout the 80s and 90s. Most of you know him as the uh what is it, the stiff in Ghostbusters? What do they call him? Sigorney Weaver's other boyfriend from the other cellist, yeah. And you see him doing the nasal spray. Yeah, but we also see him in things like The Hunt for Red October, and uh Thelman Louise is a big one for him.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:52

He was Marg Helgenberger's husband in CSI for the first two or three seasons, I think, and then they killed him off.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:00

And he was also in things like Candyman Part 2, so he's got enough horror cred that I'm still hoping one day up at a con somewhere, which leads us to Leland Crook, who played the gay secretary. This guy's got a huge career as well. He's done a ton of TV. If it was a show in the 90s or the aughts, he was probably in it. Yep. Right, everything from charmed to uh Oh shit, he's in Yellowstone.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:29

I just looked him up. Yeah, he's still going. Timothy Carhart is, I mean.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:32

Oh well, see, it all ties back to this earlier this afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:38

Yeah, that's crazy. But yeah, Leland, uh Leland worked really well, and I think he did he did a lot of um he did some sci-fi, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:30:46

He's a Star Trek guy, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:47

Yeah, yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:50

So yeah, the the Kevin Bacon game is strong with this one.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:55

Um so I think the weirdest part of this weird movie, it's this the dream sequence where Pondo's singing the song about being a party animal. The lead character of the movie is having a dream where he is singing the theme song about himself from the movie. Very fucking weird. I was like, okay, that's the weirdest part.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:20

Uh the the to me, the other weird part is is that whole series when he finally gets his, like you said, he gets his Riz and he's in that weird tiger jacket, and those girls are all spinning around in front of him and looking at each other and looking at him, and it was just like this is such a weird one.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:37

That's the concrete blonde song.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:38

Yep. Yeah. And it's a great tune.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:43

Oh, I I know I got some more notes here. You know, I saw this on the movie channel in the mid-80s. At least more than once. So this this was on cable for a short time. I remember watching this at my dad's place, strangely enough. Yeah, I never caught it until you gave me a VHS tape of it, and I watched it obsessively for quite a while. I have a memory of that rabbit with the Confederate flag on it at the end. Uh and we did the soundtrack. The first year I saw it. The credits say 83. IMDB says 84, who the fuck really knows anymore at this point.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:24

It could have been released late 83, could have been like Star Wars. You know, I remember seeing Star Wars in 78, not 77.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:31

This movie is not streaming as of the time of this recording. You can only get it on an out-of-print DVD. That's like 30 or 40 bucks. Good lord, do you not watch this film on YouTube because last time I checked, the songs are missing. So what's the point? If you've only ever seen this movie on YouTube, then you have not seen the film. If it has the songs missing, I believe, because somebody put it up there in like eight chunks ages ago, back when YouTube was 10 minutes limit on the video.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:05

Like and subscribe. If you want to, you can grab a VHS tape off of Amazon for$40. But a DVD will cost you, a DVD will cost you$14.95.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:17

Get that DVD, because those tapes are pretty chewed up at this point. Not because of the dirty scenes, just because of the tape's fucking old. Uh yeah, I I think I might have stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:39

I think I'm I think I've said everything I need to say about this movie, other than uh, you know, I think the uh the biggest part of this movie is that you and I bonded over it. Yeah. Um, that it seemed to kind of both of us found it so ridiculously funny and so um nobody else knew about this movie. We were the only people that knew about this movie. And in high school, we ended up being those people that only knew about certain films that we watched. Nobody had seen things like Basket Case or Frankenhooker or Party Animal or some of these other films that we were watching. Um I considered it a cult movie, even though it was a cult of two. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in high school they were watching, you know, Twin Peaks and and ooing and eyeing over that, and you and I are in the corner with our fucking party animal giggling our asses off.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:27

Who was in both? David Lynch. David Lynch. Who passed away this year, but he's still with us every day, guys, in little ways. You look, and then there's David Lynch hiding around the corner. I am not an animal. Bullshit, that's an animal, and that's the whole movie in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:47

I uh I struggle with the score. I wanna I want to avoid being nostalgic about it and score it on its merits, which I have done kind of mercilessly throughout this entire podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:57

Um the score is the best part, the music. I'm like, oh, you're score is the score.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

No, score, score the the film. I'm gonna go three and a half stars again, I think. I may I reserve my right to go up or down based upon my thoughts on it, but I just watched it about four days ago, and I'm still kind of I don't watch it that often anymore. Yeah. But every time I do, I really enjoy it. Uh, and I forget why I liked it so much every time I which I like. I go far enough away from it that when I come back, I'm like, oh, I like that. That's right, I really like this movie. Um, but I can't say it's a cinematic masterpiece. I can't say that it's the most beautifully lit or the most beautifully shot movie. It's competent, it's funny, it's really dumb and stupid. Um I really like it. Nostalgia-wise, like 10 stars. Like, you know, a gentleman's 20. It's it's a ridiculous amount on uh on nostalgia.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:54

I stood up and applauded the TV after it was over. Why did we used to call our company Pondo's Children Productions? Well because we were yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:06

Well, you you you you tell them tell them we were the we were the children of Pondo. We believed that we were the direct descendants of Pondo Sinatra and his mania, his goofy. We loved how goofy of a character he was. Like it's just like I said, his whole like I'm pilgrim, you know, and all the ridiculous antics, you know, and all the stupid shit. Like, we loved his character and we loved the film, and so we just felt like we were the children of the film. Thirdle Delta, the bearded clam, the holy spot!

SPEAKER_02 1:36:36

You know, he's an idiot. You know, so we did Don't whine for the champagne. Uh we did our second episode of our public access show.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:49

And our director at the time came out and said, What do you want to call your company name? We need something to write, you know, copyright, 1990. And then, of course, I say Pondo, because I have it on the brain at the time. And then Cliff says children. And then it became Pondo's Children, much like how Cliff said. Now, another weird anecdote to this is when we tried to make that remake of the party animal, we also attempted to write a sequel to the screenplay, which didn't go very far. It's fanfic before fanfic had a name. True. But it was about Pondo's child.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:33

So Pondo's children.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:35

And then uh years later, we start making movies for realsies, not doing the access thing as much anymore. We're not minors anymore. And then we put out a call for auditions for one of our films for Pondo's Children Productions. And guess what? People thought we were making kids movie. That's right. We realized we had to change the name of our company, and then it was like, well, what are we gonna change it to? And well, we had a Pondo Pictures was floating around for a little bit. We used that on marijuanos, but we settled on what Cliff came up with Enterprises and Pondo Enterprises, it has been ever since. So now you know the rest of the story. Thank you, Paul Harvey. Five stars for me to say anything under that is that fucking nostalgia be damned, five stars. And it's much like in mixed nuts, it's a half on the other end, because it's terrible, but that's why. Yeah, it's it's the alpha and the omega. And then we never got to meet David Beard, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:44

I would have loved to have meet him, I would have loved to have told him I'm a big fan of his film.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:47

You would have thought we were nuts, I'm sure. But we did get to meet Deborah Foreman, who was in my chauffeur, which we covered last year from the same director, and we got to talk a little bit about David Beard with her, so that was very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:01

Yeah, I think she was shocked that we didn't want to talk about Valley Girl or any of the other stuff that she was in. We wanted to, and I can't believe we didn't talk to her about Real Genius. I'm still killing myself over that. I want to get me started on what I didn't ask E. G to do anything about. I was so I was so focused on her being in my chauffeur and it being a David Beard film that I just couldn't, I damn near couldn't think of anything else. That was pretty wild.

unknown 1:39:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:22

But uh so next episode is two years of us doing the show. Good lord. It's it's our two-year anniversary episode of the first one released. And so uh I've been having some special things planned for episodes that movies talk about 4100 or like the party animals start the year with, and and so there was really only one left that I had in my back pocket for the two-year anniversary show. Everything else is kind of like, well, just figure it out as I go. Bring it on. And so your movie next week for the two-year anniversary is the first movie we went to go see at the movie theater together to review for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1990. I figured that would be very fitting for an anniversary show. I haven't seen it in a while. Got a good high def copy, so I always liked the grittiness of that one the way it looked.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:24

Um okay. Well, that's interesting. I have, I mean, I have a lot of films listed here that I could go through. I'm just not sure what I want to give you at this point. I'm not really on any kind of thematic thing. I know we're I know we're at that 200 mark though, and so it might be fun to give you something kind of weird. Yeah, so you still wrapping up.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:42

But I think I'm gonna spare you and I'm gonna do something a little different. And yeah, and I'm gonna give you a film. Uh uh, so let's I actually let's I got one theme to wrap up. Okay. Okay, you've seen two of these already, and it's time for the third one. And it's time to finish it up, and it's the it's his it's his modern west trilogy. We just talked to an actress and interviewed her that will pop up later on one of our episodes. The guy who made Yellowstone, we're gonna watch Wind River.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:14

Wind Wind River, okay, because I told you there better be a bank.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:17

I am very glorious. So there you go. Wind River. We'll see if there's a bank in it.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:23

Yeah, or a turtle.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:29

A no holy moly, this thing's been running. Normally we have a guest and we run this long.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:34

Yeah, well, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:36

This is an important film, though. It's our uh yeah. This is this is our uh yeah, this is our Lawrence of Arabia. In the in the non-way, in the most weird way. Anyway, you want to get out of here on a quote? Mm-hmm. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:53

I want the M5. That's if I give a movie a five, you see. He had a one-track mind. He was obsessed.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:04

My headphones are out!

SPEAKER_02 1:42:07

Later.