It was the nicest little whorehouse you ever saw.

And it just goes downhill from there, doesn't it?

I just, I don't even know where to begin. I don't know why we did this to ourselves. I, this was, this was a horrible mistake.

You know, my parents used to protect me from certain movies. You know, they said, well, you can't see this movie. It's not appropriate for you. And now that I've seen this movie, I'm really happy they protected me from it. I finally, for the first time, I feel like they weren't protecting me from Excalibur or from Dirty Harry. They were protecting me from something actually horrible.

I don't know that there's much danger of our wider audience inadvertently subjecting themselves to this film, but I do feel the only silver lining of this experience is our ability to warn anybody flirting with such an ambition to run wildly in the other direction.

Yes, in the other direction from this show. And Paul, I want to acknowledge that, you know, before we introduce ourselves and go to our glorious theme music, that, you know, this is gonna be especially difficult for me because you are from Texas. You have a lot of explain to do.

So, as I'm happy to be afforded any opportunity to say, I'm originally from Michigan, but I was moved to Texas against my will before I was old enough to mount any substantive opposition.

And have you been able to mount an opposition? This film would have been an exhibit A, right?

Well, but I was raised in Texas. I have very mixed feelings about my home state for reasons that are probably obvious. But I also, as I tell my Austin friends, I did time at Texas A&M, and then I moved to Austin to recover. And this film is very woven into the fabric of that institution's...

That's right, that institution is a major character in the film, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Yes, so there's so much to unpack here. Oh, it is...

Maybe this one might go longer than Wrath of Khan, who knows, but... In apropos of that, allow me to say... I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And as strongly disinclined as I am to associate my name in any way, shape or form with what we're about to discuss, my name is Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is...

Multiplex Overthruster: Summer of '82.

Oh, boy. I listen to our majestic theme, and wow, what we're about to do.

My deep pervasive feeling on hearing that theme for the first time is one of mourning, because I feel like, for the first time, this is a film that is woefully unworthy of the majesty of our theme.

It really is, yeah. And we've done Megaforce.

And we did Megaforce, but there's part of me that's thinking, why did we do this? And I know we gotta get to the recap. I'll do the recap as best as I can. But let me just say, I don't know why we did this. I think this was a horrible mistake. It's like we have veered off into a ditch of doom somehow. And part of me was feeling, is this the universe punishing me for inflicting Grease 2 on the two of you? But I'm watching this, I'm feeling like this makes Grease 2 look like the sound of music or Singin' in the Rain.

It's like Singin' in the Rain next to this.

It's just on a whole other planet of awful. But anyway, so we're inexplicably watching a movie that I never would have been allowed to watch at the time in 1982, and have avoided my whole life and now have failed in that avoidance by suffering through, it is.

Now, don't forget, you had the choice to watch other movies this weekend.

Or not watching one at all.

Yes, exactly. Zapped, a movie that makes great light of sexual assault or The Challenges, I don't even know what it is. Oh, We Could Have Seen World According to Garp, that was a real knee-slapper, I remember vividly. Well, Paul, I feel like the way out is through, you know?

Ah, one can only, one can only hope.

Paul, we have seen The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Yes. Recap that plot.

It is 1949 in La Grange, Texas in reality, but in some other alternate universe mutation of that in the version of the film. This is based on a true story about a brothel that existed for over 100 years in Texas, and that was embraced by the community and leaders and everything who turned a blind eye until a crusading TV reporter from Houston decided to shine the light of media scrutiny on it and forcing a change. And the story is told through the kind of star-crossed lovers of the town sheriff played by Burt Reynolds and the impresario of the bordello played by Dolly Parton.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, literally the plot is there's a brothel, a reporter blows the lid on it. There's a couple of altercations and then they close the brothel tragically and Dolly Parton sings, right?

There's a lot of singing.

Right. But there's not as much singing as you think because actually, producer Brad and I were doing some reading. They cut eight songs from the movie, from the musical, from the original musical.

And this bears mentioning this is based on a musical.

Right. It's such a weird movie because it's based on a Broadway musical, but it is really there's a lot of quoted homophobia in it and a fair amount of misogyny and a fair amount of racism. It's a really odd mix of kind of what Burt Reynolds was famous for, those sort of homespun deep-fried comedies, but then a Broadway musical. It's very odd film, isn't it?

It is a startling contradiction and collision. On the one hand, there are hints of insight.

Yeah, hints of insight.

In terms of media culture and in terms of sex workers.

Right.

But those are drowned out by a lot of banality and just real problematic bullshit.

Yeah. Well, also, like, that's the weird part. It's like it has some insights on media, but when you look at them in the context of what the current kind of conservative take on media, which is that it is run by a kind of liberal, fake liberal elites, usually from the East Coast, who are vaguely, vaguely sissified. Well, not that vaguely in the case of this movie, because Burt Reynolds straight up calls him a sissy and punches him. It also has a weird sort of proto-red state fake news kind of like coastal elite kind of prejudice to it. It is an odd, odd movie. And I wonder if that tension between Burt Reynolds being the star and it sort of being canted toward that and then, but it's a Broadway show. I don't know. Have you seen the Broadway show? Do you know it?

Are you aware? No, no, no, no. But I will say, and I should include a plug here before we get to the bell. And there's a tie in the bell because the bell does figure into this film, which I'll mention briefly. But when I was a student freshman at Texas A&M, down the hall in my dorm, one of my dorm mates, Jamie Lynn Blaschke, later went on to write the definitive history Inside the Chicken Ranch, which is a book that exists that tells the real story, oral history of the Chicken Ranch. And that is available at fine bookstores and will illuminate all sorts of twists and turns of the institution's real history, including a Bob Hope story of how he treated his touring road crew to the wonders of the Chicken Ranch.

And for anyone under 80, do you want to say who Bob Hope is?

If you don't know, I can't help you.

Let's just do this. Let's toss it to the bell and get going.

We need to ring the bell, such as Dolly Parton rings the bell at the Chicken Ranch.

I was going to say, let's ring the bell so that the beating may begin.

Okay, oh God. So, let me just say, I admire you for presumably having watched this film in one sitting. I could not do that. It took me three days to watch this movie. I had to break it up. Three days, wow. Literally three days, three different sittings. I just finished this morning. I have a headache and PTSD, but I'm working my way through. I'm working my way through it. So, the movie starts in this very lumbering, extended deluge of exposition in the form of a Jim Neighbors narrated history lesson that tells us more than we need to know in terms of backstory. And also establishing Jim Neighbors who plays Burt Reynolds' deputy, who pops up periodically through the film.

And I want to say for anyone under 60, I actually was really happy to see Jim Neighbors. Producer Brad will attest to that in Michigan, there were two UHF stations. Well, there are several, but the two big ones were Channel 50 and Channel 20. Channel 50 had all of the good UHF stuff, like the reruns of shows that were still on the air and networks. And Channel 20 was like the really low rent one that just played like reruns of The Twilight Zone, which is not low rent, but they were inexpensive to buy. All of the Japanese TV shows, the Kaiju shows, Ultraman, Johnny Sacco, and Andy Griffith and Gomer Pyle USMC, which was the two shows that made Jim Nevers famous. He played the character Gomer Pyle in Andy Griffith and was then spun off into Gomer Pyle USMC, which was about the kooky adventures of a redneck, of a comically ignorant yet wise redneck in the American military. And I remember just really liking that guy and finding it kind of at least welcoming that he was in the film. I'm sure that was the effect they were trying to get to.

Yes, it is hard to not be charmed by Jim Neighbors.

By the way, he has the best singing voice of anyone in this film, and he doesn't sing a single song!

I was just going to say, this is one of the most inexplicable decisions of the film, is that, yes, you have Jim Neighbors, noted comedic icon, but he's also the singer, and you have him in a musical, and you never get him to sing. That kind of tells you everything you need to know about the movie. As does the fact that the opening song is about ceiling fans. Basically, we are taken through World War I, through World War II, then to 1949, the Chicken Ranch, then we establish Burt Reynolds as this small town sheriff who is willing to punch a horse in the face to get a donkey from sitting on a car in the town square.

He's a tough hombre. They also introduced Madame Mona, who is Dolly Parton's character, who is such a good madam that, in fact, why don't we play clip number two so we can see just how good a madam Miss Mona is. Producer Brad, would you regale us with that particular piece of regalia?

The hospitality and friendliness never changed, and neither did Miss Woolagene's strict set of rules. She liked her ladies, as she called them, to treat her customers real good, but never in an un-ladylike way. And she insisted that each girl check her gentleman for the clout and wash him off with soap and warm water. Some of the fellas claimed that that was the best part.

Paul, the mournful look on your face, you generally look like you're watching somebody you love be killed.

I just, the unexpected levels of existential pain that this movie inflicts at so many turns is kind of dazzling in a way. It's also so striking in its inanely quaint portrayals, not just of Texas of a time, but of the sex work industry. In stark contrast to say more contemporary fare is poor things, which I think is amazing, especially in its commentary in that direction. But yeah, we do get a staircase introduction of Madame Mona played by Dolly Parton. And I just want to say this movie is so unworthy of her. And it should go without saying, but just in case, Dolly Parton, I think we can agree, is a compelling argument for the existence of God in heaven in that she is an angel sent to earth in so many ways.

You will get no discussion on that from me. And I'll tell you what, I love Dolly Parton. Dolly Parton seems to be the actual embodiment of centrism in that she embodies the best of that country, red-state-ish sort of culture. You know, and at the same time, she is a humanitarian and she is a gay icon and she is beloved. I don't know, anybody who has an unkind word to say about it. Also, she's one of the most talented songwriters ever. Like, I think she rivals Prince genuinely. And somebody who came up from, like, extreme poverty to, like, be the owner of a theme park and yet to be this great philanthropist. And, I mean, it's like, she is amazing. She is, like, really a star.

And has funded lifesaving research on vaccines and, like, all sorts of things. It's just, she is a miraculous human being. And I think the only reason to see this movie, probably the only reason I think I actually agreed to see this movie was that, well, it's Dolly Parton. We gotta, like, okay.

You know what's amazing about Dolly Parton and this movie in general is that, you know, this movie was directed by Colin Higgins, who also directed Nine to Five. And Nine to Five is this amazing feminist movie, like, that literally has stuff in it that you don't even see in modern films, you know, as far as, like, you know, and it's a movie that, you know, everybody talks about how revolutionary Barbie is, but, like, there's nothing in Barbie that wasn't set in Nine to Five in 1979, you know. And I don't know how those people wound up making this movie. It's very odd.

I'm so puzzled and dismayed and kind of frustrated by that disconnect, because this is not a worthy successor or follow-up to that film. And there are kind of sporadic spasms of charm, but it just doesn't come together or work. And the music, by and large, is such a hodgepodge until with one Star League exception at the end, which we'll get to, which is sort of amazing if you're not prepared for it. But it's just bad, and the whole plot and story is so clunky and not well structured. No. We get this, then, you know, nothing dirty going on, musical number, then introducing Mona and the denizens of the Chicken Ranch, which, by the way, is named for the fact that at a certain point, I think during the Depression, they would accept chickens as payment.

Or sex work, yes. Yes, yes.

So anyway, is it?

Paul, I'm gonna interrupt you, and I'm sorry, because I know you're...

Please, thank you.

It's just you're so demoralized, and I don't want this to become like another, like, look, Wrath of Khan was Three Hours of Sheer Joy, and this is starting to look like Schindler's List, so I'm gonna get in there and start rushing us with this plot. Look, as hilarious as your existential angst is, to me, it's also deeply painful. Paul, I mean, just the look on your face, I wish the audience could see the video of this, because you are just bereft. You weren't like this at Megaforce, dude. But, you know, I gotta tell you, if you don't mind, let me bear this burden for you, my brother, okay? I'm gonna just rush us through this so we can... But we're gonna say something, Paul, I'm sorry.

No, I was just gonna say, like, it literally takes about 15 minutes before we even get the first barest hint of a plot.

Of a plot, yes, exactly, yeah, yeah. I wanna say, before we continue, and I'm gonna run a little rough shot over you, Paul, and I'm sorry, I apologize in advance.

Please do.

You're in a state.

I am.

I was trying to figure out something funny to say about this movie. What it was like watching this film. The state of Texas mourns today. The death of the soul of Paul Alvarado-Dykstra. This movie to me is like, what, if you took Hal Needham and you put a gun to his head and you said, make a David Lynch movie, and he said, who's David Lynch? And they said, exactly. Make it from whatever you know that name means, and make this. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that was my experience of watching the movie. OK, what we find out in these really, really still 15 minutes of plotlessness is that, we're just going to call them Burt and Dolly. Burt and Dolly have been having an affair, an ongoing affair for 15 years, and they have a song called Sneakin Around, which apparently was written by Dolly, and you know, because it's a good song. And Burt sings, which is weird, because Burt had just failed at doing a musical with a Peter Bogdanovich movie called At Long Last Love, which had been a huge failure and almost killed his career, but there's a couple of lines here that are just insanely awful, because every time Burt and Dolly are together... Paul, did you feel like you were watching, like, really, really lengthy scenes of stupid people talking? You know, it was supposed to establish, like, what the romance is about, but they were just both so dumb as characters.

I am... I'm searching the firmament of existence for words. We've mentioned this in other films, but it is so jarring in this one. The startling lack of chemistry...

Yes, docking, right?...

between the two of them. It is... every interaction seems wildly implausible that the two of them are in a passionate love affair.

He says something that is objectively bizarre, and yet his delivery and everything makes you wonder if just Burt said something he meant and they kept it in the movie. Because the shocking lack of chemistry really is there. Producer Brad, can you give us clip number five, please?

None of them have ever been exciting to me like you are.

Really? Even after all these years we've been meeting like this?

A year with you is like a minute of sheer happiness.

Well, now that is just about the sweetest thing anybody ever said to me.

No, it's not. It's not. He literally said a year with you, a minute with you. What is it? It's like a year with you is like a minute. There's only one minute of joy in that entire year? Okay, like the line in Megaforce about you like him in blue, you like him in red, but you like him in blue, that makes much more sense than this to me. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, this is actually kind of a twisted companion to Megaforce in terms of bad role modeling of relationships. For the most part.

Yes, indeed.

But, yeah, I think at most, you get the sense that they're buddies.

Yes, you get the sense that they're like drinking buddies, that each of them thinks the other is the dumb one.

You know?

I want to say also, like, there's another really funny line in this, I just want to put in here, because this is their, this is the movie's entire philosophical rationalization for sex work, and I don't necessarily disagree, but the phrasing of it is kind of interesting. Producer Brad, can you give us clip number three?

Sure are. The sheriff's real particular about security out there.

Well, one of these nights when you ain't on duty, you drop in out there. My girls will love to show you a little appreciation.

Shoot, Miss Mona, you know I'm a married man.

Oh, Fred, you mean to tell me you don't think the cows don't appreciate the time off when a bull goes over to another pasture?

Miss Mona.

Now, first of all, Dolly sells the shit out of every line in this movie, and that's every time she opens her mouth, it's delightful. It's like, this movie's so not worthy of her.

Yeah.

We've established now that the sheriff and the madam are having an affair, and they're sneaking around, and even, you know, Jim Neighbors doesn't see it because he is Gomer Pyle. But there's trouble of brewing, my friend, because in Houston, in the big liberal city... Oh, wait, wait, you want to point out a plot point, Paul? You can go.

I was just going to say, when you said there's trouble brewing, I thought you were going to mention that their first argument, which is the first of many arguments, most of what they do, in this movie seems to be arguing, and in ways that are not generally pleasant or endearing, they're not enjoyable as an audience. I've seen them argue a lot. But their first one argument is about his underwear. She hates his boxers, so has bought him some black snap-away briefs from Fredricks of Hollywood, which gets a nice plug in the film. And then they start singing this duet about sneaking around, and then for the first of more than one time, Deputy Jim Neighbors interrupts and then Mona leaves, and we get the sense this is one of their regular rendezvous. Then we get back to the sheriff's office, and the wonderful Barry Corbin, who shows up, is informing us and the sheriff that a TV reporter is preparing an exposé on the chicken ranch out of Houston.

Now, Paul, in your haste to get out of this, which I can tell you're just like literally... You almost got away with it. I do want to hear the argument about Boxers to Briefs because it is just a scintillating cinema. Like Scorsese, literally the scene with the table and the club in Goodfellas does not equal what we hear in clip number six. Producer Brad hit me.

Well, honey, I've had a lot of practice getting in and out of my clothes. How do you like the outfit?

Hot damn. Makes me feel real sexy.

Well, you don't look real sexy.

What do you mean? I look like I always look.

Well, that's just it. It's them damn droopy Boxer drawers. I just hate the looks of them things.

I've worn Boxer shorts for years.

And they look like it.

These are a brand new pair. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't look sexy. People tell me I have a real sexy quality about me.

Well, you do, but them Boxer shorts don't.

I mean, it's just scintillating. It's amazing. And this scene goes on for like five minutes, doesn't it, Paul?

So, what this underlines is how profoundly unsexy the entire movie is.

So unsexy.

It is the unsexiest movie of the summer, probably. And that is such a failure. And it seems almost intentional. Like they're trying to be quaint and cute and innocuous about the subject matter, but they veer so far into this strange...

You also get the sense that they wrote these scenes to have these two characters have a relationship. And that none of it really works. Like Burt and Dolly obviously don't like each other. They're obviously having a really hard time being in the same set together. And they're seeing this dialogue and it's just... None of it is working. Let's get back to the reporter. So there's a reporter in Houston who's going to do an expose on the Chicken Ranch. The great Barry Corbin, later of Northern Exposure, tells us this, right?

And he is thusly described as this.

The Chicken Ranch on TV. Now, come on, fellas. Television is a family medium.

But he's a sensationist, Ed Earl. He shows up with his TV cameras every time a consumer has a complaint.

He's a menace to the business community.

He's that fella who put the peanuts back in the chocolate bar.

So, yeah, a TV reporter, he is a menace to the business community because he shows up every time a consumer has a complaint. I mean, it's sort of like deeply anti-activist movie while being about sexual revolution. It's very odd, right?

And I have to indulge in a tangential digression because... Go on. None of you have this context that I did growing up in Texas and going to college at Texas A&M. This character who is being foreshadowed is based on a real-life TV reporter, legend in Texas media in broader culture named Marvin Zimpler. And that's central to this whole story that this movie and the musical were based on. But he was an iconic broadcaster and crusader who was sort of a human cartoon character who would later become famous for his catchphrase, slime in the ice machine, because he would in later years take on the role of doing health inspections for local restaurants in Houston and was always on the hunt for slime in the ice machine. He in 1982, there's a clip on YouTube after the film was released of him appearing on Late Night with David Letterman. And it is amazing because it is capped off with him being handed a baton by Dave. Not a conductor's baton, but a sort of marching drum major baton. And he gives a baton twirling performance. Just an incredibly colorful, unique character who will be then played by Dom DeLuise in the film. As he says to Letterman in the interview, much to his disappointment, because he wanted Johnny Carson to play him.

First of all, I don't...

Or Ted Knight. Wow.

I've seen photos of the guy. It would be more accurate casting. Burt Reynolds agrees to go talk to this reporter and to get him to knock it off and to not do a thing. Burt tries to make some calls to his own people, the mayor of some town or some military officer, and he says he can get this guy to not do the exposé, and everybody tells him, no, this guy is really popular. We don't want to censor him. So Burt himself goes to talk to Dom DeLuise, and there is a really, really interesting, not interesting, it's a horrible scene that I hated sitting through, but where basically it's revealed that Dom DeLuise's character is a total hypocrite because he wears a wig and he stuffs socks into his underwear, and he wears shoulder pads, and he is actually from Jersey. Yeah, a girdle, and he's actually from Jersey, and not from Texas, even though he affects a southern accent. And he's also kind of quoted as being very sort of effeminate, isn't he? I mean, there's a weird sort of, that he's sort of a sissy from the East who's come to the West to like fuck with people's whorehouses. That's kind of the, you know, there's a good old-fashioned cowboy whorehouse where the traditional gender roles are respected, and this strange queer liberal journalist who's crusading is coming to do this. This is something Dom DeLuise has during this scene.

You know something, Sheriff, it just struck me. We are in the same profession. What's that? Law enforcement. I'm out there fighting for the rights of the public, just like you. Both of us are interested in protecting the public. You in the old way and me in the new. Television. I'm the electronic bounty hunter.

I use a camera, you use a gun.

First of all, that clip indicates a really cool sci-fi show called Electronic Bounty Hunter, which I wish I were watching instead of this movie. I was like, electronic bounty hunter like The Mandalorian?

Only a robot?

Although, I will say, there is a moment later where this film does start from beer into sci-fi for one scene, which is the highlight of the movie.

So, this is how Burt Reynolds describes Dom DeLuise after meeting him. Can we hear clip 11, producer Brad?

Damn. Man is crazier than a peach orchard sow.

Well, I don't want to unpack the levels of coded homophobia in that statement, but whatevs. And also, Burt Reynolds also demeans him because apparently he has a small member, which he, well, let's hear number 12, producer Brad, please.

Do you know he wears a sock in his underwear? All rolled up like a Jimmy Dean sausage.

Well, I bet he's running for office, and that's typical of them crusading fanatics.

So, in addition to being coded as queer, effeminate, all of these things, a complete phony, and he has a small dick, so really, what a villain, right?

Yeah. And again, this is so weird and tricky because on the one hand, yeah, this is just so cringe-worthily problematic. On the other hand, at first glance, when you're, you know, the commentary about the hypocrisy of this crusader and about it echoes sort of current political dynamics of every accusation being a confession. Right. By those on the right that are these hypocritical, holier-than-thou accusers. And you kind of wish that the film maybe delved into some of this more substantively or seriously, but it skirts on some of these truths and then just kind of skates by them with, you know, stereotypes and things like that. There's another bit that we skipped over. I don't want to dwell on it too much, but there was a montage of the phone calls when the sheriff is making. And there's an aside that the state senator gives about having to deal with some bilingual bullshit in the legislature.

Clip number eight, producer Brad. Let's get it in there.

Excuse me, Ed Earl.

I gotta go with that damn bilingual bullshit again. Let me give you a word of advice from one elected official to another.

Be careful of the box.

And the box in question is television. So on the one hand, like in this one line, you get cogent kind of warning about the danger of media, but you also then get this, I'm gonna hope that this was meant as satirical commentary on how topics of bilingual education are mistreated in our state. But it's compounded by the fact that this movie that is set in Texas, there is not a single Latino in this movie.

Yeah, yeah.

And that I find striking and disturbing.

Speaking of race relations in this movie, of course, the brothel has an overweight black housekeeper and cook, right?

Yes.

And she dresses, I don't even know if they changed the actor, because frankly, I just didn't want to go back and make certain. But the character is dressed the exact same way in the 1800s as she is in the 1970s. Speaks exactly the same way. It's literally, when I saw her appear for the second time, because the character is dressed exactly the same way and they have the same way of speaking, I literally went, is the housekeeper Highlander? Is she like Connor McCloud? Like, is that what the Immortals are really like? They're just these housekeepers? I mean, straight out of The Help?

I mean, what the hell?

This is the only minority character in the film, as far as I can see, right?

Well, there is also a black prostitute at the Chicken Ranch.

Of course there is, sure.

Who we see fleetingly. But I just want to mention, so the housekeeper, kind of nanny mammy character, is played by the great Theresa Merritt, who had a long distinguished career. Her character's name is Jewel. But she is referred to repeatedly by Burt Reynolds' sheriff character as Porky. What?

I missed that. Oh my God, wow, wow. There you go.

Yeah, and she doesn't seem offended by that. But she went on, she was in The Wiz, and she later was in Billy Madison. Anyway, she does the most with her role, and she has some nice moments, including one particularly good scene later with, I mean good-ish scene with Dolly.

Okay, let's get into it, because the plot's about to thin real hard.

Yes.

So Burt goes to the station, tries to convince Dom DeLuise, the gay-coded example of liberal media values from the East, because he confesses he's from New Jersey, not from Texas. Dom DeLuise literally sucker punches him by doing a segment on the Chicken Ranch the same night and inviting Burt Reynolds to be in the audience and Burt Reynolds is shamed. Then Burt Reynolds goes back to town and literally Dom DeLuise shows up in town with cameras and he's doing kind of a rally against the Chicken Ranch, right?

Yeah, and we get in the big, Dom DeLuise's big scene where he again, the sucker punches Burt Reynolds. Does this big, Texas has a whorehouse in a musical number with dancers and everything that it seems really kind of over the top. Then he brings his TV crew to the courthouse, to the small town. And then they do a reprise of that. And there is a confrontation between him and Burt Reynolds that does not go well.

It does not go well in that Burt Reynolds calls him a sissy, tells him to get out of town, and then fires his gun into the air. Yeah, it is literally like the clash of like those cowboy values, you know, where like we're good people in this town, we got a good whorehouse and all that, and you're like a phony from the east, so I'm going to call you a sissy and fire my gun, and he runs away scared. But of course, is this before or after they agreed to close the whorehouse down for two months? I can't even remember.

Oh, no, this is way before. We're nowhere near that yet.

Okay, so what ends up happening is, so do we have a clip from this confrontation? Is it?

We have a little bit of this exchange.

Well, if it isn't the man himself, would you care to give me an interview now, Sheriff?

I'm gonna give you 30 seconds, you fancified fart, to get you and your singing chorus the hell out of town.

Now, wait a minute, Eric.

And get those cameras and the rest of that crap off the street. You're blocking traffic.

The only traffic we're blocking is that headed out for the chicken ranch, right, Sheriff?

Little fat buddy, up to now you got two tickets. One for parading without a license and the other for insulting me. Now, you better get that traveling circus out of town or I'm gonna lock you up so fast your course is gonna pop.

Oh, yeah? We're perfectly within the law. As a newsman, I have First Amendment protection. Get this. The public has a right to know what is going on out there and what kind of payoff you're accepting to protect that notorious house of ill repute.

I mean, just the dramatic... I mean, like, Arthur Miller couldn't have topped that, you know? So, anyway, so basically the upshot of it is that Burt is forced to make a deal with Dolly.

Well, we're not there yet, but a couple of things. So, what are the real difficulties of this film? Go on. And there are many. There are many. Is that it is hard to kind of root for any male character in this film.

No, no.

They're all very negative portrayals.

Yes.

Burt Reynolds, at his best, can be very charming as a rogue, like in Smoke in the Bandit or Cannibal Run or whatever. It's like, oh yeah, he's this sort of Han Solo-esque kind of rebel playing outside of the rules.

Sure.

There's a real problem putting him in the authority role of a sheriff.

Yeah.

When that is what his whole brand is opposed to. Yes. He's at his best in opposition to authority. And there's this dissonance of casting him in a role of authority that he is in conflict with internally. And so much of his portrayal is one of hostility and anger that lacks his charm. And I think that probably, without speaking ill of the deceased, is maybe closer to the real Burt's disposition... Yes, perhaps... .than his cinematically constructed charisma and charm. And he's so pervasively charmless in this role that it just makes it really difficult to connect or root for him.

I think if you kind of wanted to make this movie work in any way, like that character should have been... I mean, I don't know who played the character on Broadway, but it feels like this should have been Andy Griffith, you know, and he should have been a lot less mean.

Yeah, and should have had more humor about the situation that was, I don't know, a little more good-natured or something. And also, like, as an antagonist, there are some decent points that crusading media person makes in Dom de Luis's character in terms of shining a light on hypocrisy and whatever, but it has drowned in its own hypocrisy of the portrayal that just is really messy. And I'm a little sensitive to this because I'm in my degrees in journalism, so I'm like, you're rooting for the heroic journalist character, and this is such a disparagement on the profession of journalism in a way that's just not fun. But this whole sequence and the fight between the two of them, they both suck. You can't root for either one of them. And the sheriff runs him out of town through police brutality.

Yes, indeed. Yes, he fires his gun into the air.

And shoves him into the pond, into the fountain. It is just, it's a mess. It just fundamentally is broken mechanically as a movie. And yet, then we get what I think is the one great scene in this movie.

Oh, go on. Is it the sci-fi scene?

It is the sci-fi scene. And so as we're like 45 minutes into this movie, I'm like, why the hell are we watching this movie? This is not a movie I would have been allowed anywhere near in my youth back in the summer of 82. I've avoided it my whole life. This is bad. It is painful. It is not genre. We've been focusing on great genre movies. This is the greatest summer for genre film. This is not a genre movie. And then...

On weekends, you just have to go to the multiplex and watch whatever they got. But then...

As the movie suddenly, for one scene, becomes a sci-fi movie, as best buddies, Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds, decide they need a getaway. There's a little precursor to this about them wistfully remembering when they used to just be able to go to the lake. And so they do that again to kind of recapture maybe the earlier glow of their budding romance at a campfire under the stars. And this happens.

This happens.

Hey, look, do you see that shooting star? Mm-hmm. That could have been a spaceship, you know. You believe in spaceships?

Sure. I saw a picture once of them fellers from, you know, that's supposed to be from up there, fly around. Tiny little fellers, ball-headed, little feet, little hands, got no peckers.

Got no peckers? Well, I ain't interested. I don't think my girls would be, either. When I was a little kid, I used to imagine a flying saucer swooping down and picking me up and taking me off to heaven like the angels. Mm-hmm. I looked, and behold were a wind coming out of the north, and out of the mist of the fire came the likeness of four living creatures. Well, that's from the Bible. That's what the Bible says about spaceships in Ezekiel. Don't you know nothing about the Bible?

Yeah, I know about the Bible. I just don't know nothing about Ezekiel in the Bible.

I mean... Wow!

First of all, I want to point out the fallocentrism, the narrow view of human sexuality in which only something with a pecker can be interesting to a female. That's interesting to me. I'd like to have some conversations about... Well, no, not on this podcast, but... What? Okay, so there's that. Paul, what do you got for me? Come and give me something. This happened.

We were there. This goes on the shelf. I think this is the third example of a scene in a really painfully bad movie that just out of the blue gives us a gift of a different movie, of a better movie. And I would give anything, not anything, but I would give a lot to see this movie.

The movie where Dolly Parton, who is a sensical, down-home, still religious, has good Christian values, knows the Bible, but she's sensical, right? She's Dolly Parton. She appeals to everybody, gets abducted by aliens, right? Maybe she gets abducted by the First Order, and she teaches them her good, homespun values, and that's how Kylo Ren is really redeemed. I want to see that movie.

Okay, you lost me there.

The First Order winds up in our galaxy. They accidentally beam up Dolly Parton, and she teaches them how to be good people.

That's a great movie. No, leave them out of that.

All I'm saying is Dolly is so awesome that she could even redeem the clusterfuck that was the First Order as movie villains.

I'll admit I'm a little sensitive, but the exquisite intertwining of UFO mythology with this sort of humble Christian faith and of this UFO experience through the lens of Americana Christianity, I want to see that movie.

That's a fucking Errol Morris documentary right there. That's like Gates of Heaven with UFOs and Christians, right? I mean, it's awesome.

And the fact that as preposterous as that whole exchange was, Dolly Parton sells that with such profoundly elegant earnestness that I am completely captivated. And again, I just want to see that movie.

I am nodding emphatically. I agree completely. I mean, look, Dolly is just magical. And I think that this is the one scene in this movie where at least I get the sense that, because the other one where they're about to have sex and they're going to have boxers and briefs, it's sort of fraught with fake sexual chemistry and all that. At least in this scene. This scene to me was like the scene in Wayne's World where they're lying on the top of the car. It's not a spark. It's not chemistry. I felt like these people have known each other a long time. We can have this conversation, you know?

Yes, you actually get a sense for the only time, really, I think, in this film where you are watching actual human beings and feeling a sense of real, you know, limited but some depth of human connection and interaction. And the conversation continues. They talk about Jesus. They talk about forgiveness. They reveal things to each other that Sheriff reveals these hidden political aspirations, that he is a man who is not content with his station as a small town sheriff, but is daring to think bigger and beyond.

He wants to be a state senator, yeah?

Yeah. Both of these characters reveal this sense of urination. And it's like, oh, this is almost a good movie. Ah, easy there, Javi. Easy there. But then it's not.

You're painting with a white brush there. But no, I get it. I get it. At this point, you and I are like travelers in a vast desert. We've had no water. We've had no food. We've had no dramatic content. We've had nothing of interest happen. In a movie about sex, nothing interesting has happened. And then suddenly you get the scene and it's like, oh, oh, but please let's not get ahead of ourselves. This was a, we got a coke in the middle of the desert is what happened here.

Well, as I was going to say, like to quote Steve Jobs, this scene is like giving someone a glass of ice water in hell. It's magical. But they, you know, Mona then reciprocally reveals that she had this dream of being a ballerina. And then they make this huge reveal to each other that they have each been secretly monogamous to the other.

Yes.

And that has never been spoken to, requested, agreed to or addressed until this moment in their relationship. And I found that startling in its maturity and kind of sincerity, even though their chemistry seems so kind of chaste and non-sexual.

It is a shocking moment in a movie that is a shock. And it goes on for fucking ever, yeah. But it's sort of an interesting one-act play of two stupid people talking. Paul, Dom DeLuise televises his segment. Burt gets Dolly to agree to shut the whorehouse down for two months, at least until everything dies down. But the problem in this town is that Texas A&M has a tradition where the mayor, is it the mayor or the senator? It's a senator. If they win the championship, they all get to go to the Chicken Ranch. This leads to two things. One of them is the climax of the movie. But the other one is an interminable new song and dance number where...

Oh, God.

Broadway dancers playing football players dance and sing about going to the Chicken Ranch. And the weird thing, not the weird thing, it's quite expected in this film, is that this is the part of the movie where we see the most nudity. You see these guys singing and whatever and they're going into the showers and at one point there's a thinly veiled reference to dicks and then you see the shower heads popping water and you see their butts and you see them in the shower sitting together.

Paul, what the fuck?

So before we get to the cascade of assets... Let's keep moving. No, no, no, this is important. So we get this other argument scene between Burt and Dolly, which is painful. And, you know, he's been pressured to, like, have her shut it down for two months. And he says, no, I'm not gonna... No one can tell me what to do. And then he goes and does that. And it's this painful argument scene. She agrees to take a break, but then again, realizes that this important fact... And as someone who grew up in Texas and went to A&M, there are few things in the firmament of Texas cultural existence than the tradition, which has passed because of different SEC and whatever, like football. I don't follow football. I'm sorry. But for the longest time, for generations, a foundational Texas cultural tradition was the Thanksgiving football faceoff between Texas A&M and the University of Texas. And that took precedence over anything and everything else. Thanksgiving is a holiday. Turkey, everything secondary to this annual tradition of this football game and rivalry. So that is kind of hinted at in the film in terms of its significance. Then we get an example of more than one where I'm like, how did they and why did they agree to let them actually film this at Texas A&M? A&M is like this archipelago of conservatism that also has its own airport on campus. It is this weird Vatican city of conservative, educational, whatever. But it's a whole other world. And seeing it represented in this kind of bizarre world cartoonish fashion in the film was so just brave-brazzling. I can't even tell you. But the fact that they let this production on their campus and filmed this representation of the institution and their students is jaw-dropping to me. I just can't wrap my brain around it. It would not happen today.

Oh, you mean the idea that the school would approve of a movie saying that their big tradition is to take all the football players to a whorehouse?

No! And then would portray their football team in this phantasmagoric musical cavalcade of asses, of naked asses, frolicking. And see, my God, it is staggering.

It is insanity. It really is staggering and insane. You can actually answer one question for me that I think would actually be really useful here, which is, does the A&M Stanford, Alpert & Moss, like the old record company from the Tijuana Brass and that's where the recording studio, is that what A&M stands for?

If only. Let me illuminate you on this point. So technically, and this kind of says everything like so many things do, technically in the modern day and age, the A&M in Texas A&M officially stand for nothing. What? It has been stricken from every obelisk that officially it is just Texas A&M, but the A&M do not stand for anything. Historically.

Oh, God. Oh, God.

I'm tempted to make you both guess, but it's so mundane. Texas A&M historically was Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University.

Okay, got it.

And I don't know what the breakdown is now, but when I was an undergrad there, and again, we had an undergrad class of over 40,000 by my recollection. A quarter of the undergraduate class were studying agriculture. Right. Another quarter were studying engineering. A third quarter was studying business. And then the fourth quarter was everything else. So that just kind of tells you a lot about what the cultural composition of that experience of going to that fine institution.

I gotta tell you, I would by far prefer they were Alpern and Moss University and they were all just listening to TO1 and Brass Records.

In some wondrous corner of the multiverse, I'm sure that that exists.

This movie is so bad that this is the conversation we're having. The takeaway from this podcast should be literally a five-minute history lesson from Paul about the university because we cannot bear to fucking talk about this movie. It's so tedious.

So then get us back on track.

No, no, no, no. Wait a second. The big party happens. The senator shows up at the party. It's supposed to be private, but Dom DeLuise shows up with a camera crew, and they take pictures of everyone at the whorehouse to show that it's open and it hasn't been closed. Paul, you want to slow me down and get to another earlier plot point in the movie.

Don't do it. I'm so sorry.

Go ahead. I give up.

Let go. Let God go. But against my better judgment.

Yes.

There is a scene after the Aggies, triumphant Aggies, who have won the football showdown, get loaded on a bus, head for their victory lap at the chicken ranch. The bus breaks down. They then load kind of Mad Max screw road style onto an ancient pickup truck. Then they make it to the chicken ranch and they're all prepared because they have to honor this tradition despite the promise to shut down for two months that Dolly made to Burt. Then there is the most painfully weird courtship slash welcome dance number. There's no singing. It is just this strange musical dance extravaganza that, forgive me, gives new meaning to the word hoedown.

Do we have a clip from this? Did you select something from this?

I hope I didn't. All I have in my notes is that at least they aren't singing. Thank God. But yes, then they all turn in. They pair up. The state senator is there with them who is feigning ignorance. But Mona is like, oh, of course, they go way back. Then Deputy Fred, who is on patrol downtown in the square, sees Melvin Thorpe's TV crew heading toward the ranch, goes and tells Burt, who's like, damn it, she said she was shutting down. And then Melvin breaks into the chicken ranch.

He... Yes, breaks in.

That's a crime to break in and then bust everyone on camera in this very clunky, just kind of seedy, gross scene.

Very gross.

And then it's just another excuse for Burt and Dolly to have another painful argument.

Really unpleasant fight.

And the most unpleasant scene of the film.

Yeah, so let's play that. I think, 18, clip number 18, right?

God damn it, Marnie, you're makin me mad!

Listen at him cuss and shout just like on TV. You're just a kid playin at bein a cowboy. You ain't never gonna grow up. You use me as your mistress. You use that damn Dulcey May as your in-town wife. And you even use that little boy of hers so you can play weekend games.

You leave that little boy out of it.

You're playin it, Earl. You're just a big, overgrown kid playin at bein a man.

I don't have to listen to this shit.

First of all, this town wife kid thing has not been seen once in the film, I think. Maybe after this. There's this scene where he talks to the woman who runs the diner, but this is like the first time I heard of that.

It is, but not very cogently. During the football game, he is seen watching football with this kid that he gives a beer to. He doesn't fully explain who he is, but he seems to have this sort of loose dalliance with the diner owner, who then he later has a scene with, who has the son. But it's just kind of vaguely sketched out, but it's not developed or explained. So it's one of the weird, more confusing undercooked plot points of here.

One of the many, including the electronic bounty hunter and the aliens, also undercooked plot points in this film.

Exactly. But this film, again, inflicts us with these recurrent doses of unpleasantness. Not that every movie needs to be pleasant.

But this one should be, because it's a Broadway musical about a whorehouse. The mandate is that it should be pleasant, right?

But this argument ends with such cruelty on Burt Reynolds' part, in terms of him calling Dolly a whore. It's just pretty awful. And then we get this weird pastoral montage of Burt Reynolds' contemplation. Because he realizes he has gone too far.

It's like Terrence Malick showed up for a day to direct the movie. You know, so literally you've got this big, beautiful Burt Reynolds pondering existence.

It's beautifully shot, the most beautiful shot in the film. And I will say that this film is shot in Pflugerville with a PF at the front. After this, then the TV report airs, busting everybody, including the state senator, who then makes a pretty wonderful...

The senator blames the communists for drugging him and taking him to the ranch.

Yes, which is kind of funny. And then we get a glimpse of Charles Durning as the governor watching television. We're almost an hour and a half into this movie. In his first scene that we see him, he doesn't say anything. He gets nominated for an Oscar for supporting actor in this movie, by the way. And we'll get to presumably why soon. But then we get an exchange between Mona and Jewel, who are kind of lamenting the situation. And Jewel is sort of comforting Mona with wisdom.

Jewel the immortal housekeeper.

Yes. And sort of explaining to her that he loves her, but, you know, he can't say it. Some men just can't say the words. And that's important for a later scene. Then we get this diner scene, which is kind of funny, where everyone is sort of in dismay and disarray about the aftershocks of the jig being up, basically, with this TV report that is aired. And we get within it, I think, maybe one of the greatest, let's say, tourist campaigns for the city of Austin.

Why the hell can't that station in Houston turn its cameras to the cesspool in their own backyard?

And how about Austin? Why, two blocks of the state capitol, you can have anything done to you for money that you can get in Tangiers. Whether it's naked massages, there's tongue baths, there's somebody tickling your ass with a feather.

If you know that for a fact, Mr. Newspaper Editor, it's your duty to expose it.

What you see here, CJ, I don't give a damn if folks want their ass tickled with a feather. I'd kind of like to think that that's what heaven is all about.

So the punchline of that clip is that the journalist saying, asserting, that's his idea of what heaven is probably like.

Getting your ass tickled with a feather, yes, indeed.

If that's what you want.

It's amazing, isn't it?

It's just weird. Anyway, it's very strange. We also get another dollop of folksy dialogue nugget that, again, I think that audiences and maybe the people making this film lent too much weight or value on in terms of why they thought they should make this film or take these roles. But this is an objectively entertaining line that Burt Reynolds gets.

Boys, I got myself a pretty good bullshit detector. And I can tell when somebody's peeing on my boots and telling me it's a rainstorm.

So I get that that... That's just one example of many colorful terms of phrase that I guess serve to sort of portray Texas and Texans. That I don't know.

They're a folksy, commonsensical people who are oppressed by a non-folksy, non-commonsensical government. Yes.

But anyway, so then the sheriff says he's going to go to Austin to see the governor, but then before he leaves, he has this one moment of verbalized introspection to this other woman, who we've never really seen, but is allegedly kind of the diner owner and has the kid or whatever. And through her expression, pines for him, but his heart belongs to another as he expresses thusly.

They want me to close her down, run her out of town. How can I ask you to leave when all I wanted to do is stay?

I mean, that's about as much as we're going to get from, as far as romantic expression by Burt Reynolds.

I think there's some actual acting there, but I'm not going to plant my flag on that hill, but I think there was some acting there. Yes, acting was implied in some of that. Paul, so let's talk about Charles Durning. Now, Charles Durning was nominated for the Oscar, and literally the entire resolution of this film is an extended musical number where Charles Durning shows himself off as being the kind of governor who doesn't for any reason ever make a decision unless he's pressured into it by opinion polls. The entire song is about what kind of slippery character he is. It's him tap dancing through a number of meetings, agreeing to nothing.

Not just tap dancing, it's sidestepping.

Yes, and basically never agreeing to anything, showing that he's sort of a very slippery politician. Now, I want to say something about Charles Durning because Charles Durning, well, he was nominated for an Oscar for this, which, by the way, he probably did a lot of heavy lifting plot-wise in this movie because it's literally Day of Sex Charles Durning. The entire plot gets completely resolved by this because he basically just does this dance summer and says we're shutting down the brothel. Paul, did you know that Charles Durning landed on Normandy?

Wow. I did not.

That he literally has three purple hearts, that he's actually been awarded, like, multiple medals for valor in combat. The guy that you're seeing singing and dancing, like, never talked about it in interviews. He gave one speech about it, and you can look it up on YouTube, talking about what it was like in Normandy. But if you look at his Wikipedia page and see just the sheer amount of combat, like just the sheer badassery of this man, literally killed Nazis with bayonets, this guy is Steve motherfucking Rogers. And it's amazing because it's the only kind of only meaningful thing I can take out of watching this movie, to be honest with you, I just kind of want to make a meal out of it in a little way, is that like a lot of these actors that you and I grew up with, right, have these histories that because they grew up, a lot of them grew up in wartime, a lot of them had already come of age by the Second World War, Vietnam or whatever. And when you see all of the great work that Charles Durning did aside from this film, in addition to this film, maybe whatever, like it's worth just noting that some of these guys, like you see doing these funny parts in movies you grew up watching, like they fucking live. You know, and they're drawing on some really serious shit to give these performances. And I think it's worth noting, I don't know. It's on the side, but I feel one.

He is a towering presence and they save him for the third act. And he has essentially three big scenes that move the whole movie toward resolution. And when he comes on the scene, it basically becomes his movie for that stretch, which is very interesting.

And by the way, thank God.

Although, you know, again, the music is not good. By and large, none of the music in this movie, with one exception, we're about to get to in the end. And it's a big one. None of this music is good. But it starts with him at the Governor's Mansion, a stone's throw from the Texas State Capitol, which, by the way, I'm obligated as a resident of the great state of Texas to point out, is taller than the US. Capitol by...

All right, all right, all right...

Because this is Texas, and there's something else I'll mention about that when we get into the Capitol. There is a... He's asked about the situation. He misinterprets it to be a question about the Middle East. So here we go.

I was saying just this morning at the weekly prayer breakfast in the Star Capitol that it behooves both the Jews and the Arabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner.

Oh, boy. Yeah, oh, boy. Oh, boy.

Let's keep going. Yeah, let's not even...

I can't even unpack that.

But then he does this big song and dance number from then the steps of the Governor's Mansion into Islemo and then back and forth in the back seat of Islemo, but then into the actual Texas state capitol. And my jaw is rocked because I'm watching this unfold. And as the scene progresses later, in no universe would this be allowed to film today. In our present...

Today, absolutely not.

Radical, right-wing, extremist, Christo-fascist, Republican-led Texas legislature. It is... Nope. This is such a tragically charming and quaint throwback to a simpler time of...

When we could just be racist.

A more innocuous hypocrisy that, yeah, did have many horrific problems, but right now is in a more overtly terrifying place. But we get a pretty wonderful showcase of our Texas capitol as he sings and dances about how we can sidestep. I have to say, what I want to believe is what earned him an Oscar nomination for this small role is this magical thing he does with his cowboy hat, and he does this, I think, three times. And I watch it with wonder, and I just think in my heart, this is cinema. He puts his gray, notably gray, not a white hat, not a black hat, a gray cowboy hat on top of his head sideways, and then he pivots his body, like, on a dime, as somehow, magically, through his force of will, maybe he's a force user, the hat stays in its position immobile as he pivots his body, so then wearing the hat straight on, correctly. I am like, at what point in Charles Durning's life did he discover this was his mutant power? That he had this ability to do it. But the fact that he and the filmmakers discovered this and deploy it, not once, not twice, but at least three times, I find delightful and stupid. It's cartoony and ridiculous, but at this point, I just don't want to be watching this movie anymore, and I'm clinging for whatever vague resemblance of entertainment that I can grasp. Then he is confronted by Melvin, who has descended upon the Capitol with his TV crew and is trying to pin the governor down on a decision. The governor then escapes because, as he's sung about, he has this magical ability to sidestep pretty much anything, at least temporarily, and then we get his big scene, or really Burt Reynolds' big scene with Charles Durning, and again, all of this is being shot on location in the actual Texas Capitol. How the hell did they agree to this?

Hey, here's our film that celebrates racism, that is weirdly pro-sex work but anti-sex work but anti-woman, that only elevates heteronormative values, but is also racist and is racist. Let's hear it in the Capitol.

And I will have to say, it is probably a testament, and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the monumental value of my friends, literally my first friends when I moved to Austin at the Texas Film Commission, which is in the governor's office and has valiantly, I was going to say fought, and yeah, I guess that's probably accurate, to try to bring support and sustain the film and television industry in Texas, which let me tell you, not an easy task for many reasons.

I thought you were going to say that they were fighting to strike this film from the record. I was suddenly...

But I have to say, it can only be through the heroic efforts, as bad as this movie is, I have to also just commend the glory of inflicting this movie onto the actual grounds of the Texas Capitol.

Paul, Paul, Paul, okay, listen, listen. There's one truly redeeming moment in this film.

Yes.

Right? Would you call it an exalted moment of redemption for the entire film? I think it is, actually. I think it makes the experience of sitting through this film worth it for me. Would you concur?

I think there are two. I think there are two. I was going to say this scene between Burt Reynolds and Charles Durning where Burt Reynolds makes a compellingly persuasive case for the legalization of prostitution and the hypocrisy of our laws with that regard.

But the law is the law.

Sometimes it's got to be changed. I've been fighting crime all my life, but let's not confuse crime with committing a sin. You can't legislate morality. Those girls out there have never caused any trouble to anybody. The healthy, tax-paying, law-abiding citizens who supply a demand and provide an economic asset to the community. Whew. Man, Harold.

You ever think about running for office, huh?

I mean, that's remarkable, relatively speaking. Anyway, governor then gets the poll numbers. The sheriff's arguments don't matter. The governor tells him to shut it down. On his way out, he sees this obnoxiously triumphant Melvin celebrating his victory. He goes and rips his wig off, punches him out, sways him across the seal under the rotunda of the Texas Capitol, which says, Republic of Texas, because those of us in Texas know Texas is the only state in the Union that was once its own country for two years, two glorious years in its history. Anyway, then he has to go back. He actually calls Mona, tells her to shut down, apologizes, then Mona calls this meeting. She's unaware that Sheriff Dodd had gone to the governor to fight for her. There's this really kind of painful montage of then all the women packing to leave the chicken ranch. There's this horrible maybe song of them lamenting their fate. And with this recurring line of Dolly's about, Lord, it's like a hard candy Christmas. I don't know what that means. Then they're all goodbyes. They all load up on a bus. Who knows where they're all going? I think one of them says Vegas, leaving Mona and Jewel alone. Jim Nabors now has ascended to sheriffhood, is talking to camera. And what we think is, oh, surely this is it, the over, it's the coda and epilogue.

This is our sweet release from this film.

Well, this has got to be coming to an end. But then we cut to Sheriff Dodd arriving at the boarded up chicken ranch to say goodbye to Mona and to Jewel, who again, he calls Porky. And she doesn't seem to mind it. She seems inexplicably charmed by it.

She's okay with that.

And Dodd finally tells Mona that he loves her. And he proposes to her and Mona turns him down and then sings what will later become one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

Right. A song written by Dolly Parton for this film. No, not for this film. She'd actually released it before they used it in the film.

And it is amazing, especially in retrospect, we now know it as having been sung by Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.

But what people know, but maybe not enough people know, is that Dolly Parton wrote the song, it's her song, and she sings, I will always love you. That amazing, and if you didn't know that was coming, which I didn't, I'm like, what?

It is a jaw-dropping, oh my God moment.

And look, I think Whitney Houston's performance of that song is towering, I mean, it's definitive, right? But I feel like Dolly Parton's performance of that song is in its own way so genuine, because it is her song, and she sings it as the country song, and it's a very different context for Whitney Houston, and like I said, her performance is towering, but I think there's something so special about how Dolly Parton performs this song, and what it means, and it's just one of those things where I see it and I go, I don't understand, I don't know how a song of this quality got in this movie, I think the only reason this movie should exist is to have this song in it.

It is this bolt of greatness out of the blue that strikes at the very end. And doesn't overstay its welcome, I think it only, she only sings one verse, we don't get the whole song, I wish we did, but it is magical. And then, I don't weirdly...

It's over.

Burt Reynolds goes to get Mona's bags, luggage out of Jules' truck, without anyone's permission, without asking, loads them into his truck, sweeps Mona off her feet, loads her into his truck with no consent, like she has not said yes.

No consent. Like a caveman with a cudgel.

She goes along, and then they ride away into happiness, apparently. And we see the boarded up chicken ranch has a sign that says, closed on account of the TV. As then we get a just awful closing recap musical montage, reprise of the song. And it's just like, you can't turn up the TV fast enough at this point.

I would rather just end this on, Dolly Parton sang one of her greatest songs. Look, this is an object lesson. This is what happens when you go to the multiplex a lot. Some weekends, there's not a good movie and you guys will watch whatever's there. Because otherwise you got to go to some dippy party or you got to hang out with your parents and watch Knight Rider. So we did this this week. Fans of the podcast, we're sorry. We don't know what to say. Don't watch this movie.

I'll never see this movie. The sad revelation of this film, and maybe it's an important life lesson for all of us, that there are even limits to Dolly Parton's power and greatness.

And to our love of cinema.

Well, I think we knew that. But not even Dolly Parton can save this movie.

Hey, producer Brad, how did this movie do?

For the weekend, it was number one. It knocked ET out of the number one slot.

Holy crap!

For the year, it was number 10. There were five or six other musicals that year. It was the number one musical of the year, ahead of Annie, Victor Victoria, Pink Floyd, The Wall, Grease 2 and the pirate movie.

Wow.

You know the reason why this movie beat ET is that ET has no pecker.

So next week, we're going to Friday, July 30th, 1982. There are three movies opening. We already talked about Lou Gossett Jr. and Officer and Gentlemen. It opens in that weekend, where he did win the Best Supporting Oscar.

Ooh, that's a good movie.

We also have Night Shift, Ron Howard directing with Henry Winkler, Michael Keaton and Shelley Long.

Oh, that's a good movie.

We gotta do that one. That one's really... That's another brothel movie that weirdly is far more endearing than this one.

Go on. And the last, which is for me a good palate cleanser of all this, would be Force Vengeance with Chuck Norris.

No. You know what? Let's leave this at cliffhanger. We'll decide...

We're deciding now. You gotta make your choice.

We're seeing Night Shift.

We're seeing Night Shift. Ron Howard's second movie after Splash with Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton and Shelley Long. I'm in. It's actually...

It's before Splash.

Oh, really? It's his first movie. No, actually, his first movie was Gung Ho. No, not Gung Ho. His first movie was Grand Theft Auto for Roger Corman. So there you go. But we will see you next week in line at The Multiplex. End of line.