It's in the Constitution.

Yeah, so that is a, you know, Paul, we have a lot to talk about today. So I'm just gonna, because this is a clip from Grease 2, the film that we had to go see because we couldn't get into seeing ET, I believe on this weekend.

So because Paul insisted we see it.

Oh, yeah, there's that too.

I'm so sorry.

You know, every once in a while when we were teenagers, we just got in a situation where somebody wanted to see a movie really badly. They drew the long straw and that my friend was Paul Alvarado-Dykstra today. So we're doing Grease 2.

Maybe a better title for this movie.

I think it is. And on that note, I'd like to say I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is... Multiplex Overthruster!

Summer of 82.

You know, I never get tired of that, Paul. I just don't. I think the opening of every one of these podcasts is gonna be just me, you and me, rapsidizing about our theme. Just this. Paul, we were supposed to see ET, and instead you made me go see Grease 2. And watching this movie, you know how some people say, watching a movie is like watching paint dry? Watching this movie was like watching fish rot. How did this happen to us, Paul?

So first of all, I just have to say, I am filled with a newfound depth of gratitude that you and producer Brad are still speaking to me after I have inflicted this psychological trauma that is Grease 2 into both of your psyches. But I felt, you know, as a lesson from last weekend, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. And we were duty bound to share this with each other and with our listeners because as we all should know, sharing is caring.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie in the very underrated film, Lord of War, where the dictator forces Nicolas Cage to hold the gun with him as they kill Ian Holm. And he says, this will be our bonding moment. So I think that's exactly what's happened here. I think that through this horror that we have lived through together, we will emerge stronger and better friends. I agree. And Paul, I don't feel that I have the, dare I say, intestinal fortitude to truly recap the majesty that is the plot of this film. So will you please do that for us?

Well, so here's the thing. This is my fault, but it's worth it because neither of you had seen this and I felt that was an imperative. And also I needed the catharsis and healing of working through the trauma of experiencing this film with both of you. So thank you and thank you in advance to our dear listeners. Boy, howdy, are you in for a ride today. This is a film that arguably defies recap because it is so unhinged as a movie, as a work of, let's broadly say art. But it is intended to be a sequel to Grease, which was a big success and hit and tries to follow in its footsteps, but does so in a sort of Frankenstein way, lumbering into the furniture and itself, stumbling.

Clearly, Paul, clearly it is impossible to talk about this film without falling into a kind of fugue state. So I'm going to, let me start you off on the plot and see if you can pick it up. Because here's what, because this is what happened. No, it's very true thing. You try to talk about this movie and you literally, it's almost like context and meaning dissolve.

I know, it has fractured my brain.

This is the story of the Cousin of Sandy from the first movie, who is a handsome, but if not shy, crafty gentleman, who comes from Australia to Rydell High and he winds up falling in crush with whom, Paul?

Well, the glorious Michelle Pfeiffer.

Yes, yes.

In a role reversal of our first film, essentially.

Yes.

That is the big indulgence and kind of big idea behind this movie. It's like, let's do Grease again, but let's reverse the roles.

Yes, the nerd is a boy and the hot-chip-hip person is a girl. And instead of cars, it's motorcycles. So they all race motorcycles. And he winds up affecting a multiple personality, dare I say, in order to woo the tough chick. Does that sound appropriate, like the plot of this film?

Yeah, yeah. This movie takes unexpected turns. I mean, our main focus here at our fine podcast establishment is genre film. Yes. And this is a stretch, maybe, to put Grease 2 on the shelf with the other films we are exploring.

Indeed.

But I will contend that this movie takes unexpected, bold turns into genre.

Bold, dare we say bold.

That cannot be denied, cannot be explained, probably can't be justified, but nonetheless must be reckoned with.

They really must. I think that ultimately our very sanity, and perhaps that of the Western world depends on it.

No, I think so. I will just warn you, our listeners, as Javi and producer Brad and I have all experienced, if you have not experienced Grease 2, don't. There is life before watching Grease 2, and there is life after you have witnessed Grease 2.

And there is no going back.

Once you have crossed the Rubicon of Rydell High 2.0, Mutation of Madness.

Producer Brad, do you concur?

I enjoy a bad movie, so I had no problem with this.

That's true.

Now, when Brad and I were 12, which is when this movie came out, we did have Bad Movie Night. And if I remember, we once got in trouble with your mom for watching a movie called Bloodsucking Freeze.

That was my dad. There was much more anger involved than my mom.

Okay, Paul, the reason we actually saw Grease 2 is that...

Well, we were going to see, obviously, ET this weekend, back in 1982, on the Friday night, as a metaphysical imperative. But because it is the cultural phenomenon that we all know, all showings were sold out. And so what were we to do other than brave the sequel frontier of Grease 2?

Well, we could have seen the Gene Wilder, that wonderful woman, Gilda Radner, epic Hanky Panky. Or we could have seen Porky's. Or we could have seen The Sword and the Sorcerer. Or we could have seen Conan and the Barbarian. Or we could have gone to see Visiting Hours, which we talked about in our Star Trek 2 podcast. But no, here we are. No Poltergeist, sorry.

Yes, here we are. I will use as an excuse that the theater I was going to only had two screens. And so I could not avail myself of any other options as much as it pained me.

I think that I would hazard a guess that if Brad and I were at the Briarwood Mall going to see this film in 1982, which did have enough theaters, but I'm going to guess that the theaters playing Hanky Panky, Porky's, The Sword and the Sorcerer, Conan and the Barbarian and Visiting Hours were sold out due to people not being able to get into ET and not wanting to see Grease 2.

Who were fleeing in droves from the very sight of the worksheet for Grease 2, much less its horrifying implications.

It was like a Cecil B. DeMille exodus toward Porky's, Hanky Panky, The Sword and the Sorcerer, and Conan.

Toward any safe harbor.

Well, Paul, let's go ahead and inflict our opinions on this film and our audience. Would you like to ring the bell?

The time has come. Let's ring the bell.

Now, I literally just finished watching this film, so I'm going to let you drive a lot of the train because I'm still processing the terror that I felt. But I want to say this movie, first of all, it feels like a false flag operation because you've got the old timey Paramount logo and immediately I think, oh, it's Raiders and no. And then the movie just sort of starts kind of like a stomach flu. Like in the original Grease, there was an animated sequence with that great Frankie Valley song, right? But this one just sort of begins.

No, no, they all are vomited out of a school bus and into an opening musical number. And there is immediate, just instant cringe. For almost the first frame, it is evident that this is, oh no, something's gone horribly wrong. This is not going to be good. And we are searching as all these people fall out of the school bus for familiar faces from Grease, the original. We only see two.

The school principal, right?

Well, three, I guess. But Frenchie and then also the nerd character.

But the movie starts with the principal and her henchperson.

With the announcement.

And they both react to the bus arriving. And then it is insanely clear that they never occupied the same frame as the dance number. So they keep cutting back to them looking at the dance number horror. But you're like, anyway, one of the many cinematic crimes I view here. But good to go on.

Yeah, no. It is almost immediately apparent that we have entered this bizarro world Grease. It is this sort of weird cheap knockoff version of Grease. That has Adrian Zmed instead of Travolta.

Whom we know from TJ Hooker.

Of course. Also, Christopher McDonald, who I know from Yesterday's Enterprise, among many other things. And it's very disorienting. And there's this weird kind of lifelessness to the proceedings.

I'm happy you mentioned that at the very beginning. Because the thing that I got most out of this movie is the sense of, look, as much as we may laugh and say like, oh, Adrian Zmed, and he was on Solid Gold and he was on TJ Hooker and all that, you can tell that everyone in this movie is actually, the actors at least are trying. Yes. They're doing their best. Actually, they're all very plucky and they're all trying. But, holy calito.

But amid this weird, bizarre, world-cheap knockoff, lifeless morass, there is a ray of sunshine.

And that ray of sunshine is?

And that is, holy crap, 23-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer, in her first starring role, other than a TV movie, it's almost immediately obvious, there's a star. In the middle of this mess, like, whoa.

Well, first of all, I wanted to mention one thing about you saying it's like a weird, cheap knockoff. This movie is to the original Grease, as the Turkish remake of Star Wars is to Star Wars, you know? I mean, there's always that feeling like, oh, it's the Bollywood remake of this, and it's like bat shit crazy, you know? And it's like, this feels like that. Generally watching this feels like I'm watching like some Eastern European knockoff of the original, you know?

Yeah, I don't know all the backstory, the context. I don't know that I really want to know.

No, we don't.

We don't, although the director, Patricia Birch, is a choreographer and her only other credits before and after are choreography, including the original. Somehow she was handed the reins to direct this film. She's a really talented choreographer.

She's clearly somebody of note and somebody who did Broadway and all this stuff, but it's like nothing works in this film. But I wanted to tell you the thing about Michelle Pfeiffer, you said it's a star and I absolutely agree. The thing about her though is that she feels like she's from the 1980s and like she's like Marty McFly in this movie because not only is her acting so much more naturalistic like everybody else's, you know, there's parts where I genuinely believe she's happy in this movie, which could not be possible. The other thing I want to ask you in terms of the opening number is she seems to not be in it a lot. And I've developed this theory that she can't dance because a lot of her coverage is middle shots, you know, so you're seeing her torso, you're not seeing her legs and sort of waving her arms, you know, and she's also not heavily featured in this number at all.

Yeah, and that is kind of interesting because we don't really see her emerge in sort of full bloom as a performance and a character until quite a bit later. We just sort of get a tease of her here, and this opening seems overly concerned in introducing us to a whole lot of characters that we are really not here for and not going to care about. And that, I think, is a misfire and a strange choice. We do, however, also get the introduction of Maxwell Caulfield as I will call English Ken.

You know, I'm going to push back on that one a little bit. I always felt kind of bad for Maxwell Caulfield because he was a staple in like 80s, like Dynasty, the Colbys, that kind of stuff. He was a staple in those. He's actually not had a terrible career. I mean, he's been a working actor for a while. I actually think the guy has some charm. I found him very handsome and very sort of compelling, but clearly his character is sort of all over the place. I mean, I don't know what he's playing in this movie, you know?

Yeah, and we'll get into that in terms of some of the unexpected directions that they take his character.

Like when he turns into Snake Plissken later in the film.

Yes, yes. I have other names for that, but we'll get to that. But it is striking though, right out of the bat, as you said, Pfeiffer clearly was not cast as a dancer, was cast for her other skills, which are considerable and potent. Maxwell Caulfield is ridiculously streaky. That is an inescapable fact. Another detail that popped to me in this sequence, and I'm very curious if I am revealing something to you in it, are the unnamed twin cheerleaders who pop up periodically throughout the film in just the most wonderful matching costumes. The costume in this film is pretty great, and are just little dashes of delight interspersed throughout the film. Do you know who those twins are?

First of all, before I fail the quiz, I want to say I actually believe I worked with one of those twins, because it's Liz Seagal and her sister, right? Liz was a writer on Cowboy Bebop, and she is, by the way, not just a phenomenal writer, one of the best people I know.

Yes, I thought I'd be remiss if I didn't point out this crazy small world connection that Gene and Liz, Gene went on to be a very accomplished TV director, and Liz, a writer, producer, among other things, was a story editor on Charm. Not while I was there.

Not while you were there.

But a co-EP on Cowboy Bebop with you. And when I discovered that, I just thought, OK, this is it.

And I adore that woman. She has been so good to me. But I will tell you this. The other thing I have to say is that I believe that they were dead and that they're actually the ghosts of... Do you remember that movie? Was it called Red Prom or something like that about the kids who get into the Volkswagen minibus on the prom night and they're drinking and they have seat belts on? And the narration goes like, The funeral was a closed casket.

It was better that way.

You know, have you ever seen that?

I have not. It is now going on my list.

I genuinely feel... I think it's called The Last Prom. And I genuinely feel that that is some sort of weirdo-bizarre crossover in which those two twins just sort of keep appearing contextless and it's because they're actually dead. That's how bored I was watching this film.

And we do venture into the afterlife later, surprisingly, which we will get to. It's also worth noting we are beholding Eve Harden and Connie Stevens and Cesar kind of popping up in this movie. It's like they're trying to throw different things at us to be like, oh, you know, this is like worth watching. And even though it's not the original Grease and everything, and it just feels a little like...

The thing that freaks me the fuck out, Paul, in terms of our age, is that it is now longer, it's been longer now since this film was released than it was between when this film was made and the 1950s, okay? Sid Caesar famously was the host of Your Show of Shows, which was a live television comedy variety show that dominated American television in the late 50s. It was literally one of the pioneering shows in television, right? And Sid Caesar shows up in this and he must be like, our age, Paul. He's like 53. And so is Tab Hunter and so is Connie Stevens.

I'm not quite there yet.

But it's weird because, again, to make that point, it's like what we saw as nostalgia back then is actually much closer in time to what we're treating as nostalgia now. And it's kind of strange, you know?

Absolutely. It is very unsettling. And I try not to think about it, so thank you for forcing me to confront that. I believe this film was set obsessively in 1961, as we see in signage later. But, yeah, I feel like we need to skip a bunch of stuff because there's just a lot of boring setup stuff that happens until we get...

But first, can I read you a quote from the director and what she thinks about the opening number?

No, when producer Brad speaks, we listen.

Here's a direct quote from her. I think the opening number of Grease 2 is one of the best things anybody has ever done. I managed to do a seven-minute nonstop informational number. That's where you got to know them. It's a good number. I know it's a good number. And then a couple minutes later, the same interview, she says, one of the failings of the film is the first two people who get off the bus are from the first movie and they weren't the main cast and then you don't recognize anyone. So she acknowledged the rest of the failing.

You know what? I can only be happy for her that she has that sense of accomplishment and achievement. Good for her.

Also, we don't know what they went through to get that. I mean, honestly, we don't know. In the immortal words of the poster for Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, every man fights his own war.

Yeah, yeah. And obviously, the original had material to draw on. I mean, there was already, Grease was a thing, a Broadway show and a hit. So it was, you were adapting something. Grease 2, how do you follow Grease and make something? So this was a huge big swing to have to take and then to thrust on someone who had never directed a feature, as a choreographer. So I give it all those caveats and respect.

Let me put something down right now in terms of that, because we're already a half hour in and we've only talked about two minutes of the movie. I think that anybody who makes any movie, whether that movie is Manos the Hands of Fate, Plan 9, or Lawrence of Arabia is a fucking hero. Because making a movie is literally conjuring something from nothing. That doesn't mean we have to suspend our critical faculty, but I think on a baseline level, getting anything in the can is, you know, sadly this film does feel like it came from, it went in the can, but... But I think it is an innately heroic act to make a film, you know, and all of the shitty things we're going to say about this movie are backed up by a great deal of love and affection, I would say.

Absolutely. And I will list as one of the first things that stirred genuine affection for me was when we were jumping ahead out on the track and the T-Birds are in their track gear while also wearing their black leather jackets.

Yes, indeed, indeed. Just one last thing about the end of the title sequence, okay? Just I want to... First of all, all of the acting that happens in, you know, we're going to skip through a lot of the first act because it's just boring as fuck. But the one thing I want to say is, like, when they're doing the announcement... And the great thing, by the way, the great thing about the T-Birds is they push Sid Caesar into a ditch, and then you don't see Sid Caesar for another 45 minutes in the movie.

Right.

And I thought he... I genuinely thought he was dead too, but... In fact, I'm not sure that when he reappears, he's not his own ghost, but I have a whole sixth sense thing going on with this movie that I really can't get into. So two things, one of them is the acting in this film, except for Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield, is literally cartoonish. They're playing these characters like Bugs Bunny. And, you know, like the original wasn't exactly Italian neorealism, but like, I mean, they really went for it, you know? And it feels like... And also I was going to say, one of the last credits in the opening title sequence is Alan Carr, who is known as one of the cheesiest human beings that ever lived and for the catastrophic Academy Awards where Rob Lowe sang to Snow White, which most people under 40 won't know what I'm talking about, but if you're over 40, it was a cultural milestone of awfulness.

Thank you for excavating my PTSD.

Oh, no, they didn't just sing a duet. They sang a duet to the tune of Proud Mary about the Oscars. So it was Rob Lowe, Snow White singing Proud Mary with lyrics about the Oscars. It was insanity.

Listeners, YouTube awaits you.

Now, so a great deal of real estate in this film is dedicated to Connie Stephens' cleavage and how supposedly she is irresistible and causes innuendo to break out wherever she goes. That's most of the first act of this film, right?

There's an inscrutable quantity of that and many choices that just seem so indulgently extraneous that I can't help but wonder, could you edit? I don't even want to say a good movie out of this, but a more cohesive and engaging movie out of this because there are these weird kind of tangents and indulgences that just don't seem to really matter but distract from what isn't going to be an actual story that emerges that is like, oh, why did you take so long to get to that?

Yeah, so let me just, and please feel free to stop me if you have notes on other things. So basically, the first act, we're at school, we're in classes, the nerd yells at Maxwell Caulfield, who's from England, playing a character in Michael Carrington because the nerd doesn't realize that Maxwell Caulfield speaks English, which is surreal. We meet him, we meet the T-Birds, Adrian Smith, Chris McDonald, they're the school bullies, the pink ladies are their exclusive main squeeze. He's just broken up with Michelle Pfeiffer, the lesser of the pink ladies, played by Lorna Luft, I believe. Love with Adrian Smith and he'll kiss her, but he doesn't love her and he makes it very clear, which is a big sticking point in the movie. And we hear the word nymphoid mania, which I find, I don't even know why, anyway. And then we learn that in this film, the cool activity is bowling.

Oh boy.

Do you want to get to anything before the bowling alley musical number? Let me tell you.

Just a couple quick things. So yes, on the track field, there also is the emergence of the rival game to the T-Birds, who arrive and are this threatening, looming force. And in one of my favorite lines, which I did not ask Brad to pull, but also maybe my favorite bit of...

I think you mean producer Brad. We've got to stick the cannon here, buddy.

Maybe my favorite piece of foreshadowing, and you know how I love my foreshadowing, and this is a moment where I, having been subjected to this film, really against my will, but out of devotion to my beloved ex, who you have met and who is a wonderful person.

Yes, yes.

It's a beloved film of hers, and so I thought I'd give it a chance, and I was in enormous pain until I heard the words, tonight we bowl, because you may not know this, but I bowl, and so I was like, ooh, ooh, there's going to be bowling.

They literally hit your soft target. That's amazing. You know, Paul, and for that, you having said that, I must apologize for intimating that bowling is not innately cool. You know, sincerely, I did not mean to defame your pastime. I also wanted to point out that they do trot out Didi Cohn, who was the beauty school dropout in the original movie. And she has come back to high school to learn chemistry so she can mix her own cosmetics. So there's one little vignette where she sort of like blows up the school lab. And then, you know, again, like Sid Caesar, you don't see her for 45 minutes again. And you know what I'm going to say? It is that she's really dead. She died in the chemistry lab explosion and returns as her own ghost to counsel Maxwell Caulfield's romantic issues. Okay, I'm done. I'm done.

I am increasingly persuaded by this alternative narrative that you are constructing out of the wreckage of this ill-conceived sequel. I kind of want to see that movie. So we go to the Bolarama, which is a place I want to live in, but that's just me. And then I, this is just me speaking personally, I suffer the trauma of seeing just the worst bowling etiquette ever committed on film by the T-Birds and everybody. And then, and they're bowling nuns that we get a glimpse of, but then we don't get to follow them like, oh, I want to go hang out with the bowling nuns. No, we're denied. And we get this after 18 minutes, it takes 18 minutes to get our second musical number in this musical.

Yeah.

And it is utterly horrible.

It really is putrid, isn't it? I mean, it is just bad.

Just to underline it, the lines are, let's bowl, let's bowl, let's rock and roll. We're going to score tonight.

Yes.

I mean, just kill me.

But you know, I think that from now on, whenever a conversation is ending or whatever, you know how the cliche about Russians is they go, and now we drink, right? So I think I'm just going to end conversations by saying, tonight we bowl. The only dramatic relevance of this musical number is that Michelle Pfeiffer, Adrienne's man is trying to get Michelle Pfeiffer back. She doesn't want to be with him, and she says, I'll kiss the first guy to walk in through the door.

Before we get to that, before we get to that, and this with your indulgence, because this pains me. So this, and again, no disrespect to the tireless ambition of the director, choreographer. This sequence is, the song is awful. The musical number is a mess of shots and edits. That's just crazy.

As with the rest of the film, yeah.

They're dancing in the lanes, which is just sacrilege. I'm sorry. You just can't, you can't dance in the bowling lanes. You've ruined the goddamn wax on the lanes. They should all be banned from Bolarama for life.

Mm-hmm.

And I am just, I wanted to kill everybody on screen when this is happening. It just, this is a thing. It vexes me.

I am blown away. I am touched. I am moved by this personal revelation.

Thank you for indulging that. I just had to make sure I didn't miss that before we bask in Michelle Pfeiffer's shining moment of feminist glory.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Which is when the movie finally spasms to life for me.

Yes. Because the theme of this film, because the theme of the first movie was, you have to be a slut to be popular. So in a very, in a very sort of, I mean, look, ultimately the intentions of this film aren't terrible. They gender swap the roles of Danny Zuko and Sandy, and they make the movie about Michelle Pfeiffer being a woman trying to be Danny Zuko, but being sort of under the thumb of a man and trying to break free from it and being very independent, which is actually not a terrible message.

And that is one of the unexpected delights of the film, is of this particular ambition and sort of motive. And there are glimmers of actually achieving that wonderful goal. And it's because of moments like this with Michelle Pfeiffer, who kills it.

I might have stepped away to make a sandwich during the glimmer, but I'll take your word for it. She kisses Maxwell Caulfield, who's just coming in to the bowling alley.

I want to hear the line.

What about the trophy for best score, Stephanie? I ain't no one's trophy, Goose. She ain't no one's trophy. So that's the way it's going to be now, huh, Miss Independent? Yeah, independent. I kiss who I want when I want.

Oh, yeah?

I could kiss the next guy who watched through that door if I want.

Yeah? Yeah.

You know, it's funny because Michelle Pfeiffer's performance kind of presages Madonna's work as Breathless Mahoney and Dick Tracy. So before this happens, so before Maxwell Caulfield comes in, I just want to call out two things. One of them is Maxwell Caulfield is apparently consulting an American phrasebook as he goes into the bowling alley. He's literally going, oh, hey, guys, can I go, can I bowl? Let's bowl. Tonight we bowl. It's like apparently British people, you know, just just need that in the United States.

Yeah, I do have a note, which is why is Michael such a social idiot? Like, I just it's implausible. And it's one of my pet peeves in movies where they're dependent on the inexplicable, unmotivated stupidity of their character.

So this is their meet cute. They meet. He had actually met her before on the track field, but the marching band got in between him and asking her out on a date. This is their meet cute. But Maxwell Caulfield winds up making friends with the mascot of The Pink Ladies, who shockingly is played by none other than Pamela Adlon.

Pamela Bridging Adlon!

Yeah, who must be like 10 years old.

She's like 15.

Yeah.

It's her screen debut.

Wow.

She steals every scene she's in. But yes, if you don't know who Pamela Adlon is, go watch Better Things. She's a genius. She's amazing. She's incredible. I did not realize this the first time I saw this film. But on the second viewing, and as I was looking things up, my jaw hit the frickin floor. And once you know that's her, you know that's her.

And if you've seen Better Things, you're like, dude.

And she's so great, and I want to see a whole movie about her.

She actually turns in a pretty decent performance as a young girl who's the mascot. And Maxwell Caulfield quite cutely says, you know, he offers to walk her home. She says she needs a babysitter. And he goes, well, consider it a date, and offers his arm. And that may be the one just genuinely heartwarming moment in this film, you know?

Yeah, I was going to say. So yeah, so she is this like skateboarding kid sister who aspires to be a pink lady for whatever. But yeah, the scene coming out of the bowling alley where everybody is left, and it's just left to Maxwell Caulfield and 15-year-old Pamela Adlon, there's this wonderful twofer of just the scene of the two of them. And it feels like, oh my God, this is actually a good movie right now. Like, it's remarkable.

It's a glimmer. It's a glimmer.

A glimmer of a good movie.

It's a glimmer, yeah.

Then we get Tab Hunter.

Tab Hunter, who, by the way, also shockingly young. You know, you think Tab Hunter, he must be 132 years old in 1962. No, he's like a dude. And apparently he's so handsome that there's an entire subplot with him and Connie Stevens that you never see. And he's teaching, yeah, because honestly, I have no idea what the fuck is going on in this movie at this point. I'm just like, what?

He shows up as a new substitute teacher. Yes. And then, of course, then we're supposedly getting sparks flying between him and fellow former teen idol Connie Stevens that is supposed to resonate with us in the audience or at least the parents of us in the audience in 1982. And it's just kind of awkward and feels like that should be its own movie or another movie.

Or not in the movie. Yeah, or something.

It's very strange. Then there's this hallway encounter with Adrian Smedd swallowing the cigarette thing, which is just...

Because then the plot actually starts because the backbone of this film is the talent show. Yes. Such as it is. Everybody's worried about the talent show. They all want to be in the talent show. Yeah. And for some reason, Michael Carrington is the house piano player, even though this is his first day at Rydell. So that's weird.

Yes.

So he's playing piano, accompanying for everybody. We're sort of seeing the auditions for the talent show. And we hear the Man for All Season song, which recurs in this movie like three times. It's like a fucking venereal disease. It will not go away. And it's a terrible song.

It is. And Pamela Adlon speaks for all of us. When she asks Michael. What's happening? Bread.

I want to tell you a story from the files of the secret life of Producer Brad and Javi. Producer Brad and I were roommates for much of the early 90s in LA when we first moved out here. Producer Brad is a fan of Roy Lichtenstein, who famously in many of his paintings of panels from soap opera comics, the character that the women were always spurning was called Brad. Producer Brad, what was the thing that she says in the poster you had in our apartment?

I know how you feel, Brad. And there's another famous one called Drowning Girl, and it's I don't care, I'd rather sink than call Brad for help. But do you know who plays Brad in this film?

Who?

His name is Matt Lattanzi, and he married Olivia Newton-John.

Oh, that's right.

Yes.

Wow. So anyway, here we are. Okay, so the talent show is the backbone of this film.

Yeah, and I have to point out just in the in the theme of that trivia, Sharon, who's one of the pink ladies I kept staring at, who's played by Maureen Tiede, also plays Lucy Lane in Supergirl, the movie. And I'm just like, I watched her the whole movie and being like, what is Lucy Lane doing in Grease 2? But that's again, just me.

So then we start getting into the real nitty gritty of the plot here because Maxwell Caulfield, after the rehearsal, asks Michelle, just legit asks her out for a date. She says, no. He says, well, the line, we start, are you free? Yes, I'm for him in the Constitution, but she's not free tonight. She's not free tomorrow night. She's not free the other night. He keeps asking. And then she launches into a musical number that launched the puberty of many a friend of mine, Cool Rider.

And I just want to contextualize this. So we're about half an hour into the movie. And this is Stephanie, Michelle Pfeiffer's characters. Yes, big. I want song in the classic musical tradition.

Yes, indeed.

And that you would usually start the movie with. I mean, famously, like whether it's Little Mermaid or, you know, wherever you open with your heroes, I want seen. We've had to endure half an hour of whatever to finally get to why are we here and why do we care and what is our hero heroine want? And oh, boy.

Right. So there's a couple of things about this. First of all, Michelle Pfeiffer has most of the time, again, she's in a medium close up during the song, except for two times when she has a dance solo. And look, Michelle Pfeiffer, she can do no wrong. She is the most exalted queen of the universe. And I adore her. I would hazard, not a criticism perhaps, but an observation that she may not be the most fluid dancer. Like, she's not Sid Terese, okay?

That is not foundational to her training, clearly, as some of the other performers. She's primarily an actor. And then, secondarily, a singer. And really great, but, you know, nobody is great at everything.

And it looked to me like some of her dance steps in this number were recycled from the opening number.

Oh, wow. Okay, interesting. Producer Brad with the eagle eyes. Yes, because in the opening number, there's only one time you see her dance with the entire crowd. And most of the time, she's by herself. I also wanted to point out that there is an extended scene where she dry humps a ladder while singing. And for some reason, perhaps the least sexy thing I have seen in my... Even though many a friend of mine found that beguiling, I think it's the least sexy thing Michelle Pfeiffer has ever done.

It is objectively stilted. And I just want to clarify for the listeners what she is wanting in her I Want Someone. She is, and I'm quoting, looking for a dream on a mean machine with hell in his eyes. That is the best line in this really painful song, which again is called Cool Rider. And Cool Rider is like half the lyric of the song that we are pummeled with over and over again. She sells the hell out of it though.

She does.

I just have to sit back in admiration that she takes this kind of dreck of a song and she just owns it and goes to town full on, even to the point, which I think is hilarious, maybe unintentionally so, she continues to sing it out of the scene. Her scene ends and we move on to another scene and we still hear her singing it off camera in the distance for quite a while. She is in her own world, continuing to sing the song maybe all day.

It's amazing. I love it. Musicals already exist in a rarefied space where people's emotions can no longer be conveyed through mere dialogue. This movie breaks that convention entirely because the songs are motivated by absolutely no emotion or dramatic thrust in the film. It's interesting the choices this movie makes. It doesn't have a consistent way of staging musical numbers. Some of them are surreal, some of them are naturalistic. The movie has no vision. It just says, well, they did this on Fittler on the Roof. Well, they did this in Carousel. It's an amalgamation of a bunch of different conceits from musical theater, but none of them have any real thematic relevance.

We get these turns and revelations like, oh, this might have been good to know sooner. Right after this scene or near after, it's revealed that Michael is living in a fallout shelter. And then we finally get sort of a plot engine because he wants to date Stephanie and he's heard what she wants. Yes. And so he decides, oh, he needs a motorcycle to impress her. How is he going to afford a motorcycle? He is going to sell homework.

One of the T-Birds comes to him because he's smart and says, will you write up? Basically, intimate said he should write a paper for money. Michael realizes he can make money this way. And we learned something. Michael is living with his uncle, who I think are Sandy's parents.

Yeah, there's some connection that he's like Sandy's cousin or something.

But it's like, because Diddy Kohn has that famous, before she dies, Diddy Kohn has that line where she goes, I told Sandy, any cousin of yours is a cousin of mine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's before her untimely death in the chemistry lab. So here's the thing. Michael lives in his uncle's bomb shelter, which already is, there's a weird Cold War thing that happens about 30 minutes from now, you know, when the movie just seemingly runs out of ideas.

Oh, yeah.

And then we find out that Michael is a master calligraphist.

Yes.

Michael not only writes papers for like about 20 other students in this, all the T-Birds and a bunch of other people, he varies the calligraphy in every paper. And he's masterful at it. The guy literally, I think after his metamorphosis in this movie, he goes on to become Willem Dafoe and to live and die in LA.

Uh-huh. A master forger.

A master counterfeiter. And I will go to my grave with that.

Yeah, it does open up this huge Pandora's box about how his future could turn into this very elaborate life of crime, given that he has this convenient special set of skills.

An amazing skill, by the way.

I mean, literally, you look at the calligraphy. It's insane. Producer Brad and I have a very dear friend who works as a... She actually makes documents for movies. Like her job is, she writes, you know, like you see a journal in a movie, like it's her job to make sure every page has writing on it. But, I mean, this puts even her, I mean, and she's a master at this. I mean, he clearly is like, I don't know. I mean, I think if this guy had lived during Casablanca, he would have been forging transit letters, you know.

Uh-huh.

That's all I'm saying. So, and then comes a very surreal interlude in the film where for no reason, Tab Hunter is substitute teaching a class about human reproduction.

Yes.

And we get to a song about reproduction, right?

Yes, called...

Reproduction.

Reproduction.

But I just want to say one thing. Before this happens, one of the many weird stylistic turns this film makes, there's, he's asking questions of the class. And the first guy he asks a question to, a guy named Jaworski, who's one of the T-Birds, right? There is this extreme zoom-in on Jaworski that literally makes you think that after lunch, Sergio Leone visited the set and said, hey, can I do this one shot for you? And then left. Because it's literally like, it's literally something out of Spaghetti Western. Like he goes, can somebody tell me what the penis is or some shit like that? I mean, it's insane.

So I want to spend a little time on this sequence. I'm very curious if your opinion aligns with mine. First of all, it's clear very quickly, this is why Tab Hunter signed on to the movie. Even before the number starts.

Even before he figured out whether he could sing.

Even before he could sing. He is masterfully cleaning his glasses.

Yes.

In this moment that you're just like, oh, he's just settling in. Like this is his scene. This is his moment. And you can tell. And it opens on him drawing female genitalia on the chalkboard. Like not subtle at all. And pretty well rendered, I would say.

Wow, okay. I'm glad that you stopped to...

I'm just saying from a biological instruction standpoint. Kudos to the art department. You know, oh, hey, Connie Stevens. There she is. And then this, again, this musical number is so cringe. But in terms of the lyric, the staging, the performance, how it's shot and edited all in this very contained classroom that is very tightly packed and populated, I think this sequence, and maybe it's just because I've been punished by the finality and dreck of the rest of the movie, I think this number may actually be objectively brilliant.

But I also want to point out that because this film was the favorite film of one of your exes and somebody that is, we still hold us a kind person, there is a possibility that you needed to find something positive in order to preserve your sex life.

That's a fair hypothesis. However, my assessment of this scene has changed since when I first saw it. When I first saw it, I was just sort of repulsed by the cringe of it. That this is just so wrong on so many levels. And it is, and it is. But taking a second look at it, I feel like it may be the only number, certainly in terms of the cleverness of the lyric and the construction of the song and the execution of it that even comes close to measuring up with anything in the original film. This is the first time in the movie, and really the only time where I'm watching the movie, I'm hearing the music, I'm experiencing this, and it feels like Grease, even though it is a very excessively wrong version of Grease. It is going places Grease never did, even though Grease goes many wrong places.

Yes, it does.

It goes way further, but I feel like, oh, here they finally kind of almost captured that spark for this one number in this film.

Yeah.

And also the twins look amazing in their matching yellow ensembles.

Being as they pierced the thin veil between our world and theirs to appear in this musical number from their place of the afterlife. I just want to say that I actually will enjoy with you in this part of the conversation in a positive way because there is an actual really interesting physical challenge here to set like what, three, four minute musical number in a space that feels like the inside of an Airstream trailer. And I will say that she did do a good job of framing it, keeping it interesting and choreographing inside this contained space. Obviously, the director of this film was an accomplished choreographer and she knew what she was doing. I personally think that choreography in this film, the moves feel very tropey. I'm not a choreographer, but they feel very sort of choreography Tetris to me. But you can tell this is somebody who knows what they're doing in that space. But the song, like literally they're talking about flowers and somebody goes, I don't even know what a pistol is. And then somebody goes, I got your pistol right here.

And it's just, oh my God.

And look, I'm not singing...

It's weapons-grade cringe.

Yes, I'm not singing that from having just seen the movie. I saw that, I think it's in the trailer because I've never seen this movie before. So it's either in the trailer or in the clip they showed in Siskel and Ebert in sneak previews in 82. And it's still burned in my mind like, I don't know, like some sort of gonorrhea, chancroid, pustule. So there you go, yeah.

But, you know, everything's relative.

Yeah, it is. Now we get back to the plot of the movie. In which Maxwell Caulfield goes to a junkyard, buys a fixer-upper motorcycle and he fixes it up and all of that. And then he's having difficulty learning how to drive it. So Dee Dee Cohn comes back from the grave.

First of all, before then, it's important to point out, he is doing all this while haunted by Stephanie's I Want song, ringing in his head.

Yes, yes.

Before then, Dee Dee Cohn comes in as sort of his Yoda Obi-Wan.

Yes, yes. She literally, okay, she literally is a force ghost. I mean, it's like, Dee Dee Cohn is literally in the afterlife like Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi. Like, she's just sitting cross-legged, projecting astrally her high school self to talk to Maxwell Caulfield. She actually doesn't help him, though.

No. And this is so frustrating because in this moment you want her to be, oh, she can be the mentor figure. She can be the Obi-Wan Yoda.

Yes.

To him, that's why she's in this movie, not just as a gimmick, as a holdover from the original to play on our nostalgia for the, and affection for the first film, but she has nothing to do other than a little encouragement, observation and cautionary, whatever, and that's it. And then we're just kind of getting a little bit of him somehow learning how to build it and then somehow endeavoring to learn how to ride it. And then we're just subjected to this, I just think it's an abysmal at two stretch of limbo where there's just more forgettable high school musical rehearsal stuff interspersed with his motorcycle montaging and it's just kind of dead.

So yeah, there's a whole thing where Sid Caesar, again, returns from the dead to explain nuclear war using a football analogy to one of the T-Birds and then disappears for the rest of the film, never to be seen again, because apparently his entire purpose in this film was to come back from heaven to tell Jablonski about how nuclear war is like football. I have two notes for this stretch of the film before we get to the appearance of Cool Rider, which is...

And back to the Bola Rama.

Yeah, back to the Bola Rama, yes. My two notes are, I like Michael Caulfield, poor guy! And my other note is, an hour in, this is still happening? Yeah. Like, literally, this movie felt less like a film than like something that sort of happened to me. I can say no more. I'm still working through it, as you can tell. Paul, I should be paying you like I pay my shrink for this, but, you know, obviously...

I just want to add one thing.

Yes, producer?

Apparently, they started production with an incomplete script. You don't say! And so, like, Didi Khan, they would shoot things and then change the story down the line where the story never finished, and they still use it in the film.

Wow. Okay. So that actually explains quite a bit. Thank you, producer Brad, for wafting into our lives like a sweet breeze of truth.

Or like Didi Khan from The Afterlife?

Like Didi Kohn? Brad, like Didi Kohn from The Afterlife. You have come into our lives and given us some insight.

I think it's Didi Khan.

Khan, not Kohn, I'm sorry. No, it's C-O-N-N, but you know, Paul, I'm going to do that thing that exasperates producer Brad, but I'm going to rewind all the way back to the opening credits of the film. We'll get back to the Bola Rama in a second. Not only does this film not have an opening sequence like the original with a cartoon and all of that, where you really kind of get ushered into the movie in a very gentle way that sets period and time.

And the font.

Yes, the font. Okay, just in case we just in case we didn't all in some weird way, someone in 1982 made the choice of doing the opening titles of this film in the same font as the room. It is literally the font that Tommy Wiseau used for all of the key art and in the room. And I think that there is some sort of weird psychic connection there that like the awfulness of Grease 2, seeing its worthiest successor, punched through the veil of consciousness and gave Tommy Wiseau this moment of insight. Let's get back to the Bolarama.

I am just shocked to my core at that observation slash revelation. And I can't dispute it because the universe is a mysterious place.

Okay, so we're back at the Bolarama for the epic introduction of Cool Rider.

Yes.

Because Maxwell Caulfield didn't just get a motorcycle. He created an alter ego.

Well, before we get to that, this is like the big moment central to the film, the fulcrum of the film that we're going to. So we're back at the Bolarama. And then there is this showdown with the scary rival bite gang that is, I still don't really understand what their beef is, like who they are. It doesn't seem to matter. It's just whatever. But that is sort of the inciting, precipitating event that necessitates Michael showing up. And as I have written down, it's like he's goddamn Batman.

Yes, he is. The way the scene is staged, the T-Birds are terrified of the rival gang, whose name I can't remember. And they run screaming back into the Bolarama. And then they have a shot of the rival gang where they're lit from behind with obviously smoke, perhaps a wet down, a Michael Mann wet down on the road. And my note on that was when did the Willem Dafoe gang from Streets of Fire enter this movie? Because literally the guy looks like Raven from Streets of Fire. He's got like the pockmarked face. He looks like he's about much older than everybody else. But you know what? When we do Summer of 84, we'll talk about Streets of Fire, because that is a transcendent masterpiece that has been under examined by humanity.

And a key influence on iconic anime series, Bubblegum Crisis.

Yes, and a key influence on me.

Yes.

Anyway, yeah, so cool writer, man. He comes in, he actually rides his bike on a car, right? This is the way he does that, right? And scares away the evil bike gang and Michelle Pfeiffer is smote, dare I say.

So we have this really incredible sequence where Michael shows up in his new motorcycle that he has somehow mastered. He's mastered his new steed. He is clad head to toe in black leather with his black motorcycle helmet and these goggles. He's basically Batman, like he's masked or Zorro. Like he has this new secret identity, which is this plot twist. And no one knows who this mysterious rider is. And they all launch into this, again, unbelievably horrible, who's that guy, musical member? I just, it's so bad. But Stephanie is super turned on. And Michelle Pfeiffer totally sells this.

Look, Michelle Pfeiffer, what I was going to say about her dancing, because I don't, you know, it's like literally she can sell using one of her sea level skills. That's how good she is. She literally, like in a major movie where she is asked to do something that is clearly not her forte, she still gets the job done because she's Michelle fucking Pfeiffer. And, you know, and she's in that Bruno Mars song. So anyway, I think maybe I just misheard the lyric.

So Cool Writer, her I Want Song object made manifest, who has appeared out of her dreams and yearnings, saves the day. The rival gang is sort of goes off and I think chases them. Then we get another great line. Everyone inside, we bowl tonight.

We bowl.

As then Stephanie's loyalty is questioned. Yes.

Yes.

And she says, yeah, maybe I'm tired of being someone's shit.

Yeah. And that's where again, this whole sort of initial feminist message of this film is expressed so clumsily and so artlessly that it makes me want to embrace toxic masculinity, but I don't. You know, it's one of those horrible thoughts that happens to you when in the middle of a traumatic situation, Paul, please don't judge me.

I completely empathize with that. I find myself just yearning for her to fast forward in a time to 2023, see Barbie and then go back and break free.

You just had the exact same thought that I had, which is what if Greta Gerwig remakes this film?

The mind boggles.

The mind boggles. Now, this is the part where she takes out her cigarette and he reaches in with his Zippo lighter and lights it for her and it's the reveal of him in his goggles.

So this is the great cinematic moment of the movie. So he's left. She's left wondering who he is. She's questioning her place in the social firmament of the tea birds and pink ladies. She is confiding her existential angst about maybe she's tired of being someone's chick and then she needs a cigarette because that solves everything in this day and age. And there's this incredible reveal. We're pretty close on her. She's struggling to light the cigarette. A hand comes in with a lighter from out of frame, gives her a light. She looks up and then we cut to the towering over her. Again, the object of her imaginary yearning made manifest has appeared in the flesh and leather and then offers her a ride. No double entendre there at all. I have written down, and Michelle Pfeiffer's face lights up like a thousand suns. I think this is an objectively incredible cinematic moment in this movie. It's just glorious. It's so great.

Look, even a broken clock is right twice a day. But then, as you say this, the cops show up because of the rumble, everybody disperses, the Coral Rider vanishes into the night. So here's the thing. Then the movie shifts to suddenly, not only does Michelle Pfeiffer have a job that nobody has mentioned before. So we go to her at her workplace, which is a gas station.

We're not there yet.

Okay, go ahead. Where are we next?

So first of all, we have a beat back at the school with Michael and Frenchie. And now it's been established that Michael has a secret identity.

Right.

And Frenchie knows it.

Oh, wow. She's like his Alfred.

I know. That's what I've heard. And so it's teased. It's like, oh, oh, now Frenchie has a purpose in the movie. She's not going to be Obi-Wan. She's going to be Alfred, his Batman.

She's going to procure the bat suits. She's going to coordinate logistics for his exfiltration of the Chinese banker. It's on. Yes.

And we've established that she has the chemistry lab. She's there for the chemistry lab. So like all this cool stuff is set up and I'm like, oh, oh. And of course, it doesn't do any of that.

Nope.

At all. Because he is not that he is not Batman. He's not Bruce Wayne. He is Clark Kent. And he ended up put to hang a hat on it. Yeah. As the pink ladies come in the chemistry lab. Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. The Superman moment is completely ripped off here. Yes. Go on.

Go on. He actually asks Stephanie, have you ever read a Superman comic?

Yep.

Yep. Because now Michelle Pfeiffer is playing Lois Lane.

Yes, she is. The greatest moment in the film Superman, the movie is ripped off in about 10 minutes.

Yes. Then there is.

I think I blacked out during this part of the film.

As you should because the next scene is the most problematic fallout shelter, almost date rape scene with what's his name, who I have is like this weird alternate reality Tom Hardy guy trying to manipulate Lucy Lane and thankfully they mess it up and so she escapes. But it's also and it's a horrible.

It's a terrible song where he uses the specter of nuclear war to try to convince a woman who's not necessarily eager to have sex with him that they need to do it not just for the country, but there's actually and I wrote this down. I did not actually lose consciousness and enter a fugue state as I thought I did because well, maybe I did and I just wrote this down because it was that horrible. We're doing it for Uncle Sam. We're doing it for this. We're doing it for that. We're doing it for Disneyland. Yeah, it is a cringe, cringe moment and profoundly problematic. Yeah, profoundly.

Just it's very painful on many, many levels. But then after we get through that, I think the worst, most horrifying scene in the film.

You know how you get through it with your friends? You know, you get through it by you call your mom, you call producer Brad, you call me, you know, and you just hang tight until it's over because it was horrible. It was kind of morally reprehensible to me.

I completely agree. I think that it's not about it just not aging well. It should never. So it's really awful on many levels.

Can I go on to the gas station?

It's one of my favorite out of the blue revelations. Right. It kind of character details that suddenly it's like, oh, Stephanie works at a gas station. One thing I've got to say about it.

Yes.

Pfeiffer sells this. Of course she does. She shows so many things in this dazzling wonder. Right. That is so great. And it's just like out of the blue. And then, of course, her Mystery Man Cool Rider then shows up.

Let's talk about that wonder, though. I want to talk about that wonder because here's the thing. Literally, it is... Well, I don't know because the middle of the film seemed to last about 48 minutes. I literally kept looking up at the timestamp and I was like, one hour to go. And I'm like, I've seen eight scenes. How much? One hour to go.

Yeah.

So suddenly, like up until now, the movie has been pretty mise en scene.

Yes.

Right. And I know I use that term a lot. I know it's a pompous whatever, whatever, but it's like it's been one of these movies where there's a lot like the camera doesn't move a lot.

Yes.

The camera that she sets up the shot. She choreographs the motion. She's actually not a terrible, you know, visual. I mean, some of the shots are very nicely framed. She puts the characters in interesting positions so that their dialogue looks good and doesn't punch in unless the drama actually is a very classically directed film in a weird way. But then suddenly, at this moment, the film goes handheld documentary style and the stock itself appears to change. Yes, it's like suddenly this becomes an Altman movie for about 30 seconds.

I know.

What?

Suddenly, I hear Werner Herzog in my head saying, we are making cinema. Why did this come from? What is happening?

Yeah. And I think that that entire sequence, because Maxwell Caulfield shows up.

Yeah.

He speaks and we find out that he is, in fact, Superman, but he's also Snake Plissken. I mean, he's got the leather and he's got the voice. And he sounds like Russell doing Clint Eastwood, you know.

He somehow lost his shirt.

Yes.

And just has his leather jacket zipped way down his chest.

Yep.

And of course, then it is this triumphant moment of Michelle Pfeiffer as this working stiff at the gas station, basically gives the finger to the man and to capitalist society, because she's got her cool rider.

Yes. He finally has her cool rider.

And then we get this sequence of her riding off with him. And I can only think in one shot, what a terrifying insurance risk of having her straddling him backwards on the motorcycle at speed without a helmet.

Yep. I literally went, who is short this movie? And is the reason that suddenly the filmmaking looks guerrilla style, that they just went and picked this up in Topanga Canyon without anyone knowing?

Not only that, but when she rotates from the back of the bike to the front, Michelle Pfeiffer does that.

Yeah. It's like, oh, maybe she can't do fancy choreography, but she's like a full on stunt woman doing this really significant thing that is dangerous.

This film, in this sequence between the previous sequence where he shows up and rescues her from the rider bank from Streets of Fire, to the gas station scene, to the romantic motorcycle ride where she straddles him and falls in love with him while he's driving, to the next scene, it is literally a shot for shot remake of Richard Donner's Superman, because the bike ride is can you read my mind?

Absolutely.

It's like Lois Lane, he rescues Lois Lane, right? Then he shows up because she's going to interview him, it's her workplace in a way, it's her apartment, but it's really a workplace, it's a work function, right? Then he gives her this magical ride where she falls in love with him. And then at the end of the ride, he's wearing these goggles, which apparently make, much like Clark Kent's glasses, nobody can recognize them behind the goggles. He takes them down and says, Stephanie, there's something I have to tell you. And then he, much like Clark Kent, changes his mind and puts the goggles back on.

As the T-Birds arrive. That is exactly what it is. We have now switched movies, and we are watching this bizarre world, Lois Lane Clark Kent thing play out with Cool Rider and Stephanie, with the beautiful, beautiful sunset backdrop kiss on the motorcycle. It's just...

But also radical change in the filmmaking style.

Completely.

It shocks me that this sequence is in a different aspect ratio, because the quality of the grain is literally different through most of the scene.

I can't help but wonder if this was just handed off to another director to come in and do, or another unit or something, because it is jarringly discontinuous.

Maybe it's like when... You know how in Sin City, Tarantino showed up and directed one scene for Robert Rodriguez? You know, Robert was like, Quentin, you want to direct the scene? And Quentin came in, directed one scene and left. Maybe that was it. You know, maybe Hal Needham came in. Hal Needham, the famous director of Megaforce and Smokey and the Bandits 1, 2 and 3, and did this scene for a day and then left.

Maybe. Maybe.

Maybe.

We don't know. But we have this dazzling sequence where she is swept off her feet again. It's like her dream man has come true, is real, but she still doesn't know who he is. T-Birds arrive, he basically bolts, and she's like, I got this. I can take care of them because she's a badass. And then she tosses off one of just many. I just love her line readings. And there is this perfect line reading as then she just after having this swooning magical moment and has to pivot to confronting the T-Birds who've arrived to interrupt it. She just says this. Hi.

What are you guys doing?

I just love her. I just love her so much at this point in the movie.

I think it's Rosebud, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. And hi guys, what you doing? It brings up a really interesting point, which is that Michelle Pfeiffer and Maxwell Caulfield are acting in a different style of acting from everybody else in the film.

Yes.

You know, everybody else in the film is acting like they're in a cartoon and they're acting like they're in a movie.

Yeah.

Like they're in a cartoon from the 30s and they're acting like they're in a movie from the 80s. And it's a it's boring.

And increasingly, as we get to in a scene that's coming up, it's pretty remarkable, the kind of crescendo of their performance and their relationship arc that just makes the rest of the movie that much more painful in its stark contrast. But I just love her attitude, her presence, how she just tosses those lines off. She's so freaking great.

Now, what's going to happen next in the film is that they're going to be twin breakups that lead to musical numbers.

Yes.

The first one is Stephanie conclusively dumping Johnny. Johnny, what's his last name? He's got something like like like it's a funny it's an Italian last name, but it's but it's sort of there's something funny about it.

It's a mouthful.

Nogarelli. Nogarelli. I thought that they called it like like it was like like they were trying to do Fonzarelli is generally what I thought. Heartbroken over not heartbroken, but pissed off that he's not going to score with Stephanie. Johnny proceeds to lead the T-Birds in a musical number about picking up women at the supermarket. And the musical number is staged entirely as a shadow play like a sort of Balinese shadow puppet presentation with Adrian Smith and the T-Birds in front of a translucent screen. Behind it are these shadows of sexy women in a supermarket pulling carts. And he's singing and Paul, Paul, help me. Throw me a line. I'm thinking fast. I don't know what's up. I don't know where this movie begins and I end anymore. Please.

My notes at this moment are awful. T-Birds number about prowling dot dot dot the grocery store. Yes, seriously. What the hell?

Good.

So you express that way more coherently than I could have because my brain broke watching the scene thinking they just completely run out of ideas here. Because how did this get filmed?

Also, this movie is an hour and fifty five minutes long. How did this not get cut for time?

It's just so bad. I mean, I'm also leading up to that. This is sort of paid off later. Why does Paulette put up with two-timing Adrienne's med? Where is her agency and sense of self-worth? I get she has to find that, but it's painful. It's rough to sit through. But anyway, this number is awful. It's just in its badness.

It's also bad in that it thwarted my prediction of the badness. Because when they start talking, I'm like, oh my God, is this movie going to turn up to be about like Porky's? Because Porky's came out around the same time. Are they going to do a brothel? Is that where this movie is going? This is horrible. And then it's worse. It's the supermarket. You know what, producer Brad, I'd like to parachute away from this.

Then we parachute into Connie Stevens class. Yes. And poor Stephanie has to redo her, I think it's a Hamlet paper. And conveniently, this opens a door of opportunity in the stairwell for Michael to offer his help because we've established that he is the go-to guy for everybody to redo their homework to get a better grade. And it's great. He's got this swagger because also he knows he's Batman, but she doesn't. And he's playing that pretty well. And then we get my favorite scene by far in the movie. I think the one really great scene in the movie, the diner scene with the two of them.

Yes, leading to his ultimate rejection, by the way. Yeah. And they talk about hamburgers.

They talk about so many things.

It's like my dinner with Andre broke out in the middle of this film. Is that what you're trying to say? Yeah.

I love how this scene is staged and it's shot. It's in a corner booth in a diner. And we finally get a scene just between the two of them as them without a lot of things going on or affectations or whatever. And they play it like a real scene in a real movie.

It's jarring, isn't it?

It is jarring. It's startling. And it's also, I think, a wonderful Clark Kent and Lois Lane scene. Yeah.

I actually thought the exact same thing watching it. And, Paul, I have to say that I commend you on your pure love of cinema. And I'm not being smug. I genuinely believe, like, I mean, one of the things that I also really like about Producer Brad and one of the things that has bound us in friendship, Producer Brad's mom once said he would just be happy sitting in a movie theater with the sound of the projector running and nothing happening on screen. That's something, yes, your mother said that to me, Producer Brad. And it's one of those things where, like, I just really appreciate that you like movies so much that you're able to find value and merit even within this construct here. So just, I commend you both.

Thank you.

You both have far bigger hearts than I.

When I first saw the film, this scene struck me so hard, and in part because I am a diehard, devoted, lifelong, just boundless Superman fan. I just love the lore and everything. And so once I looked into this and what they were doing, I finally had a point of connection and a meaning in the film where I was like, oh, this is resonating with me. But in rewatching this film and sort of imposing the decision on you to make you watch it, as much as I dreaded rewatching this film again, which I swore I would never endure again, I blocked out parts of it, I couldn't stand it, I couldn't imagine ever willingly watching this movie again. I looked forward to this scene. And also in inflicting it on you, I looked forward to you seeing the scene. So I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

What impressed me about it is after she rejects him conclusively, leading to the final sort of action scene of the film that kind of gets us into the third act, at the end of what is literally the longest second act in cinematic history. Like I'm shocked that there wasn't an intermission with Maurice Jarre over to her playing over it. It's like he finally sings. Our main character, one of one of the two reasons has not had a song until now.

Yes. Before we get to that, because it is a big thing, I just want to say I think Pfeiffer is a star in the scene. She finally has a lot to work with and play with. And to get her readings and delivery, I just think are magical.

Don't you think that's kind of weird? Not weird, weird, but like exciting weird.

Oh, yeah.

So what's the problem then?

When she's talking about this mystery cool rider, and of course he's playing dumb, and it's so great. And it's just not the delivery. It's not doing her justice hearing it. It's the micro expressions that dance across her face. As her wheels are turning, and she's really, I think, just giving a great performance in this scene. I think it's magical.

The other thing you see, I think, in this scene is, you know, something I've noticed a lot is that when you look, I think Maxwell Caulfield does the best with what he's given. And I honestly have, the only thing I ever saw him in is La Femme Nikita, the TV series. So I don't really have a big frame of reference to judge him as an actor, but certainly if this film were my only benchmark, I would say she's a significantly better actor than he is. But the thing that happens is that when you put someone like, when you put actors who have a sort of, you know, a chasm between their abilities, you know, like one actor will bring the other up. And I think like she kind of brings him up in this too.

She does. It's the best he is in the film. Yeah. And it's again, the one scene that feels like a real movie. Then they depart. Then she's confronted by Adrian Smith and Christopher McDonald. There's a really funny moment where Smith says, Goose wait for me inside. And then Christopher McDonald plaintively says, I don't want to eat alone.

Hilarious.

It's just so funny.

You know, Christopher McDonald, who famously played the evil husband in Thelma and Louise, he was the government agent in The Iron Giant. I mean, he's the guy who goes, it's the perfect storm. I mean, this guy.

He's the non-Latino Lieutenant Castillo in Yestridis Enterprise.

I actually got to meet him once because he was interested in a pilot that I had written. A lovely guy, at least in this one meeting I had with him, but also just one of these great MVP actors that just, you know, he's worked forever. He's kind of like William Atherton or JT Walsh. He's on that league. He's a guy who's literally been seeing him since he was like 20. He's just fantastic. And I just want to put a little shout out here for him. Hey, it's that guy. Shout out, because I think he's a genuinely wonderful actor who perhaps has not been as recognized as he should.

Yeah, but he's always a treat. Like he always shows up, makes the most out of it without overdoing it. But it's just little moments here and there that he just are gems.

He overdoes it in this film because he's directed to.

Right.

And then you realize like some of the actors in this movie, you see them on the movies and you go like, oh, they weren't acting that way in Grease 2. That's just their idea of acting.

Right.

Christopher McDonnell, you see him, you're like, oh, he was directed to be that way. This actually is such a good actor that he can act that badly in a movie.

Yeah. In this scene, he does it. He kind of underplayed. It's so great. But before we cut to Michael finally having his moment, Zmed finally officially declares him and Stephanie as an item officially over and demands that she relinquish her pink ladies jacket. Oh, wow.

You know, that moment was another. It was like Kramer versus Kramer, where you feel for both sides. Your heart breaks for Meryl Streep, for the kid, for Dustin Hoffman. No, not at all.

Yeah, but it is this toxic masculinity moment. It's awful. But then Michael, way late in the movie, he finally gets his I Want song.

Well, and this is what's interesting, because if you look at this movie as a sequel to Grease, this is hopelessly devoted to you.

It should be.

This is the analog. Well, yeah, it should be. But this song is this movie's analog to that song.

Yes.

Except in the original Grease, it happens earlier in the film, the place where you would have had this movie in a well-written film.

Exactly.

Yeah, or rather, the song in a well-written film. But I mean, I actually liked the way he sang it. Like, I actually was like, oh, well, that's pretty good, you know?

Well, the first half of it, it's so weird. He's singing his I Want song in his head to himself. So he's walking around and we're hearing him singing in his head, presumably. And then it transitions to him actually singing out loud. Of course, no one is noticing this. He's just by himself doing it. And it's the charade song and about his dilemma. Now he's assumed this other identity. And it's the classic Clark Kent Superman dilemma.

I'm super batsnake, pliskin, cool writer here.

Yes, exactly. But I think it's really bad.

His performance or the song or the way it's all of it?

I think the song is bad. I don't disparage him as performance. I think that given what he had to work with, he avails himself valiantly.

Again, a running theme in this movie. Everyone on screen is trying. Yes. Everyone on screen believes that this is a film that will do good things for them, that they need to come in here and bring it. And sadly, the film fails all of them horribly. Now the film takes a really, really weird turn. However, not one that isn't foreshadowed. If you know the music of the 1950s, you may be aware of a song called Leader of the Pack, right? So even though the thing seems to come out of nowhere, culturally, it's actually sort of a trope moment for these kind of, like, Rebel Without a Cost bike movies, you know?

Yes.

Would you like to describe the moment, Paul? Because I couldn't without bursting into tears, and I just don't want to be that guy. I've already cried in this podcast, so let's go.

So, we have what I call the Talent Show Down, where... I don't even... kind of all hell breaks loose. Cool Writer has promised... I was going to say Sandy... Stephanie.

Stephanie.

That he would return to her at the Talent Show, which we've been building up to, and she's like, how does he even know about this Talent Show thing? Should have maybe clued her in. So, we're building up to this moment where she's all dressed up, everyone is converging, we've seen the rehearsals, the painful, awful rehearsals, and we're waiting for him to arrive. But of course, then the dark forces are also waiting. And there is then a confrontation and a chase.

Yes.

Because they have to take him down, because he is a threat to their dominant masculinity.

Yes, yes. And in this chase, Cool Rider dies.

Yes.

He is pursued, they can't find the body, but he goes to that man's curve, kind of like the song Leader of the Pack, and he is presumed dead.

Before then, we get an iconic line.

Okay, do go on.

Delivered by who I'm referring to as Lucy Lane.

We're going to die and I'm wearing my mother's underwear!

Just shout out to that screenwriting and performance choice. But yes, there is this chase scene that inevitably leads to a dead man's curve that has an appropriate ominous sign.

That says dead man's curve.

Because of course there has to be a dead man's curve because it's evoking these biker movies. And Cool Rider goes off this cliff into the void not to be seen or found. And we're like, really? But everyone thinks he's dead.

Because the pacing in this film is so sodden and so completely like just... I honestly, I swear to you, between now and the climax, which is the talent show, when the movie goes even more batshit insane, I genuinely thought they'd kill them. I actually went on wiki... No, no, I'm going to tell you something about me. I wrestle with anxiety and I never go into a movie without knowing the ending. I can't go into a movie without knowing the ending because it literally makes me anxious. This one, I didn't. And after he goes over the cliff and then the next three hours of the film take place, and I'm wondering why he hasn't shown back up. I'm thinking they fucking went through with it. They killed Cool Rider. So I looked it up on Wikipedia. So I was spoiled for the ending at that point. It's only like really two minutes away. It's just that the film is so badly made that you feel like it's a day. Yeah, that was the effect it had on me, Paul.

Wow. I'm shocked, but what a high compliment to the filmmakers that you were sold on that moment. I don't think I ever really bought it because I just thought as incompetent as this movie is at so many turns.

And boy is it ever.

I just was like, no, this is just too dumb and we don't see it.

No, they can't. And I'm like, did they say Leader of the Pack is out? No, no, they can't. And then I went on Wikipedia because I literally could no longer stand it.

Yeah, it does beg the question like, oh, what would the movie be if they had? And we sort of get a stretch of that because, again, to the credit of Michelle Pfeiffer's commitment to the role, we see her wrestling with grief through the Nightmare Talent Show of just these horrible numbers. And because we didn't get enough of it, we are getting the full performance of Girlfriend All Seasons that has already poisoned our brains.

In which Michelle Pfeiffer was always a part of, only we never saw her rehearsed it really in the movie.

Not really.

And she's wearing a dress that looks like a Christmas tree. And can I do this one? Because I got to just... Please. Okay, you may remember how in the original Grease, Didi Khan has a metaphysical visionary encounter with Frankie Valli, who sings in a quite dream-like heavenly space, as he appears to her as a teen angel, and sings the song Beauty School Dropout. And honestly, it's one of the most delightful moments in the film Grease, right? The classic. Yeah. So, while she's in the middle of this horrific girl for all seasons number wearing a Christmas tree dress, the fabric of time, space and reality breaks.

What breaks it is that this horrible girl for all seasons number that we've been subjected to rehearsals of over and over again, is finally unleashed to us in this full nightmare.

Like some Kraken, like T-Rex in Jurassic Park. You understand why, like Bruce the Shark and Jaws, they've been holding this off. They've only been showing us little bits of it, because the full horror is something that would make Clive Barker run home to his mother.

Absolutely, and in the eye of the storm, Stephanie is wandering around bereft, shell-shocked with grief, and she detours and hijacks the entire number into a solo of heartbreak that then launches this, insanely launches this hallucinatory phantasmagoria.

And we're in what I can only describe as HR. Geiger's reimagination of Beauty School dropout. It is truly grotesque. It's like the production designer quit, and somebody said, my uncle, Hiram Abbas-Bosch, can design this one for us, you know? And Cool Rider appears to her, dressed in a sort of golden, leatherman costume.

And you are taken to the surrealist afterlife. Yes, yes.

And he sings a farewell, and he delivers an inspirational message of closure to her. Or does he? I don't even know.

I was so bewildered at this point.

I imagined from the way it was shot an inspirational message of closure, but I'm actually not entirely sure.

It is one of the things I have to say, and I feel layers of guilt about inflicting it on you. I was most deviously delighted to imagine you watching.

God bless you, sir.

It is so completely unhinged, and it is such a, again, bizarro world response to its counterpart in the original movie. It is the cringiest song and number. Again, it's like this, he is atop this mountain of motorcycle skeletons, and it's all white and smoky, and he's the silver angel, biker angel, and she has entered the afterlife in this white dress to have this final farewell and moment with them, and they're singing. And I've got to say, you mentioned the flying scene in Superman where there's this musical interlude and an aerial ballet, and then it is punctuated by spoken word.

Margot Kidder doing a spoken word interpretation of Leslie Bricus's song, Can You Read My Mind?

Yes, and as much as I adore and love that film, that always never...

Oh, just thinking about it gives me... You know the bad chills, you know how you get the good chills? But then you have those chills that feel like somebody just stuck a piece of dry ice in your cerebral cortex and your entire body is like, Oh, don't do this!

Yes, and I think we've clearly established that the makers of Grease 2 watched Superman the Moon and liberally stole from it, and they chose this moment to say, What if we don't just have one character interrupt this musical number with spoken word? We'll do a spoken word exchange between our two heroes. And it goes like this.

Stephanie, please don't cry. That doesn't matter now. The only thing that matters is that I love you.

And you're the only one who can keep our love alive.

I'm sorry, I'm literally... I'm having an out of body experience. I have fully depersonalized. Right now, I'm like Bill Pullman in Lost Highway, where he goes to jail for murdering his wife, but when they go get him, then it's Balthasar Getty in the cell. That's how I feel right now. I'm sorry, I can't eat.

I just can't believe that I made you two sit through this.

So, it's just nuts.

So, my friends and I, my close friends and I had this idea for an app that we were going to call Ribs. Ribs is an acronym for run it by someone. And the idea for the app was that 24 hours a day, if you're going to do something, you can Ribs it. And there's always a live tribunal of people waiting on some phone bank that you can run it by.

So if you're like, I'm drunk and I text my girlfriend about how much I love her, you Ribs it.

And we're like, dude, put the phone down, have some water, you know. And nobody Ribs this. What studio executive? I mean, you know, George Lucas has the title of the documentary about the Phantom Menace is movies don't get released. They escape, you know, and this is such a...

How did this escape?

Well, how did this escape?

In 1982 in New York Magazine, it said the suits, the studio execs have pretty much left Pat Birch alone.

Wow.

That was a choice.

There we go. You know what? God bless her because, look, the title visionary is often presented in marketing films as a positive. From visionary filmmaker James Gunn, from visionary filmmaker Zack Snyder, from visionary filmmaker Joss Whedon. Well, the reason I don't buy into that type of promotion is because Ed Wood had a vision. I mean, he did not have the skills to render his vision in any manner resembling objective aesthetic quality, but he certainly had a vision. And I think one thing we can say about this director is that she did have a vision.

Yes.

Yeah.

One wonders if it was assisted in any way by any number of substances, natural or laboratory manufacturing. So, but anyway, this scene...

Paul, Paul, yeah, yeah, yeah. And after this, bring us home, because I can't. I just can't anymore. Just let's bring us home after this.

I promise everybody we're in the homestretch. We've seen a light at the end of the tunnel, as twisted and dismaying as it is. So this scene seems to establish that Javi was right and that Cool Rider and Michael Carrington are dead, that they actually died.

Yes.

And that's insane. But Stephanie has her farewell with the great fleeting love of her life, who in no way looks like he'd be really at home in a club in West Hollywood.

None of the iconography in this film is homoerotic in any way whatsoever. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm a big fan, but I gotta say, I was more shocked at Johnny for Cool Rider than Stephanie. That's all I gotta say about this movie. And it would have made, and not might, would have made it a far more interesting film.

I agree. I do think they were missing disco balls in that afterlife scene. I think that was an egregious oversight. Maybe it was a budget compromise. But Stephanie returns to her corporeal body in her horrible white Christmas tree costume and gets a standing ovation, because of course she does. But it is willfully inadequate consolation for the depth of her grief.

Not to mention that her victory, the victory she gets is that she gets to go to the luau with her ex-friend.

Her victory is shrouded in torment.

Because A Girl for All Seasons ties with the T-Birds musical number, which they perform after having tied up their competition and tried to drown them.

There's no making sense of it, but it's a talent show and they don't declare a winner, they declare a king and a queen as if it were homecoming. What is that about? But it's like, oh, so she can be the queen and he can be the king and then she has to go to the Rocka Hula Luau. The next day, I have in my notes, thank you Seagal Twins, who show up again and help open this number.

Because the presence of all of those avatars from the afterlife in this number is what allows the resolution of the film to take place. What you don't understand is that the coach, Frenchie and the twins knew, because they are from the hereafter, what the end of this film would be. And they actually went from the hereafter to the past, from the future to the present, from a space where time has no meaning and relevance, to create the happy ending we're about to see.

Yeah, they're harbingers of the undead. So we now are treated to this lavishly huge outdoor scene with like every extra known to man in luau festive costumes. There is a pool of enchantment that then Stephanie and, what's his name, Adrian Smith, are then festooned onto this pontoon to be celebrated and idolized as the king and queen of the town show, which makes no sense or whatever. And she is still grieving. And then, of course, this convenient evil rival biker gang, of course, has to show up and raid the festivities. And this is apparently like end of the school year celebration thing, too, that's happening. Sound really clear. And then there's just chaos. It's just like gremlins level chaos of these evil rival bikers that it's never sandwiched with their beef is. What is their damage? I don't know what their problem is, but they're here and they're wreaking havoc. And it's... Who can save us now?

Who can save us now? And then the newspaper that says that America surrenders to General Zod starts to blow in the wind.

Yes.

And who should appear in his snake-plisskin getup back in black leather in his motorcycle? But, cool rider.

But, now sleeveless.

Yeah.

For some reason.

Yes, gayer than before.

Cool rider returns and then evil-knevel style jumps the pool of enchantment in his motorcycle, luring the rival biker gang to attempt to do the same, to abject failure. They plummet in. That apparently is enough to save the day. And then... Do you want to take it? Do you want me to keep going?

No, you keep going. I got nothing. I got nothing. I mean, he gets Michelle Pfeiffer. They kiss. He says, I love you.

Yeah, so Michelle Pfeiffer, of course, is like, hold the crap. He's back from the dead. And then he has the big reveal of his identity, which is kind of a big moment.

Yep, but there is a really sweet thing that happens here. I don't know if I'm skipping over anything, but I don't give a fuck anymore. I'm dead inside. The moment where Adrian Zmed gives his own T-Birds jacket to Cool Rider slash Michael Carrington, weirdly kind of sweetly played. I kind of hate myself for having thought that. And I don't know if it's the Stockholm Syndrome, where literally I just fell in love with Beast because Beast had me in his tower. And what else could I do? I mean, eventually you're just there for so long. And now that Cool Rider Michael Carrington is officially a T-Bird, he can go out with Michelle Pfeiffer, with Stephanie.

It is a sucker punch of sentimentality. But I think it's really effective because they draw out the suspense about, is this going to be this other confrontation? But Michael has earned the respect of the T-Birds. And he saved the day.

It's so much more important than any other hallmark of human dignity.

Of course.

To earn the respect of the toxically masculine misogynists who basically...

Yeah, he's vanquished their rival gang. He saved the day. And Adrian's Med, in a spasm of self-awareness and maturity, lets go of his kind of alpha male toxic masculinity and bestows the mantle of his jacket onto him, which is unexpected. But it is kind of weirdly sweet. And then, as this just perfect lovely bonus, Pamela Adlon shows back up with her new guy and has to break it to Michael that she's moved on and they can no longer be a thing. But it's a really sweet little scene and kind of a button on that relationship between the two of them. And it's just another Pamela Adlon. It's just amazing.

And then in that scene, he whispers something in her ear that much like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation is never revealed.

Yeah.

And I was left wondering, what did he whisper to her? But then she looks at him and says, them's the breaks, and she walks off.

Yeah, I mean, one can only imagine it was the seed of Grease 3. And then finally we get what should be the perfect ending, the clunky but charming exchange where she says, I've never been certainer, which I just love. And I want the movie to end there.

What does it know? Because this is Grease 2. It doesn't end.

It's Grease 2. So then they have to start singing and ruin it by singing again. And this awful we'll be together song and cutting to graduation. And then this weird jump still frames. And I'm just like.

And this is where you realize that this film and this talent show and everything has taken place over an entire school year, which is kind of like the running time of Grease 2. Yeah. I believe that there are places where Grease 2 is still happening.

In our collective nightmares.

Yes.

Producer Brad, let's talk about The Box Office a little bit.

How much did this movie make in its opening weekend?

It opened number five at 6.7 million. For the year, it made 15 million as a comparison. The original film cost less and made 400 million. For the year, it was the number 55 film of the year. And there were other musicals that year, and it was the fourth ranked musical of the year behind Best Little Horror House in Texas, Annie, Victor Victoria, and then Grease 2.

Victor Victoria is an objectively great film, though. I mean, problematic in the current day, but it's still a classy piece of entertainment of its time. Would you disagree, Paul, or am I...?

It's been so long since I've seen it, but I wouldn't disagree.

Well, Paul, what can I say but thank you for leading us on this near psychedelic journey?

I thank you for letting me test the strengths of our friendship by inflicting this upon you.

I think we can safely say that our friendship is strong.

Yes, our bond has deepened.

Producer Brad, any final thoughts? Any housekeeping we need to take care of?

We're staying with the same weekend for our next episode, June 11th. We're returning for ET. ET?

So this time we had the sense to buy tickets in advance for the next day.

By the way, buy tickets in advance by going to the multiplex and buying the tickets physically at the multiplex box office and standing in line. We didn't call anybody.

Right.

Day of, yeah.

Yeah. All right.

Well, I guess we will see you next time at the multiplex.

It's in the Constitution.