Yeah, research and I can get his hands on that top secret crap report two days before it goes public.

My God, the Dukes are going to corner the entire frozen orange juice market.

Unless somebody stops them.

Or beats them to it. Eggnog.

The great Denholm Elliott, right?

Oh, nothing beats it. And what I wouldn't give for a chilled glass of eggnog right now.

You know, this, I suppose, you know, when you hear all the debate about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not, you never hear anybody say, well, Trading Place is a Christmas movie. How is this not the most perennial Christmas movie ever?

Oh, there is one very specific reason why it is not.

Oh, yeah, there's that.

Actually, actually two.

There's two.

There are at least two.

At least two.

Very specific reasons why this is not a perennial Christmas movie. Perennial at all. It is.

It is a forgotten classic, isn't it?

It is. It is an unfortunately slightly problematic classic.

Well, I think.

But overall, it's a remarkably entertaining and sharp film.

It is. Well, ladies and gentlemen, fellow thrusterikens and thrusterians, and what do you call our fans?

Thrusterians.

Thrusterians. Hey, listener, all one of you. We're talking about a movie called Trading Places here. It is a delightful throwback to these screwball comedies of the 1930s, and we had a good but problematic time watching it, I think is a good summation of the next hour and a half of your life. Right, Paul?

Yes. Yes. I this is a fountain of delight with intermittent speed bumps of.

Oh, it's like it's like you're in a chocolate fountain, but everyone's in a wild bird poop.

That's a little bit a little bit in there.

With that glowing metaphor, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Javier Grillo-Marxuach.

And I'm Paul Alvarado-Dykstra.

And this is Multiplex Overthruster.

Summer of 83.

Paul, today you are the plot man. Why don't you give us a little bit of a... Well, we don't get to the plot yet. Let's talk a little bit about when and if you saw this movie in the theater.

Did you?

Oh, no, no, no. I was verboten, R-rated, off-limits to me at the very young age I was in 1983, so...

I counted six reasons why I didn't see this movie in the theater.

Yes, yes, at least. At least.

There are great many, there are great many. Again, though, funnily enough, as I'm watching the film, I am thinking this did not necessarily need to be an R-rated movie.

Absolutely not.

That was a choice that was made and they lean into it.

By the six reasons, I mean boobs.

Those are some of the reasons, yes. There are ample numbers of them on display.

Do you think that the racial... Okay, so I didn't see this in theaters either. Producer Brad, did you see this in theaters?

Cable, Late Night.

Yeah. Late Night Cable, right?

I must have caught up with it years later on Cable, but I have not seen it in decades.

Nor have I. It's interesting because Eddie Murphy was so huge. He'd done 48 hours before he did this movie. I remember seeing him interviewed by Barbara Walters, and he said he wanted to be like the Beatles of comedy. That was his ambition. I think that this movie really cemented that for him, didn't it?

He's just so undeniably a star and just a powerhouse of charisma. There's even a line, a take he gives where they keep a take that he flubs. It's a long one, but they let him go because he's still selling it. It's still great. Yeah, he's just so much fun to watch. This film can't lose once he appears on screen, and every moment he's on screen, he owns it and you just are along for whatever ride he wants to take you on.

I got to say, this is probably my favorite Dan Ackroyd performance, because I feel like he's actually giving an acting performance. I feel like Dan Ackroyd is actually playing a character in this movie, and I do like him quite a bit in this. You seem dubious, Mr. Alvarado-Dykstra.

Well, I'm processing a kind of Robocop menu of potential comments to make on that.

I think I mean The Terminator is fucking asshole one of them.

No, no. These are kinder. I do agree. Dan Ackroyd definitely giving a performance. I think that as you mentioned, this film is a definite throwback and love letter to screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s, updated to the go-go Wall Street Reagan era, early 80s.

Yeah.

And there are moments where I feel Dan Ackroyd's performance is a little arch, is a little almost too trying to veer into a 30s, 40s heightened caricature.

No, I actually completely agree with that, but that's what I like about it. You know, I think that it feels, yeah.

Yes, it kind of works because this movie is so much about class and that he is of a class that is so out of touch with reality and sort of the common man that you sort of buy that. That it's like, okay, that gives him some cover for some of those...

Choices, dare we say.

Yes.

Paul, you know what? You're the plot guy this time around. Yeah, so basically... Let's go ahead and tell us what this movie is about, Paul.

Basically, it's The Prince and the Pauper by way of a 30s screwball, 40s screwball comedy, but again, channeled through 80s Wall Street hubbub, but it is also this plot about a conspiracy by these old white rich men who have a plan to corner the market on orange juice futures to make a lot of money, but along the way, they enter into a friendly wager, questioning the nature versus nurture argument. That's right. And one is very much on one side of that, and one is on the other, and they decide there's an easy way to field test this. We are going to elevate this black man from the streets who has been arrested and put him in the CEO position and kick out our current CEO and strip him of everything, and then he is going to descend into a life of crime and squalor. And so it's this devious plot and filled with problematic turns into homophobia and racism and yeah, it's very much a film of its time. But that's essentially what it is.

But also, I think also in being stripped of all that makes him who he is, the Dan Ackroyd character winds up teaming up with a Hooker with a heart of gold.

Of course.

Also a problematic character choice. Yes. And ultimately him and the Eddie Murphy character, the Hooker character played by Jamie Lee Curtis, and his butler played by Denholm Elliott, team up to basically jump in on the insider trading that the Mortimer brothers are doing, or the Duke brothers, and send them to the Poor House.

Yeah. We have this unexpected foursome that combine and collide to take on the evils of capitalism as a metropolitan A team.

They're taking on the evils of capitalism, but really they also just want to exploit the evils of capitalism.

Very much so.

One of the more problematic aspects of this movie for me is how much it leans into the idea of money as redemption, and money as goal, and money. Hey, producer Brad, give us a bell, man. Come on, let's get into it.

Sorry. Wrong bell.

Wrong bell. Oh my God. Producer Brad.

Ding, ding.

There we go.

Wouldn't you know it? The film opens, and where are we? We're in Philadelphia.

And we're seeing a montage of Landmarks of Philadelphia. And what is one of the first ones we see?

Paul?

Oh, the glorious immortal statue of Rocky Balboa.

Of Rocky. Yeah. On the steps of the museum.

And who played Rocky?

Who played Rocky? Balboa? That was Spencer Tracy, wasn't it?

Indulge me.

Sylvester Stallone.

And who is his brother?

You mean his brother Frank Stallone, producer Brad?

The Frank Factor.

Get it out of the way. Sadly, frankly, Frank Stallone is nowhere to be seen in this film, but another slightly lesser known brother of a more famous brother does appear in the third act. So there is a little echo to Frank, or maybe an intentional homage to Frank in the film, but we open under the glorious strains of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which is a quite interesting choice, but it is meant to convey this dichotomy, this contrast between the sophisticated upper class and the working class. And we get this glorious montage of working class Philadelphia set to that music, we get a peek of not just the aforementioned statue, but the magnificent Denholm Elliott, who is the butler in residence at a brownstone mansion in Philadelphia where he is getting the paper, prepping breakfast for somebody who is revealed to be none other than Dan Ackroyd.

As Louis Winthorpe.

Yes, Louis Winthorpe with an E at the end. He proceeds to shave him, dress him, and we get our first bit of foreshadowing this morning. Because Winthorpe just has a glimmer of capitalist leaning, psychic intuition.

He is reading the newspaper.

Yeah, the mayor may not be provoked by this immaculately sliced bacon that is before him on his breakfast break.

Well, let's find out what that piece of insight is. Producer Brad, clip number one, please.

Pork bellies. I have a hunch something very exciting is going to happen in the pork belly market this morning.

What could that be?

Paul, pork bellies are bacon, right? Yes, also. So when people say, yes.

Pork belly is also pork belly.

Well, what's the difference if it's like a mystery? Okay. No, no. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Should I? Never mind, never mind, never mind. Let's continue. I'm worried. I might have.

Have you not experienced the wonders of nice, thick cut pork belly?

Well, they used to call that fat back, right? Isn't that like, like, like, yes.

Yes. So bacon is thinly sliced pork belly.

Right. Got you.

Okay.

Okay. Woof.

But you can get basically chunky style bacon, which is, which is pork belly.

Well, why not call it chunky style? Never mind. Anyway, Paul, Lewis Winthrop, we see him, we see him going into his, like Coleman, his butler drives him to his brokerage.

In a Mercedes. And yes, a very luxurious vehicle. And yeah, to and then we immediately also get a sign that it is Christmas. There's a Christmas tree in the lobby of Duke and Duke. Yes. This towering monolith of capitalist power. And there he has wished many good mornings by everyone he passes as he enters his office.

He's clearly the boss, clearly in a position of power. Yeah.

Yeah. Meanwhile, we're cut to the mansion of Duke and Duke, who are played by the great, legendarily great, Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche, the Duke brothers. How much do you love these?

You know, I love these two and I love how they kind of take you back to the thirties. You know, like, again, one of the interesting things about watching movies in the eighties is it's that hinge between actors who were in movies in the thirties and forties and fifties. We're still kicking around. Yeah. So everyone's had a turn up and you and these two really were staples of screwball comedies in the thirties. So they're they're like they're old pros at this and they're so good. There's a whole scene where they're coming out and they live in the same mansion. Presumably, they're unmarried. They're brothers. And they're kind of like all of their staff is lined up and they're kind of being very dismissive of them unless everybody kisses their ass. And they're just great. I mean, you just know who these guys are from the get go.

They're such pros.

Yes.

They are just weaving through this film so effortlessly.

Yeah.

And again, they are this link to the past, to the very roots of and origins of the screwball comedy.

Exactly.

Ralph Bellamy, most notably in His Girl Friday. It's just like a definitive screwball comedy characters and have been around for so long. And this is the joy of this film, is this intergenerational combination and mix of this new young talent of the 80s, of Ackroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis and Eddie Murphy, getting to go toe to toe with these legends who have not lost a step at all. They're sharp as a tack.

And by the way, as they're reading the Wall Street Journal and the limousine and talking about nature versus nurture, because Randolph is reading scientific journal, not scientific American, scientific journal. And he's going on and on about how this guy has been given the Nobel Prize for proving that it's nature that determines people's success in life. Of course, his brother Mortimer believes that it's all, that nature is in fact the thing, that it's breeding, that people are like horses. And in the Wall Street Journal, in the scene, there's also an ad for the Apple IIe, which also puts us in...

I noticed that. It's very conspicuous on the back of that. And yeah, this exchange occurs once they've arrived at the Heritage Club, which is an all-white men...

Oh, yeah...

.gentleman's club in Philadelphia. The Fictitious says it's established in 1776, and so it's this just bastion of...

White privilege.

Exactly. But very...

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Watching this movie, it really felt like an object from another time. I felt like these characters speak more to the characters in the Age of Innocence than they do to the current conception of what wealth is in the world, you know? Like, if you watch Succession, these don't seem like the same wealth at all, you know? And this is very patrician, very class-conscious, upper-crusty, almost like evolved from British society wealth, you know? And it feels like something that doesn't even exist anymore, but it probably does.

Well, it strikes me many times in the film how quaint the portrayals of wealth in this film are compared to the obscene extravagances of the millionaire class of today. Yes. So, like, for instance, they have, oh, they've got this very crude car computer in their rolls on their way. And they get excited about, they have a pork belly's argument, and they get excited about having made, like, oh, an extra $347,000, which is like pocket change to the truly wealthy. Then they arrive at the Heritage Club, and lo and behold, they are accosted by a very unusual panhandler who appears to be both blind and legless, and rolling around on some kind of flat cart.

Yeah, he's, like, propelling himself with rocks. He's holding rocks in his arms, and he's using those to propel himself. Yeah, it's a...

Yes, and this is how we meet the great Eddie Murphy.

Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Thank you very much! Vietnam did this to me, but I'm not bitter. Thank you! Merry Christmas!

And he receives no sympathy from either of the Dukes at all, who just cast him aside as they are let in. And it's worth noting the Dukes are driven by a black chauffeur. Yes, they are.

Yes, they are.

They're welcomed by a black doorman.

Yes, they are.

At the Heritage Club. And then they are served by a black waiter.

And you get a sense of how cheap and awful these men are, even though they have great wealth, because they give the waiter his Christmas bonus.

Yes.

And it's a $5 bill. And I love how the waiter goes, oh, that's great, I'll go to a movie by myself.

Yeah.

So you get the sense that these guys are cheap and they're mean.

So yeah, we get this glimmer that Don Ameche is the more ruthlessly greedy. And Ralph Bellamy's character even says that mother always said you were greedy. But they're both incredibly-

Oh, they're awful, awful, greedy and corrigibly evil men.

Awfully greedy. It's just a question of degrees.

Yes.

Then Win Thorpe, Dan Ackroyd, arrives doing his duty to, and as we've seen him getting a lot of respect from employees at the company, he gets almost no respect from the Dukes who barely look at him.

When he comes in and says hi to his-

With the payroll checks.

Yes. But also he comes in and says hi to his three best friends, these four chimps who are like his snooty Todd and whatever. One of them, I want to note is played by an actor named John Bedford-Lloyd. With whom I have a personal connection because in the first year of Sequest, well, I never met the guy or whatever, he played the villainous The Regulator, who was going to be the series villain and they made an action figure of him, and of course the character flame down and they never brought him back. But I think he was also in the abyss. Just one of those wonderful character actors you see, who's a wonderful dude.

I knew I recognized him and I am now sad that I have not previously requested that producer Brad load the Sequest theme as a cue for any potential Sequest references because if anything delights me more than the Frank factor, it is John Debney's Sequest theme. Yes. Winthrop arrives with the payroll checks that have to be signed still by the Dukes because they don't trust anybody else to do this apparently. One of them observes, we seem to be paying some of our employees a lot of money and Winthrop says you can't get around the minimum wage, which is kind of funny. And then we get Winthrop notices-

The first hints of the conspiracy. Yes.

There is a mystery check to a Mr. Clarence Beek's.

One of the great, by the way, the two best villains of films in the 80s are both named Clarence. Clarence Beek's and Clarence Bottiker from RoboCop, yeah.

Of course.

Yes. Yes. The two Clarences.

That's the one that we got in the team up of them instead of Alien vs. Predator.

Oh, Clarence vs. Clarence. Do go on.

But yeah, then we get this nature vs. nurture argument and then they tell him, yeah, don't worry about the mystery check. That's our thing, like whatever, blah, blah, blah. So very unsubtle that there is something nefarious and underhanded going on with there. Then we cut back out. We see Eddie Murphy accosting a lovely woman who's just trying to mind her business and walk through the park. He is stopped by cops in this bit that frankly feels like an SNL bit, which is fine. And I say that as like, it's a good thing because it's funny. We just get a little Eddie Murphy skit of him being stopped by these two cops who are like, we've gotten complaints about some guy faking, you know, injuries.

Being a Vietnam War veteran, having no legs.

Yeah, details about the war and who he served with or where. And of course, he just makes up mumbo jumbo. They reveal that he's fine. And of course, he's then immediately starts rejoicing. Praise Jesus. Suddenly he can see and has legs again and then tries to escape. But fate intervenes.

Intervenes, yes.

And he collides with Winthrop, who's leaving the Heritage Club with a payroll.

And Winthrop thinks he's trying to steal the payroll.

Yes. And he's immediately panics at the sight, at the mere sight of a black man.

Immediately.

He thinks that his life is in danger. And he drops the briefcase and Eddie Murphy. Sorry, I'm just going to call Millie Murphy. We soon find out he's Billy Ray Valentine.

Billy Ray Valentine.

He kindly picks up the briefcase and is trying to hand it back to him. But Dan Ackroyd insists that he is under violent threat and not, you know, whatever. And so then Eddie Murphy is chased into the Heritage Club by cops who arrest him under the eyes of the Dukes. And this inspires the wager.

And this, by the way, there's a couple of things happening in the scene that I think are phenomenal. One of them is John Landis is a gag that he does in The Blues Brothers, for example, before that, which is a ton of guns come into frame, you know? So Eddie Murphy falls on his back and suddenly from every side of the frame, guns come in, the cops holding guns at him. There's like eight of them. And Eddie Murphy says, is there a problem, officers? Which is hilarious. Yeah.

It's a great trailer moment.

Yeah, it's interesting because one of the things I noticed in this movie that I think John Landis, he really shines with these sort of sudden sight gags, you know, like these sort of... And I'll mention another one later on, but it's like, he really does have a great sense of comedic timing with gags that are... Kind of could only happen in film because they depend on cuts, they depend on blocking and cuts and on the size of the frame. Yes. And he's quite good at it. But my favorite moment in this is that after he gets... He's being handcuffed, Eddie Murphy's character says, you know, this is harassment, I've been being brutalized, is there a lawyer in the house? And they cut to about six white men who just sort of look away and start coughing simultaneously.

For all, obviously, attorneys, overpaid attorneys. And none of them want to take on this potential...

Yeah, none of them want this pro bono case, do they?

This potential client. A couple of things about this. There's so many people in this scene. There are a lot of scenes that almost feel overpopulated by extras, that there's an extravagance to certain beats in this film.

Another John Landis trait.

Yes, and the comparison or parallel you're drawing to Blues Brothers definitely pops up. This film is a spiritual cousin unavoidably with the Blues Brothers in kind of tone and in terms of how it pitches some of the comedic beats, especially some of the visual gags. Sometimes...

But also, so you go ahead, go ahead, if you want to make that.

No, no, no, I was just going to say sometimes they are deployed with organic aplomb. Sometimes they feel like they're just whole scenes that exist just to shoehorn a visual gag in.

Yeah.

That they just want an excuse for. And so to me, the film goes, it just always just self-consciously feels like, oh, you're watching a movie. It's a construct and it doesn't really make much effort to ask you to suspend much disbelief and really just. Yeah, because it's fun. It's heightened.

But that's also John Landis. I mean, arguably his most naturalistic film, even that word is possible with John Landis' Animal House, you know, which is a movie that has a ton of psych gags in it and all that. I mean, this guy, he's not a director who's showing you the human condition. This is a guy who does movies that have a lot of gags and jokes in them. And he's really good at staging them and sometimes not as good. But I was going to say, the thing that is really interesting for me, like let's just get into this one thing and kind of kiss it for now or talk about it more later, so we'll get into it. John Landis has such a strange, you know, he is a white man and he has such a strange relationship with black culture. And so does Dan Ackroyd. You know, you've got literally an actor who got a recording career by covering blues songs, you know, from black artists with his other white buddy, John Belushi. They made a huge movie about it and yes, they cast every, I mean, a humongous number of black musicians and R&B figures and all of that in that movie, but it's still sort of white people, you know, kind of appropriating that music. And when you look at this movie, you know, the relationship, like Eddie Murphy plays a very broad character for a lot of the movie. You know, he obviously has levels to it, but when you meet him, he's this really broad caricature of blackness, you know, of a certain kind of jive. And you see sort of like a lot of that in the film, and it's really, I don't want to say difficult, but it's sort of, it makes it, there's something very uncomfortable about the way that Eddie Murphy is deployed in this film, because he's such a natural comedic talent, right? And I love what he's doing in this movie, but it's also very broadly stereotypical. You know, and for me, the crux of the Eddie Murphy problem for me is that he's great, but then there's so many things in his oeuvre, dare I say, that are so difficult to brook. You know, the entirety of Eddie Murphy Raw, that misogyny and homophobia, you know, which also present themselves here. Paul, any thoughts on any of the stuff I've just talked about? Well, we're obviously Latino men, we're white Latino men and wholly unqualified to speak about black issues, but I'm curious about where you land in on that.

I mean, you've known me long enough to know that there's anything I never harbour a deficit of its thoughts and opinions.

I thought you were going to say adjectives.

There are also those. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot here. I think another dimension of this, and again, it's 83. It's just sort of at the early moments of the shockwave explosion of Eddie Murphy's stardom.

Yes.

And where that I can also kind of instinctualize that there was big commercial pressure to say, oh, people want Eddie Murphy, let's give them Eddie Murphy. More than people wanting to see Eddie Murphy play characters. Right. That people just wanted to see Eddie Murphy.

It's funny because people didn't realize Eddie Murphy was a really amazing actor until like a decade later when he did Dreamgirls, you know?

Yeah. I mean, well, and there are moments of things in between and before then, but yeah, I mean, he has continued to demonstrate both heights and depths and widths and range, every dim- like this multi-dimensional talent that he is. And that I still don't think we've nearly begun to see the full scope of. He's incredible. I just think he's an incredible-

He's an incredible talent. He came up in a time when the sort of perception of black men was so different.

Yeah.

And you know, he's also coming off of, you know, like people like Richard Pryor, you know, the movies he made with Gene Wilder and all that, where they were very much about, you know, embodying that kind of 1970s stereotype of a black man. It's really interesting. I don't know how much I can say about this safely, but I find this whole thing very interesting.

Yeah. But one of the most interesting things about this film, and I think gutsy, even if it is a mixed bag of success, again, it's Prince and the Pauper. It's taking a very classic tried-and-true ancient formula of switching the roles, these people across class, and then seeing what happens. But it has the added dimension of race, is that there's this undeniable racial politics that run through it and racial commentary about this country and our society. And Eddie Murphy has a superpower, many, I think, superpowers. But one is that he's able to walk right up to and confront, and I think drop some, dare I say, truth bombs about these things by his existence, but also by his insight and delivery and intellect and skill that are very powerful and resonant, but he can do so with such charm and a smile and his signature laugh that it's palatable to at a different level and degree than, say, the more confrontational Richard Pryor or some other voices of this era.

The other thing about this movie is that, I mean, the singular point of the movie, beyond all others, is that the black experience in the United States is completely dominated by a systemic prejudice and the movie sort of hides a little bit of that by talking about money, but it was just kind of, this is a pretty pretty big statement for 1983 screwball comedy to make, isn't it?

Yes, because I think it is kind of packaging that in the broader case of rich people are ripping us all off.

Yes.

And he punctures that to foreshadow or forecast something he says later when the Dukes are explaining to him what they do.

Right.

He basically deconstructs it by saying, oh, you're guys are bookies.

You guys are a couple bookies. You're bookies.

Like that's all it is.

At which point Mortimer looks at Randolph and says, I think he gets it.

Which is effectively puncturing this whole mythology of the Wall Street and rich class. You guys are not adding any value whatsoever. You're not doing any real work. You're just exploiting people by inserting yourself in these transactions. That's gross.

When you get to the end, look, the ending of this movie and we'll get to it, it broke my brain in a lot of ways. Because I didn't understand how the financial markets were because on a fundamental level, what Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd do at the end of this movie in terms of their manipulation of the market to get their revenge is nothing more than like highly unethical legalized gambling. They're basically short selling the futures in order. And it's insane because when you think about what the instrument that allows you to make a short sale transaction, there is no objective value to this transaction other than you're making a bet. It is literally, they might as well be putting it on the roulette. And that's sort of insane because the movie does give you this idea that for all of the blandishments of this wealth, these people are just crooks.

Welcome to America, Javi.

And it was legal back then to do this.

Oh yeah. I think it's still legal, isn't it?

No, the Dodd-Frank Bill of 2010, they added the Murphy Rule.

Is that right? The Eddie Murphy Rule?

It's called the Murphy Rule, yes.

Really?

Yes.

Yeah. But significant parts of Dodd-Frank have been weakened and underpowered.

Well, you don't say.

Yeah. But no, it's...

Welcome to America.

It's... I mean, watch The Big Short. It would be a great feature.

Oh yeah, yes. Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With this one. Actually, not a bad double feature with this. You know, Paul, you were just getting to the bet and let's...

Yeah, yeah, because... And before we get to it and we're gonna... I'm not gonna say it better than they do. There's an observation that's made. And this is pretty early in the film, within the first 20 minutes. Like when the Duke brothers are observing the situation and they just had this abstract nature versus nurture argument that is now becoming more concrete in the personas...

As Billy Ray Valentine invades the Heritage Club and there's a whole...

Yes, of him and their interaction they just had with Winthrop. And Ralph Bellamy, Randolph, is asserting that, oh, there's nothing wrong with Billy Ray, inherently. He's a victim of circumstance and upbringing and social injustice and all this, to which Mortimer Don Ameche says, of course there's something wrong with him. He's a Negro. And that like, oh, and again, in this moment, there's this glimmer of hope that there is a divergence of thought on this perspective of bigotry between the two Duke brothers that I personally found myself holding on to, because I love Ralph Bellamy. And of course, you want one of them to be good.

You want a Duke brother and a good Duke brother, but you're gonna, but I think the movie plays on that. I think the movie, one of the big surprises in the movie is that Randolph appears to be Billy Ray's defender for much of the movie, and at the end, he is just as willing to throw him away with everything else. For a movie that is as problematic as this one, it's amazing that it has so blunt a message about racial prejudice and money and class in America. But at the same time, wow, let's get to the idea.

Here's the wager in a nutshell.

Given the right surroundings and encouragement, I'll bet that that man could run our company as well as your young Winthrop.

Are we talking about a wager, Randolph?

I suppose you think Winthrop, say, if he would lose his job, would resort to holding up people on the streets.

No, I don't think just losing his job would be enough for Winthrop. I think we'd have to keep a little more misfortune on those narrow shoulders.

Fascinating. Because they have such contempt for Winthrop also. These two men are like masters of the universe.

Yes.

I also just have to make mention. Now is as good a time as any. Score.

Yes. Let's talk about that.

By the great Elmer Bernstein.

Dear Lord.

Yeah. Producer Brad was actually singling this out. I made a joke about, yeah, I didn't realize that Elmer Bernstein wrote The Marriage of Figaro. Because there's a lot of Mozart in this, right?

Yeah.

They're other.

Yeah.

No, but it's all Mozart other than Bernstein. But what's cool is a lot of the score, much as we heard at the beginning of it, and we're talking about pork bellies, is Bernstein writing variations on some of those melodies, some of those Mozart melodies, and they're masterful. The kind of synergy between the two types of score is quite good. Yeah.

Elmer Bernstein, obviously a god and a genius. Yes. One of the great film composers of all time.

Yep.

You hit the nail on the head of one of the unexpected bonus pleasures of this film is that you get an ongoing conversation across centuries between Elmer Bernstein and Mozart.

And Mozart, and not just Mozart, but Mozart writing Figaro, which is in and of itself a screwball comedy.

Yeah.

So it's like you're literally seeing like a screwball comedy from 1983 talking to a screwball comedy from, I don't know, 17, whatever.

Yeah.

The score was nominated for Best Score.

Deservedly so.

Yes.

Deservedly so. I mean, yeah.

Fantastic.

But you know, when you look at like, this is the guy who wrote The Magnificent Seven theme. I mean, it's like, but you know what I think is interesting is the score is comedic, but it never winks. It's sort of a very, it just really guides you through the comedy in a way that is subtle, but that it just gives you like, I don't know. I think it's very good. It was really fun to listen to this movie, you know?

Yeah, and it elevates the film. It has this classical, almost retro film scoring attitude to it, but yet it somehow also feels current. And yeah, I just, I'm dazzled by it and delighted by it. I just, I love it when a film has a surprisingly great film score.

Now, the Duke brothers have made a bet and it's their usual terms, so we get the sense that they've bet before. They're going to frame Dan Ackroyd for any number of crimes. They're going to alienate him from his world and they're going to elevate Billy Ray Valentine's. But tell us more.

Yeah, so one little bit of foreshadowing, I guess, or a set up for a later payoff is that they, one of them asked, so how much, basically? And this is all the usual. We don't know what that is.

We don't know what that is.

But we know that they are obscenely wealthy. Yes. But that's Plants Little Seed that pays off later very well. So they put the wheels in motion of this, now, this social or scientific experiment that they're going to conduct on these two unsuspecting guinea pigs. Yes. We cut to one of them. Winthrop is having dinner with Penelope, who he's been talking about.

Yes. His fiance, yes.

His fiance played by the lovely Kristen Holby, who I believe is a niece of the Dukes or cousin.

Yes. She's the Dukes niece.

Yes.

She's related to them in some way.

Yes. And Denholm Elliott Coleman, I cannot love Denholm Elliott enough.

So this scene starts with Denholm Elliott is making a crepe cell orange at the table. He is making a show of it for Dan Ackroyd and his girlfriend who are eating together. I mean, it looks like something from Downton Abbey. He's literally just making this dish. He's also wearing a chef's hat and a chef's apron. Coleman reminds me of Jeremy Irons in Batman v Superman, Dawn of Justice. Hear me out.

Never seen it.

Never seen it?

Nope.

Oh, I wish I were more like you that way. One of the things in that movie is that every time Jeremy Irons shows up on screen as Alfred the Butler, he's always got an outfit that works for whatever he's doing. At one point, he's fixing one of the Batmobiles, and he's in a very, very tweety, Downton Abbey car mechanic smock with a leather apron and all that. Then later on, he's making dinner and he's in a chef's costume. Then later on, he's going out into the world to give Batman a map, and he's wearing a vest with a bunch of pockets and stuff. Whatever he's doing, he's got a very, very specific and very tweety, very British version of that outfit. It feels like every time Coleman is making food, he's got the striped apron, the chef said, Coleman is driving, he's got the little chef's cap. Coleman has a lot of jobs in this house, but he's got an outfit for every one of them, which just fills me with delight because, I don't know. It's funny.

He's good at all the jobs too.

He is good at all the jobs too. Also, so now Dan Ackroyd, Lewis is telling his girlfriend Penelope about what happened with Eddie Murphy, and he's of course making himself sound like a hero.

He survived this near death experience with this scary black man.

He defeated Eddie Murphy single-handedly at what I don't know. Of course, at that point Penelope says, I want you Lewis.

She gets a little hot and bothered by this.

Yeah.

Javi, I get the sense in the scene that it may not take much for Penelope. Now I understand why Winthrop is so taken by her.

Yes. But I'd love someone to think about the scene and then the following scene. So basically, Lewis and Penelope are going to fuck. So Dan Ackroyd dismisses Coleman.

Shockingly to me, because if anything can contextualize the powerful passions that exist between these two characters, it's that Dan Ackroyd's character is willing to dismiss Crepe Flambe.

Yes. By the way, what a dick. Like he doesn't dismiss him until after he's flambéed the crepes, which is just dirty, dirty pool.

He does say that he can have them.

Yes. Oh, because Coleman is so wounded. He goes, but what about dessert? You can tell that he's like put his heart and soul into this. And then and then Dan Ackroyd says, you can have them. And then the next scene is literally straight cut to Coleman throwing them into the garbage.

Yeah, that also hurts me. But and I get it. But I'm just like, eat the crepes. They look beautiful and delicious.

John Landis, for his many, many, many flaws and problematic things as a human being and as a director even, has a great gift and I think also it's because he works with the same editor, always setter Malcolm Campbell, right? They literally edited most of his films and it's always so sharply edited. That cut between, oh, you can have it Coleman and then going in the garbage. It's just so sharp and the comedic timing in this movie is just so precise. What I love about him throwing the stuff out in the garbage is if you look at the shelf behind him. Do you know what I'm about to say, Paul? Did you see it too?

Please, yes.

It turns out that Louis Winthrop's Coffee Grinder, which I found on the internet as a Krupp's Coffee Grinder, is also the primary component of the Mr. Fusion from Back to the Future. It is a Krupp's Coffee Grinder that was repurposed into the Mr. Fusion and it is right there behind Denholm Elliott in this. Maybe this is just what a nerd I am, but I was like, it's Mr. Fusion. Louis has Mr. Fusion. What's he doing? What's he doing fucking around with pork bellies? I am use me, sorry.

The second of our just gettacularly exciting inanimate object cameos that proceed a litany of actor cameos or unplanned cameos, but kind of in retrospect, exciting cameos of name actors who will soon appear over the course of the film. So they proceed to the drawing room or somewhere to get to get it on. They're going to go out and start disrobing. And they have a little bit of a tiff about like, oh, his work interferes with their business or their social plans or things he wants to do. But he's always working. And they're interrupted by poor Denholm Elliott.

Poor Coleman.

Just asking if there's anything else they need. He's dismissed. Dan Ackroyd makes a bad joke. And we now know everything we need to know about Coleman's lot in life, working for the insufferable Dan Ackroyd.

Yes.

His job sucks. He's really good at it, at every level, and is woefully underappreciated by this spoiled, privileged douchebag.

You know, one of the really interesting things in this movie is that all the working-class characters are actually quite good at what they do. Yes. And all of the very wealthy characters actually are sort of like knobs, like they're just not very good at much of anything.

And easily replaced, like non-essential, just very fortunate to have landed in the positions of privilege that they...

But if you're in the working-class, if you're a cop, or if you're a butler, or if you're a prostitute even, all of these characters are actually really competent, which is sort of, it's very interesting. Maybe not so much the baggage handlers at the end of it. We'll get to that. Yes.

So then we get our, if I'm counting correctly, our third or fourth, maybe fourth, Eddie Murphy SNL skit scene in the film. Which is him in lockup, having been arrested. And who, pray tell, is standing next to Eddie Murphy in lockup? I'm sure you know this.

No. Who is?

Giancarlo Esposito.

Really?

Yes.

Oh my God. Moff Gideon is in this movie?

He's startlingly young. Giancarlo Esposito.

He must be so young. Does he have dialogue? Does he speak?

Yes. Yes.

Which one is he?

He's the guy on the left, on screen, like standing next to him, this young guy, like sleeveless.

The guy who just tells how he cut him?

And is chatting with him. He's among them. It's amazing. Wow. It makes me so happy to see him in the film, in the scene.

Eddie Murphy is recounting how he... Dan Ackroyd just recounted how he faced down the awful black man.

Now we get Eddie Murphy's version.

Eddie Murphy is recounting how he crushed eight cops after they maced him. And he's telling this story about how he's a karate man and how he bruises on the inside and how he did the quarter blood technique, which is that if you hit a guy, a quarter blood flies out, right? Yeah.

And he does this, let's just say not particularly convincing, a Kung Fu demonstration to his fellow inmates who in the holding cell who are, of course, all black men. And there are two particularly large black men seated opposite who are particularly skeptical. The ones surrounding Eddie are They're buying it.

They're buying it.

They're going for it. That he has a limo or no, he doesn't have a limo. That he's a big deal. He knows Kung Fu.

That he kicked the shit out of a cop because they brought him in. He was crying when he came in because he'd been maced. He'd been, he'd steered gas on him.

Then we get in the running list of quotes, memorable quotes that I think potentially warrant a place of honor on the shelf of our Multiplex Overthruster bumper sticker store. Is this piece of immortal wisdom?

Do go on.

It ain't cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.

Wow. Wow. You can go ahead and put that bumper sticker on any bumper that you might possess.

It's a choice. It is a choice of a very particular characterization that the film makes. Then these two large men confront Valentine, hold him up against the bars. He keeps his cool. He clearly has been in similar situations before, has charmed or joked his way out of them. But just as he looks like he's going to get the shit beaten out of them, he is bailed out unexpectedly and very mysteriously. We also now learn his name, which I think we've mentioned, is Billy Ray Valentine, which I have to say, that is the cool name. He exits the police station and it turns out he's been bailed out by the Duke brothers who lure him into their Rolls Royce in, let's just say, racially problematic ways. It's like they're trying to lure a wild animal or a primitive in the jungle. Like it's so messed up. It's so messed up. Eddie Murphy plays it really well because his reactions are priceless. He is persuaded once he finds out that okay, they're not going to just frame him and throw him back in jail because they just bailed him out. He gets in the limo with them. They make this extravagant offer. They claim to be part of a program to rehabilitate. Exactly, so there's this program that they're these generous philanthropists trying to remedy social inequities and they're going to give him a house and a job, an $80,000 a year job in 1983, which-

Wow, that's pretty good. That's pretty good.

That's some serious moolah. He then amusingly asks the black chauffeur if this is a prank or in one of the first spasms of the film's pervasive homophobia, if they're gay.

Yes. Well, he says these guys are a couple of faggots, is what he says. I mean, it's not subtle. No. And the chauffeur, the funny thing in this scene is the chauffeur has no dialogue. He just sort of nods, shakes his head, you know, and then when, and then anyway, he goes, thanks, man, you've been helpful.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And but then they then they take him to, they take him to that, yes, yes, to Winthrop's house. Because he's he's gone, he's out at work or whatever. Introduce him to Coleman. Denholm Elliott as, OK, the new man of the house. There's also a moment of jacuzzi, jacuzzi adjacent homophobia because Valentine has never seen a jacuzzi before. And he's like, what is this thing for?

And he thinks the word jacuzzi means that that Denholm Elliott is going to have sex with him or something like that.

Yeah. So there's a lot of paranoid homophobia.

Yeah.

Going on here.

But after Billy Ray has been bathed and clothed in Louis's finest, finest clothes, the Dukes explain that this is his house, all the stuff belongs. Because Eddie Murphy is trying to pocket everything. He's trying to literally stick vases in his pockets and things like that. Right?

He knows this is got to, this can't be real. It's got to be true. There's got to be some alternative motive. It's a scam. It's a prank. It's whatever it is. And he's just kind of humoring them. He's not believing anything they're saying. And he is pocketing as many things of value he can possibly get his hands on very conspicuously. And then there's a moment where.

Once the Dukes convince him that this is his house and that this is all his possessions, he's just stealing his own stuff. Eddie Murphy grabs a vase and by the way, he says, and you're telling me I got this own house and my own thing and I even have my own slave, which is kind of an interesting way of describing Coleman. I don't, he grabs a vase and starts juggling with them. Say, so this is my vase, right? If I just throw this vase, if I just juggle this vase around, it's in my own vase. And then he drops it, the vase shatters. And he's like, oh man, I'm sorry about that.

First he says, no, that was a fake. That was obviously a fake. That must have been a fake. And they're like, no, it was worth about $35,000. But happily insured for $50,000.

So Randolph has had to pay. He's already made his own profit.

Yeah. Yeah. But don't break anything else.

So then we cut to...

Back to the Heritage Club.

Yeah, where Clarence Beeks is presented as the head of security. And he makes an announcement that somebody has been robbing other members of the club.

Yes.

There is this very, very sort of...

Played by Paul Gleason.

Paul Gleason, also known as Agent Johnson from Die Hard. Know the other one. He's one of the two Agent Johnsons, yeah.

Yes.

So Gleason basically frames Dan Ackroyd for stealing from his fellow members of the Heritage Club.

Decidedly petty theft.

Yeah, he's framed for stealing 150 bucks.

$350 bills that are marked that he plants in his jacket pocket. And then we get this very elaborate big, like almost Bond villain hall room where they convene the Heritage Club in this very dramatic. Yeah, it's like a big semicircle with other people observers in the back. And then this big stage and dice and raised pie. It's very dramatic.

And the really interesting thing about it is that one, Stan Ackroyd is shamed for stealing this money. He's being arrested and he's crying out whatever that he's innocent. And the Dukes are saying, how could you do this to us? I've already done to you. Then suddenly, it cuts to about four oil paintings of old white men looking down that are all framed around. And it's a really funny side guy.

Again, one of the skills of John Landis and his partner in crime editor, comedy is timing. And this film has many opportunities to showcase just the exquisite timing editorially of side gags. And gags in general that are very effective and that just keep the film moving and keep it funny and engaging and kind of a delight.

And now the plot thickens because Lewis is taken to jail.

There's one other thing that just is so mean. These Dukes are such assholes. So they know he's innocent. They know they framed him. They're putting on this masterclass of acting.

How dare you! After everything we've done for you.

Of feigning offense and insult. And one of them, and I think it's Don Ameche, says, oh, Winthrop, I'm glad your parents aren't alive to see this. I'm just like, Jesus Christ! Like this!

But they are very deliberate. They're selling it.

They're trying to make sure that all of his peer groups that he is shamed irredeemably and cast out from his social class.

Which is only going to get worse when he gets to jail, which is the same jail Eddie Murphy was at, because his, the officer, well, first of all, he is, he is told, he is told to strip. He's being a total snooty asshole in jail. He's in prison. He's threatening the officer saying, you're making a career decision. And this one, the black officer stands up and says, strip your little shit before I tear your new asshole. Which is the first time I'd ever heard that expression. So very powerful moment.

Yes, it's compelling, compelling and persuasive.

And Dan Ackroyd says he's not going to take his clothes off. And then suddenly a bunch of hands reach in from off frame and drag him off frame. And then we have a cut to him in his underwear being, with all of his possessions being gone over by.

Yes, they take inventory of his possessions. And it is no other than Fozzie Bear. I mean, the great Frank Oz.

Yeah, it's a great Frank Oz.

It sounds a little like Fozzie Bear in the scene to me. And we also get a...

By the way, Frank Oz reprising his role as a prison person who is taking inventory of the main character's possessions. Because that's also what he's doing at the beginning of The Blues Brothers, since he's got a camo in that too.

Yes, he's cornered the market on that role. We also get at the beginning of the sequence, Mr. Beaks whispers into his ear. So there is a plot, there's a conspiracy, something going on that he is in on. And as they take inventory of his possessions, on top of him having been framed for petty theft at the club, they reveal a Ziploc bag or a little plastic baggie of white powder that we are told is PCP.

Yes.

PCP.

And Frank Cost gives a great monologue where he goes, Do you know what this is?

This is PCP.

Angel does.

Do you know what this stuff does to kids?

You're looking at three to five mandatory, Lewis.

Do you know what this does to the Muppets? It's pretty great. So, yeah, Lewis now, his whole life is crumbling. His insulated bubble boy existence of white privilege has been just popped in the most painful way. And he is just, yeah, cannot process what is happening to him.

And we cut to him in the cell. Well, he's still in his underwear. People are, other men are putting on his clothing, which has been taken from him. He's been beat up. He's got like two black eyes, right?

Yeah, he gets beat up.

And Penelope comes to bail him out.

Not yet. We first have an interlude of the triumphant Billy Ray Valentine showing up to his favorite bar where he apparently has been unable to show his face because he's owed, what, $27 or something?

Something like that.

Measly.

Measly.

To the magnificent bartender played by the great Bill Cobbs.

I don't know the great Bill. Tell me more about Bill Cobbs.

Fantastic character actor.

So he winds up paying for everybody to get champagne because he's a big shot now.

Yes.

And then he invites everybody to Lewis's townhouse.

Yes. Also, the big toughs, like the two big tough deep voice black men.

The Enkulbingo Jive Turkey guy. Yes.

From holding. We're also let out by now. And they're there and they're seeing him arrive. And they're still skeptical of these wild tales of wealth and privilege that he regaled them with. And he says, no, my limo is out front. Just go look.

Why don't you go outside and take a look at it?

And they look and they see it there being dutifully minded by Denholm Elliott who smiles at them. And then he has an idea, Valentine has this idea, which is not only by everybody around a champagne to celebrate his newfound fortune, but he decides to welcome anyone, particularly the ladies. At first I thought it was exclusively the ladies, but apparently the invitation was interpreted more expansively by those in attendance at the bar.

So the genesis of this predominantly black bar, yes, for a party, and they are being quite rowdy. The women are taking their tops off.

Yes.

As Coleman is diligently trying to serve canapes on a perfectly balanced silver platter. And this is, I love tracking Denholm Elliott's performance and Coleman's arc in this film.

Yes.

Because-

Well, you get the sense that Denholm Elliott likes Billy Ray for some reason. I'm not sure, you know, they've only had the interaction with the Jacuzzi and all of that, but I think-

Yeah, it gets off to a little bit of a shaky start, but-

But you can tell that he's doing his best to try to accommodate Billy Ray's needs.

Yes, he is delighted in this kind of quiet act of conspiracy in class warfare to be helping to facilitate a, getting rid of his asshole boss who treated him like shit, and then bringing in this agent of chaos in the form of Eddie Murphy and is having fun. His job clearly has been very boring and tedious, and now it has gotten unexpectedly exciting and kind of fun. It hasn't gotten too shitty yet because he observes that, this is also something I really appreciate in the screenwriting of the scene. The stereotypical trope would be the stuffy butler gets all up in arms and upset.

About the Pauperty damage and the rowdyness of the party.

About these low class people of color invading this sacred space of the immaculately maintained rich domicile, full of all sorts of fancy, priceless accoutrements and whatnot. But he is happily serving his new head of household. But it is Eddie Murphy who is surprisingly, after first rejecting his new reality and not being willing to accept everything that has been bestowed upon him, suddenly now feels a sense of ownership of this house and all that it contains.

He is pissed off that people are putting out their cigarettes on his Persian rug. He's like, it's a Persian rug, it's a Persian rug. And then the coasters, I bet you people haven't heard of coasters?

Yeah, and they're dripping drinks on the floor, and they're making a mess. And he's like, this is not good. And he finally takes it upon himself to kick everybody out. Of course, this is after many of them have gone topless, and one has gone up to the room to wait for him. And I mean, it's a moment of choice there, that he could have gone another way, but no, he kicks even her out, and is just like, enough. Including the last person he kicks out, another glorious cameo, before he kicks out these, again, the two skeptical, big, tough black men. He kicks out this woman who thanks Denholm Elliott, Gracious in the Way Out, puts on her mint coat, Javi. Do you know who that was?

I have no idea. I don't know. Who was it?

It was Arlene Sorkin. Is that right? It was Harley Quinn herself.

The voice of Harley Quinn. Oh my God. I saw that in Producer Brad's rundown of the movie. I didn't realize that she, wow.

Has a one-line cameo. Just my heart melted seeing her.

This is a very, but this is a very weird scene to me, because Eddie Murphy, Billy Ray is obviously a con artist. He impersonates people, and that's well all the time. But, you know, like so suddenly he sort of ennobled by all of the wealth and privilege around him.

He's been on the other side.

Yes.

He's been on the other side, like taking advantage of people. And now he's feeling like he's crossed the Rubicon and like he's gone through the looking glass. And now, now wait, these people are taking advantage of me. And he doesn't like that. Yeah. And it's like, this is my house now. This is my stuff. And they're messing with it. Whereas, yeah, it's remarkable.

But my favorite thing is when Denholm Elliott says, I thought the affair was quite a success, sir.

So Coleman says, your friends seem to enjoy themselves. I thought this was a great success. So he's this, again, you wouldn't expect this from the stuffy butler, but he's this fountain of positivity here. And but Billy Ray says, I think he says wasn't, weren't no friends of mine Coleman, it was a bunch of freeloaders who treated my house like a goddamn zoo.

Yeah. It's, I mean, look, as a character moment, it sort of foreshadows everything that Eddie Murphy did for the rest of the movie. Yeah. Especially when he's when he's dealing with the Dukes.

And it's, I don't know, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, but you, you get the sense, and the scene plays out just briefly more, you know, because Coleman is like, well, you know, he's like, I'm just going to turn in. He's like, don't you want to do anything? I'll have more fun. Whatever. No, no, I'm good. And he's like, yeah, you got a big day tomorrow. But you get in this scene.

Oh, yeah.

The sign of this burgeoning friendship, that the flame of friendship has been kindled between these two characters from completely different worlds that would never have otherwise intersected or interacted, but are demonstrating appreciation for each other in each other's station. And because you get a sense that part of what Coleman is, I mean, what Valentine is concerned about is the mess that someone's going to have to clean up and that someone is Coleman. And he's treating Coleman more like a peer.

Yeah. And like a person, like a human being. Yeah.

And that is refreshing.

And these two characters don't have a lot of moments with each other in the film, to be honest with you. They have maybe like, but you get, but it's funny, your reading of it is really interesting because you do get the sense that Coleman likes Billy Ray.

Yeah.

You get the sense that Coleman suddenly like sees life in this house, even though it's not desirable to Billy Ray anymore.

Yeah.

You get the sense that Coleman is also feels for the first time, like acknowledged and treated with graciousness, you know, which is.

Yeah. Yeah. But this just this little interaction in this scene and their chemistry that just again is periodic and minimalist in the film. But I think it's very effective because these two actors are so good. And also I think the material is so efficient in terms of its construction. So meanwhile, in prison, then Winthrop has had the shit beaten out of him in jail. He looks like hell.

Other men are putting on his clothes.

And then Beaks shows up yet again as this force of the nefarious conspiracy. And we finally, and it's 45 fricking minutes into the film, we finally meet Jamie Lee Curtis, who is a hooker who's now apparently out on bail or coming out of holding. And Beaks walks up to her and says, hey, you want to make a fast hundred. And at first, she's like, hey, I don't want to get arrested. Like you're trying to trap me in the lobby of the jail, yeah. He's like, no, no, no, it's something else. Yeah. And so he enlists her for what is going to ensue after Penelope has shown up as this dutiful fiancee who is horrified to be where she is around the people who she's with who smell bad, who she literally sprays like fragrance on. She sees Winthrop emerge to her horror. She can't believe how badly he smells and looks. She's repulsed by him.

And we get a little bit of homophobia again, where Dan Ackroyd's character talks about how they're trying to rape him in the cell.

And again, he's still proclaiming his innocence, not doing a great job. They exit. She just wants to get out of there. He is still trying to convince her that he's been framed.

As his protests reach their apotheosis.

And just at the moment where Penelope is starting to be convinced, where she's starting to be won back over by his pleadings and questionable charm.

And explaining that he's not a drug dealer, he doesn't deal aged lust.

Yes, that this is all some kind of frame up, you know, for some reason, Jamie Lee Curtis swoops in and...

Pretending to be his best client asking for a dime bag and saying that she will trade whatever sexual favors he wants for a little PCP.

Yes.

And that is when Penelope...

Leaves an abject horror. Could not be more disgusted, offended, revolted since the trade...

But then, Jamie Lee Curtis' character, I actually don't even remember the character's name, she's Jamie Lee Curtis to me, because this is like the first...

We don't know it yet. Yes, that's a reveal later, but yes.

That's right, yes. So Jamie Lee Curtis, you know, like, weirdly though she hangs out.

Yeah, she's amused, she's entertained by this whole thing going on. Because, as she reveals, she was told this was a prank.

Yes.

That this guy gave her $100 to pull this prank. He's like, oh, your friend paid me to pull a prank. Like she thought it was just an innocent prank. And of course, by the time she points, you know, to try to point out Mr. Beaks, he's gone. Of course, because he's a clandestine operator. The plot demands that Dan Ackroyd doesn't know who's doing it yet. And yeah, and so then they, he has like nothing. So he then has to...

He's asking her for help.

Yes.

But the way he turns around is he says, you don't care about what happens to me because you helped them do this to me. And he offers to give her five figures to help him out in his time of need. He explains who he is. And the way that she realizes that he is who he says he is, she takes his hands and says, you have soft hands and a manicure. You've never done a hard day's labor in your whole life.

Yeah.

Which is really interesting because that alone is what gets her to put him in a cab and take him to her apartment.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because he's about to leave and just be like, okay, that's enough. I got all my own problems. I don't need whatever your thing is. I don't believe you, whatever blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it's a really smart moment and it demonstrates how smart she is. Yeah.

Now, but this entire sequence is about demonstrating how smart she is because she takes him to her apartment, right?

Well, no. First, they stop at the bank because he tries to get cash.

Oh, that's right. He's trying to get cash for her.

All his accounts are frozen. Then they confiscate his numerous credit cards. Numerous. They're kicked out of the bank. Then we have the moment also where they pass in the cab.

Yes, that's right. They're in the cab. They pass Coleman driving Eddie Murphy to work.

Yes. Eddie Murphy thinks he recognized. It was like, hey, isn't that guy? Whatever. Denholm Elliott is like, I don't know what you're talking about. That's whatever. Here, there's this great moment where Billy Ray is starting to get increasingly suspicious. He has this line where he's like, there's some strange shit going on here, Coleman. He's starting to figure out, this is something weird. But then again, he's just like, no, you don't want to be late for your first day. He's like, keeping him on target. And then we'll get to Jamie Lee Curtis and with her at their apartment soon. But we first get then the big moment where Billy Ray is deposited at Duke and Duke.

Yes.

And we get this exposition scene of the Dukes explaining what their company does as commodities brothers.

There is a great moment before that. Paul, I can't believe I'm the guy saying, you got to go back because you missed a great moment.

Makes me so happy that you're doing this.

Billy Ray is about to leave the Mercedes to go into the brokerage. And he says he has no idea what he's supposed to do here. And Coleman says, just be yourself. That's the one thing they can't take away from you. Yeah. And that to me is the moment where you sort of really see that even though Coleman is part of this manipulation, he does have sympathy for Eddie Murphy's character, that he's a real human being, that he has compassion and that he feels... You get the sense that Coleman doesn't like anything that's happening here. You get the sense that he also has contempt for the Dukes for everything he's being made to do, but he does root for Billy Ray. He likes Billy Ray. And he understands, and that Coleman also understands what's important in the world, which is, it's a minimal moment, but it's so touching.

Yeah. He kind of is a little bit... Again, this is a stretch. He's kind of the good Obi-Wan before Obi-Wan became a liar. He becomes the...

He's still the guardian angel character in this movie.

Yeah, the mentor. Yeah. But also, what's interesting is that then he becomes a co-conspirator.

Absolutely.

So like he... The fact that this stereotypical butler role and character that we've seen, especially in screwball comedy so many times, is taken to unexpected turns in this film, I think is really delightful. And also makes me happy for the actor, for Denholm Elliott, to get to have this amount of fun.

Denholm Elliott had two great roles in American cinema in the early 80s, and they sort of defined a great deal of his career moving forward. This role, and of course he's Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He is Indiana Jones' older colleague who, at least in Raiders, is implied to have been every bit as good as Indiana Jones, but a little bit longer in the tooth. Later he was made into a buffoon in Last Crusade, but whatevs. So I think for me watching this movie, I was a Denholm Elliott stand, not from all of his work in British stage and British movies in the 60s, 70s and 50s. It was from Indiana Jones. That's Marcus Brody. I love Marcus Brody. He's actually one of my favorite characters in Indiana Jones. So it's interesting how this actor suddenly got this career in the second act of his life as this kind of cool guy who showed up in movies that people my age liked.

Yeah. No, he's so great. And also you get the sense of like wheels turning behind his eyes, like of him observing and processing and having opinions about things.

But let's talk about the Dukes being bookies, because it's kind of, let's talk about the bacon, lettuce and tomatoes sandwich.

Yeah. So this is a great scene. So we have Ralph, again, the joy of Eddie Murphy of this cross-generational comedy actor's talents.

Yes.

Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche with Eddie Murphy is magic. And the two of them begin what could be just boring exposition of how commodities workers works. But they have props.

They've laid out on the table like a bar of gold and a plate with bacon on it and whatever. And Don Ameche is being so connoisseur. He's like, we trade commodities like frozen, concentrated orange juice, gold, or pork bellies, which are used to make bacon like you would find in a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. And what's great about this scene is like Eddie Murphy looks straight into the lens.

It's worse. He says like in a BLT, a bacon, lettuce and tomato. Like he literally explains what a BLT is. And then we get the break the fourth wall moment where Eddie Murphy just deadpan turns the camera.

Like what the fuck. And again, it's the sharpness in the editing. The time like so much of this movie is carried in the editing and in that type of site. Yeah. But basically they explain commodities brokerage to Eddie Murphy. And this is where Eddie Murphy says, It looks at me like you guys are a couple of bookies.

Yeah.

And Ralph Bellamy turns to Don Ameche and says, I think he gets it.

Yeah. Yeah. I told you he'd understand. Like, yeah. It's so good. It's so good because again, it contrasts the presumptive self-aggrandizing.

Yes.

These wealthy men who've gotten their wealth, not through any real talent or hard work. But they have this mythology that they've kind of told themselves about how complex and rarefied the air that they exist in and these machinations. And Eddie Murphy's character is just able to puncture it with a few words and a very precise analogy that's very simple. And also that cast them as shady characters.

Oh, absolutely.

Which they are.

And yeah, Eddie Murphy totally gets it that these guys are not good people, you know. Now, here's something interesting about... Let's get to Jamie.

So now we're in their apartment.

So Jamie Lee takes Dan Ackroyd to her apartment.

Her slum apartment.

Yes. She explains that she's from a shitty mining town, that her looks and her brain are all she's got. She has $46,000 that she's... The place is cheap, but it's cheap, but it's clean. And she turns tricks in this place. She's got $46,000 in T-bills earning interest. She figures she's got three years on her back before she can retire. And then, of course, because this is an R-rated movie, she takes off her top, and as she's changing, she tells Dan Ackroyd that food is not the only thing that costs money in this house, and he's going to sleep on the couch, which is so gratuitous. And I think even Jamie Lee Curtis has spoken about how gratuitous he's felt at the time. I don't know why they felt the need to show her breasts. I mean, it's certainly, as a 12 or 14, whatever year old I was at the time, I didn't mind. Now as an adult, I'm like, that's gratuitous. But all of this is, and when she says her name is Ophelia, and Dan Ackroyd goes, Ophelia, do you know that? And she goes, yeah, yeah, Hamlet's girlfriend, you know, he went crazy, she committed suicide, you know. It's like, she's smart. She knows, you know, she's not just a hooker with a heart of gold, she's actually like a pretty intelligent human being.

The other thing, before she takes off her top, she takes off her wig. And she reveals the classic short Jamie Lee Curtis, like, badass hair.

The long red tresses were her hooker cosplay. She is in fact a short-haired, driven businesswoman who knows exactly what she's doing. And again, you know, look, this is something that happens a lot in this movie. The working-class people are good at difficult jobs, even being a prostitute and, you know, like knowing when her shelf life is up, having the money in the bank, the T-bills, I mean, it's very specifically made to make you understand that she's a smart person, you know?

Yeah, and she has an exit strategy, but she is doing what she needs to do to survive.

Exactly.

But she's not accepting her fate as eternal, but as temporary.

Exactly.

And so she knows her power. I think, I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis is a national treasure. She's great.

Yeah.

And early young Jamie Lee Curtis, like obviously broke out with Halloween. But then because of the kind of marginalization of the genre was not, did not break out as a star to the degree that she arguably really deserved to and should have. And it wasn't really till like now, here, that she's kind of getting another chance, another springboard toward stardom in a more mainstream commercial way. And again, she holds her own with anybody and she's so sharp and charismatic and she plays every scene so perfectly in terms of letting us know that she knows what's going on.

Her prowess as an actor has not been celebrated until criminally recently. Yeah. But I am glad that it is now celebrated because she is wonderful in this movie.

Yeah.

And I just want to point out in the background in her apartment, she has a poster for a movie called See You Next Tuesday.

Yes.

Which is a running gag in John Landis movies that is going back to his first movie which is called Schlock. Which is like literally there is always a movie called See You Next Tuesday and all of his, there is always a poster or some mention of it or it is on a marquee or something in the next scene.

Yeah.

Billy Ray.

I just want to underline. So she ends this scene in a very calculated way because she essentially, without negotiating, just by asserting that she is investing in him, she is wagering that this investment is going to pay off, and that in exchange for helping him, for harboring him, he is going to pay her five figures.

In the five figures, yeah.

In the five figures, non-negotiable, and he's not getting any perks or whatever out of it, but that's the deal. You are taking it, and it's very sharp and savvy. Yeah.

Yeah.

She's a hooker with a heart of gold, but she's also a hooker with a mind for business, and she's exploiting him too.

Well, but is it exploitation? I think it is.

Well, she's making a deal. She's going to make sure she gets paid.

I think it's a very fair, clear-eyed, fair-minded deal. I don't think she's exploiting him. I think that she's saying, look, this is, yeah, this is fair. If you are, this is what you're trying to recover and get after, this is then what I'm asking for if I'm going to help you get it.

Now, speaking of business, we then cut to Billy Ray at the brokerage with Mortimer and Randolph. And Billy Ray, now pork belly prices are going up. Mortimer wants to sell, but Billy Ray makes a very, very lengthy explanation of why the prices are going to continue to go up.

Can I just say, one of the meta-experiences of this, and I have a hard time referring to Eddie Murphy's character is Billy Ray, because I keep thinking of the great screenwriter Billy Ray.

Billy Ray, yes, indeed.

Who, among other things, Moneyball, which, again, not dissimilar to some of the financial shenanigans of strategizing in this film. Like, this is a really weird meta-cross connection. Again, hats off to Billy Ray, screenwriter.

Wonderful, wonderful screenwriter. Shattered Glass, underappreciated. Hayden Christensen performed in that movie, by the way.

Absolutely. But yes, there's an argument about the pork bellies and what position to take.

Yes. But Billy Ray explains why the price is going to keep going up. And he basically explains, don't sell now because everybody's freaking out.

He's advising why they're going to go down.

I don't even, you know, the financial stuff in this movie is insane. I don't understand any of it. It's taken me, literally, it's taken me like 40 years to understand what actually happens financially in this movie because I don't understand that. But you know why? Because I don't understand short sales because it makes no goddamn sense. It is literally an anarchic financial instrument made to sow chaos and create a gambling culture in our financial markets, which is the truth.

I was going to say, you've explained it pretty well.

When you have time, Planet Money has a whole episode on this and trading places and explained it. And I'll put a link in the show notes for you.

Excellent. So Billy Ray basically explains it in terms of not being able to buy your kid a GI. Joe at the Kung Fu Griff for Christmas.

It's Christmas time. Everyone's up tight and kind of hedging their bets and everything.

And he ends up being right. He makes a bunch of money. He makes something like $300,000 profit for the Duke brothers in 30 seconds.

He demonstrates unexpected financial acuity and kind of real world grassroots market insight that kind of kind of dazzles Ralph Bellamy, even though Don Ameche is still very skeptical to the point.

Yes, this is the part of the money clip, right?

That he attempts to entrap him because the wager is this criminal is going to rise to be the successful CEO, but then the successful CEO is going to descend into criminal behavior.

So Mortimer slightly leaves his money clip lying around, so the next scene Eddie Murphy runs in and says like, oh, Mortimer, you left your money clip, and Randolph looks at Mortimer and goes, nice try. The next scene is really interesting. We cut to some country club, some racket club where Todd and the rest of the-

The bar at the racket club. Yeah.

That's right. They're all dressed in their tennis whites, and the men are singing a song about the loose women of their Ivy League school as a barbershop quartet. And Penelope and the other girls are just- they find it hilarious. These frat boys singing about how loose they were. But here's what's interesting. Before Dan Ackroyd enters the scene, because Dan Ackroyd comes in and he's wearing some pimp clothes that Jamie Lee Curtis' character had in her closet.

I was going to say, very conveniently, Jamie Lee Curtis' character has a wardrobe in her apartment that was left by the previous owner that contains a lot of...

Pimpish, dare we say. A stereotypically pimpish clothing.

Yeah, I would say fashionably questionable male attire.

Now, Paul, there was a movie that played on the movie channel endlessly when I was a child and I loved it. Not a child, it was like 10, 11, right? And that movie was called Auntie Mame. Are you aware of Auntie Russell and Russell?

Of course. I could have guessed 100 movies that you were going to say and that would not have been one of them.

Now, I've seen Auntie Mame a billion times. I think it's a great movie. It is? But here's what's interesting. Yes, the way that the vacuous characters, the parents of the woman that Auntie Mame's nephew is going to marry, the way that they're shown as dunderheads is that one of them tells an anecdote about a tennis match gone wrong and the punchline of the anecdote is, And then he stepped on the ball. Right? And as Dan Ackroyd enters the tennis club, one of the women says exactly that. She's going, And then he stepped on the ball. And I'm like, Is this an Auntie Mame callback?

It's insane.

The movie literally has an Auntie Mame callback. And Auntie Mame is like one of the great sort of true ballcomers of the 50s. So it's kind of, I don't know why I'm saying this, but I just can't believe that this movie, much as The Rocky Statue and Mr. Fusion and all the other stuff, it's like, I don't know.

And our next cameo, although it's sort of not too surprising given Blues Brothers. But yeah, so crashing these frivolities at the tennis club bar comes Winthrop, still with the black eye, still looking unshaven and like crap.

Dressed questionably.

Dressed like some kind of bizarro world pimp and proclaiming his innocence and saying everything's going to be OK, but I'm going to defend myself. I need some character witnesses and a loan. And he just he assumes that, yeah, all his buddies from the Heritage Club are still going to are going to be like, oh, yeah, yeah, you got a raw deal. Of course, you couldn't possibly be what you look like you are now.

But he is brutally rebuffed and Penelope and Penelope, even it is even highly intimated that in the two days that this movie has taken place over, Penelope has already changed boyfriends and gone off with Todd.

Penelope has not waited around. She has. She has moved on with her life decisively.

Now we're nearing nearing kind of the end of the second actor. I don't know what it is. It's it's a but but it's really his lowest point. Yeah. Dan Ackroyd is sick now. He's been outside in the rain. He's actually watching.

He makes a stop at a pawn shop.

Oh, yes, to sell his to sell his Swiss watch.

To try to sell his $7000 Swiss watch that the pawnbroker played by Bo Diddley is convinced must be stolen. So he doesn't even want to touch it. And then he's only willing to give $50 for it, which Winthrop is desperate enough to take.

That's right.

And then what does he see in the in the case?

A gun. At the end of the scene, he goes, How much for the gun?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we cut from that to then him wandering in his pimp coat in the rain, past a floor-to-ceiling picture window of a restaurant.

Very fancy restaurant.

Very fancy restaurant where Billy Ray Valentine is being wined and dined by the Duke brothers and other clients, employees, bigwigs, a judge, we're told, and his very young girlfriend, apparently. And he watches as Valentine has asked his advice on wheat futures. And the entire restaurant falls silent.

As if Valentine has already made a reputation for himself.

He's already become the stuff of financial market ledgers because of his future calls thus far.

Much like what ad? Remember the TV ads from the 80s?

Oh, EF Hutton.

When EF Hutton talks, people listen and everyone turns to listen.

Yeah, it was an ad for tax services, you know. And well, my broker is EF Hutton and then, yeah. So, and Dan Ackroyd is watching from outside, he's dressed as a pimp.

He's at his lowest point, he's in the rain.

He's watching everybody, he's watching everybody, a Fet, Eddie Murphy.

Who's stolen his life, who now he's convinced has stolen his life.

And then a dog pisses on him.

Yes. No, that doesn't happen yet. It happens later. But no, he gets home, he's in bed with a fever at Ophelia's. She's sympathetic, she's taking care of him. She even turns away a client who comes knocking on her door with roses.

By the way, and what John shows up with roses, that's a really nice John.

I would say a very impressed John, clearly. And then he's like, oh no, no, I'll go. Like you have to do, like you're busy. She's like, no, I'm protecting my investment. Yes. Which she does by, again, removing her clothes.

Yes, taking off her bra and getting in bed with him.

Then cuddling with him.

Presumably to cuddle him back to health, right?

Keep him warm, although he's running a fever, so he shouldn't be kept warm. Anyway, whatever.

The cure for all that ails him is boobs.

Of compassion. Cut to the next morning. We are told it's Christmas Eve. She brings him the paper. He's still running a fever. What is the headline on the Financial Times? Because they cannot declare it from the Wall Street Journal.

It is an article about Billy Ray Valentine, the new wunderkind at the Duke.

Yes, the new appointee Valentine electrifies Duke and Duke.

Electrifies Wall Street.

And this infuriates him. And he goes into a rage. And then we know without even seeing his face, he crashes the buffet line at the Duke and Duke Christmas Party, dressed as a Scuzzy Santa, stuffing his jacket.

Yeah, he finds the Scuzzy Santa on his jacket. Yeah. So he says, I'll give him a Christmas he'll never forget.

Yes.

And then you cut to Dan Ackroyd in the Scuzzy Santa Claus costume.

No explanation of where he got it.

Nope.

He probably beat up some Santa, like Salvation Army Santa and took the costume with a gunpoint. And then then race to the Duke and Duke party.

And at one point he puts a whole salmon fillet inside of it.

An entire smoked salmon fillet and not a little one.

No, it's rather large.

But like a big ass smoked salmon.

What we get, what we now get is that Dan Ackroyd has decided in his Criminal Genius Mastery that he's going to reverse frame Eddie Murphy as a drug dealer. So he breaks into Eddie Murphy's office.

But first, Valentine is taking his job incredibly seriously. He is shouldering the mantle of responsibility.

Yes, by doing the payroll if it's already done.

On Christmas Eve, he's working on Christmas Eve. He hasn't even been told to do it. He's just like, it has to get done, it has to get payroll done. And much like his predecessor was puzzled by a mysterious check made out to a mysterious Mr. Deeds, who is not on the company payroll, he notices a new check made out to him that he goes to ask the dukes about and as he approaches them, he overhears them discussing a wager of some sort.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah, he does. Yeah, he does. They do? Yes.

Okay, do go on.

He doesn't catch all of it, but he catches it. He overhears some reference enough to pique his interest, but not to spoil anything to him. They have been-

But then Dan Ackroyd tries to reverse frame him. They take the check for the-

They tell him, don't worry about it. We got it. We'll take care of that. Whatever. It was just like they did. He goes back to his office that was Winthrop's office and he busts Santa Dan Ackroyd, who's planting just all-

Not just drugs, but like Quaaludes, Cocaine Grinders, Joints, Uppers, Downers, Red Pills.

Yeah, a whole catalog of pharmacological feast.

It's the most ignorant white dude framing ever. He literally bought all the drugs.

He doesn't even know half the things that he has. He's just dumping them all into his desk. And Valentine is trying to reason with him. He's like, come on, man, what are you doing? This is a little crazy. And then he pulls a gun on him. And then the Dukes arrive and security and other party attendees. And clearly at this point, Winthrop has lost his freaking mind. And so he flees, taking everybody at gunpoint. And this is a funny, interesting bit. He then climbs like on the table.

On top of the buffet table.

On top of the buffet table that he's already raided. Again, a lot of extras at this party, well dressed. And has them all cowering in fear. He is feeling power that he has been stripped of.

Yes.

But he knows.

It's a weird thing because he gives a maniacal, villainous laughter as he pulls everyone at gunpoint.

Yeah.

He has this fractured psyche. But Valentine is like, this is weird. Something's going on.

But of course, by the way, Valentine starts throwing all the drugs out.

This is very important.

But he decides to keep one of the joints because you know.

Yes. So Valentine is casually emptying all the joints, throwing them in the trash and then he comes across a joint and he just casually pockets that. And it's very fortuitous.

Yes, it is. Because he takes it to the men's room.

It is the deus ex marijuana. Because it provokes him to go smoke it in the only refuge available, which is the men's room in a stall. And then he is like, oh, now what do I wear? I can go back to my bag sale and he blows out to a vent. But just then, and he's climbed up on top of the toilet. And he crouches as the Dukes enter and lay out their entire plot.

Randolph and Duke talk about how all it took to reduce a man like of Dan Ackroyd's breeding to a criminal deranged state. And yet Billy Ray Valentine has become this brand new, she's offered as CEO of the company.

And not only that, they got Eddie Murphy, they got Valentine, to so far through the looking glass, that he is calling for Winthrop to be put in jail, that he belongs in jail, which delights Ralph Bellamy.

They've turned Eddie Murphy into a snob, they've turned Dan Ackroyd into a thieving drug-framing maniac. And of course, Randolph has won the bet because it was not breeding, it was nature. And Mortimer hands over...

He says, Pay up Mortimer, I won the bet. And then, yeah.

He gives him a single dollar.

Here you go. One dollar.

And Eddie Murphy is in the stall and he hears all of this. And he realizes that his life and Dan Ackroyd's have been both, frankly, destroyed, even though Eddie Murphy's got the better end of the deal. And then comes the clincher, which is that Ramdahl says, I don't know which one of them says what, but it basically says, well, are we going to get Lewis back? And after everything he did, absolutely not. He's horrible. And then he says, well, what are we going to do with Valentine? And they agree they're going to drop him back into the ghetto because they couldn't have an N-word running the company. And that's the moment when the true evil and horribleness of these two characters, not just because they use the N-word, but because they literally are so materialistic, snobbish and condescending to the rest of the world, that they will destroy these two lives just on the principle of the bet. And it's kind of, you know, it's played for laughs, but it's sort of a really telling moment, isn't it?

It is the darkest moment in the film.

Yes, it is.

Because and it's shocking by how dark it is.

They're so callous.

They're so callous and they are blatantly revealed to both be no offender, but white supremacists. Yes, because when Bellamy is kind of opening the door, a possibility of like, oh, well, you know, because Valentine is done demonstrably well in the role. But Don Ameche's character says, you know, do you really believe I'd have, you know, and we're running our family business, Randolph, to which Ralph Bellamy horrifyingly answers, of course not, neither would I. Yeah, as being complicit.

They are birds of a feather.

So they are not, there's not a good brother, bad brother. They're both bad and they're both white supremacists.

And because this is a deus ex marijuana, they go on to explain how they're not going to drop Eddie Murphy back into the ghetto until after New Year's when their thing with the with the guy in the place has been settled. Because they don't want to rock the boat until they've, you know, done that thing that they're going to do. Now we go to Dan Ackroyd's worst night of the soul, where he's in a bus eating the salmon filet that's gotten tangled up in his scuzzy Santa beard, which is gross.

Yeah. So Billy Ray now is on a mission because he now knows the truth. The curtain has been pulled back and he realizes he has been a pawn. He's been exploited and he's considered expendable and also knows what they've done to Winthrop. So he now is going after Winthrop. He chases him down, does not catch him before he gets on this bus. And yeah, the scene of him pulling out the big salmon, the smoked salmon, and then gnawing on it through his big beard. It's oh my God. And to the horror of these witnesses, these women sitting across the bus room, he then gets off the bus.

And this is the part where he tries to commit suicide.

This is when the dog pees on him.

Yes.

On his foot.

And he pulls the gun out.

It's raining again.

Yep.

He pulls the gun out, try to shoot himself, but the gun clicks. There's no round. Then he throws the gun. And this is something I question, whether this was just a decision made in post or whether this was scripted. Then off camera, we hear the gun fire. But Dan Ackroyd does not react or flinch. It doesn't really make sense. That he pulled the trigger on. It's not a revolver. It's not like one chamber was empty or whatever. It has a cartridge.

Right.

So if it didn't, if it clicked and didn't fire around.

Paul, I think we all know that guns work differently in Hollywood. I mean, gunsmithing for movies is a very-

Maybe it's an attempt to send a message like, oh, this is dangerous no matter what, don't risk it. But I just feel like that maybe was a poor choice in post.

He bought an unloaded gun because he's so privileged. He just took it for a real gun.

Then when he tosses it after he doesn't kill himself, it somehow still is able to fire. That bugs me a little bit. But Billy Ray then arrives in a cab. He's been in pursuit. I was surprised the film did not do a black man trying to hail a cab in New York City joke.

Well, it's Philadelphia.

Yeah, that's true. But I guess it's a testament to Philadelphia being a more evolved city.

Yeah, more evolved place.

Yeah. Kudos and hats off to my friends in Philly. Then he follows him to Ophelia's apartment, where he ODs in the bathtub, Dan Ackroyd, Winthrop. Then we get one of the most efficient cuts in the film, because we cut straight to his old home.

Yes.

His former home that's now Valentine's. He is, he's awaking in bed, in his pajamas, in his bed, and speaking to Coleman, his trusty butler, and saying, oh, I just had the most...

Well, you know, we've got it right here. Let's see clip number five.

Good morning, sir. Merry Christmas. Coleman, I've had the most absurd nightmare. I was poor and no one liked me. I lost my job, I lost my house. Penelope hated me. It was all because of this terrible, awful Negro.

Just so, just so bad. Wow.

And of course, he then sits up, sees Eddie Murphy standing on the foot of the bed.

And then he leaps out to strangle him and attacks him. One thing that's worth noting before we get to the rest of the scene, this whole scene and sequence is pretty great. Yes. We have been denied two-hander Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy.

Yeah.

That's the comedy goal for most of the film.

And the poster for the film is literally Dan Ackroyd, Eddie Murphy together, you know, all of that. So it's like you want to see them together. Absolutely.

Yeah. It's sold as a buddy comedy. Yeah. At least superficially. And it is not until we get now to this third act of the film. But really it becomes-

But by the way, what a great payoff because they work great together.

It's a great payoff. Yeah. But it's not even just a buddy comedy. It then becomes a foursome. It's a team that forms, that includes Jamie Lee Curtis and Denholm Elliott. They all form this team in this scene. But one thing that's interesting that producer Brad was kind enough to remind me of, and I am surprised by my own powers of recollection that I have not forgotten to mention it at this moment. Javi, do you know who was originally intended to play the roles of Billy Ray Valentine? And what's his name?

I don't know who.

Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder.

Of course. Which is interesting because I brought up those movies earlier on and how Richard Pryor played that kind of jive stereotypical 1970s. That's really interesting because I could imagine it.

It'd be a very different movie because.

Less for so Richard with Richard Pryor because Eddie. So much of who Eddie Murphy and his persona is is standing on the shoulders of Richard Pryor's own comedy persona. But for I don't think Gene Wilder could pull off Louis and make him this hateful and make him but then make him this likable, but at the same time, making him so unlikable, you know? Yeah, that's really interesting.

Yeah. But also, I think that like Eddie Murphy's youth and earnestness in some scenes and things are dimensions that would have been more difficult maybe for Richard Pryor to play and sell.

Richard Pryor plays a much more hard, he's a much harder character. And I think that his comedy and his point of view, so much of it comes out of the 60s and the 70s and that black experience. That's a very different thing than Eddie Murphy coming up then in the late 70s and in the 80s and being received very differently because of what Richard Pryor did.

Exactly, but it's very interesting to imagine that parallel universe. Yeah. Incarnation.

Well, I think you have to have made the movie in 1976 for it to have worked with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder because I think you needed them younger and more fresh face. I think you needed a different version of those two, you know? But producer Brad, I think then clip number six, Eddie Murphy explains to Winthrop exactly what's happened.

Exactly. We finally get the revelation.

Dukes use us as guinea pigs. See how our lives would turn out. They made a bet.

I'm afraid it's true, sir.

I believe in Loey. Dukes ruined my life over a bet. For how much?

A dollar.

One dollar. Fine. That's the way they want it? No problem.

And then we cut another great cut.

We cut to him loading a shotgun, a bird hunting, like one of those Downton Abbey, fucking the Crown, Prince Philip shotguns that he's going to use to shoot them in India.

And there are other rifles lying there. Like he's got multiple weapons. He's like, oh, we're just going to go shoot them.

Eddie Murphy then explains that shooting people in the kneecaps is probably not a great revenge. And Dan Ackroyd says, well, what would you do? And Eddie Murphy then explains the crux.

Well, first he asks why not?

First he's like, well, he's like, why not?

It's called assault with the deadly weapon. You get 20 years for that shit.

But then Eddie Murphy says the line that kind of defines this film, which when Dan Ackroyd says, well, what would you do? Eddie Murphy says, well, it appears to me that the best way you can hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people. And Coleman turns to Dan Ackroyd and says, you must admit, sir, you didn't like it one bit yourself. There's some version of that line. And this is also where we have a deus ex television because the plot is now moved forward by a television report that explains that the commodities, because this is obviously reported in all television channels, that the crop reports are coming in tomorrow.

For the orange futures, for concentrated orange juice.

Exactly.

Estimates will be delivered to the Department of Agriculture by none other than Clarence Beek's of Lindhurst Security.

Because when you're carrying top secret documents that could alter the fate of an entire market, you not only say who the person is carrying them, you also...

Yeah, you show a photo of them.

It's a cockamamie.

And then Ophelia recognizes him. Oh, that's the guy who gave me $100 to pull the prank on you in front of Penelope after you got out.

So everything comes to... And Eddie Murphy remembers overhearing the Dukes talking about how they're going to corner the market.

Yes.

So Eddie, whatever information... Everyone's information comes together here. And they all realize the Dukes are using Clarence Beek's to steal the Crop Report and...

We get the clip we opened this episode with, which is again, it's a great four-hander scene where all of them have something to do and to say. And they connect the dots. They put two and two together. They realize that the Dukes are going to cut a quarter of the market on the frozen orange juice, whatever, and unless someone stops them, and Denholm Elliott offers eggnog.

Our heroes, thus galvanized by the power of eggnog, wind up... Oh, God.

The racing of the Third Act. Billy Ray returns to the office. He eavesdrops on a call between Mr. Beeks and the Dukes, revealing their plan to confiscate, to get access to the Futures Report before the markets open, and more importantly, reveals Mr. Beeks' itinerary.

Yes, yes, because that's what you talk about when you do.

Which involves a train. And we get, and I have to say, applaud the film's admirable restraint up till this point. This is the first time we get the classic Eddie Murphy laugh after he gets this information. And now we're in the third act, which is an extended train sequence. Oh my God.

This is just insane. It's like they come in to Mr. Beeks' train cart. They've all affected very, there's a costume, New Year's Eve costume party?

Apparently, there's a costume, New Year's Eve costume party, which gives us an excuse.

Going out on the train.

For who do we encounter on our way into the train? Who welcomes us and welcomes us? Yeah, which just happened in the New Year is an already probably intoxicated Jim Belushi in a guerrilla costume. Very important coincidence. And then an even cooler cameo.

Yes, the best cameo in the movie as far as I'm concerned. There's three cameos in one scene that are all great.

We get a pair of drivers of a luggage cart of a carriage handlers, one of whom is the great Al Franken.

Yep, Franken and Davis.

Al Franken and Tom Davis are there, and no disrespect to Tom Davis. And they are arguing over whose turn, much like we question who's turn it is to run the plot, they're arguing whose turn is it to run the baggage handler cart upon which.

I don't think we have a question anymore who should run the plot.

I'm going to be on probation. I'm going to be put in the cage with the gorilla. There is a cage with a very unconvincing gorilla.

And who's explaining that the gorilla is being repatriated? They're taking the gorilla to port to repatriate the gorilla?

It is Mr. Beaks.

This amazing character actor named Stephen Stucker, who was in the airplane movies. He was the funny guy in the tower. He's the guy who yelled to the tower, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, and Jacobs, what do you made of this? Oh, I can make a brooch, I can make a hat, I can make a turdactyl, right? And this actor, I find this actor amazing, not just because he's so great in the airplane movies, but because I saw him interviewed on Entertainment Tonight, and weirdly, they were talking about the AIDS crisis, and he was the first person that I ever saw saying, the administration's response is terrible, I'm not impressed, and they're doing bad by us. And he was a very, very sort of diehard advocate for gay rights at a time when that was not fashionable. So not only was he hilariously funny character actor, he's also a really courageous guy. So I'm just very, it's somebody that I'm always happy to point out. And he explains that the guerrilla is being repatriated and taken to port. And of course, Franken and Davis are arguing about who's going to drive the forklift. Now, Paul, our foursome.

I'm just going to say, not shoehorned into the plot at all. Like not the most elaborately indulgent plot construction just for one tasteless gag and joke later. Here you feel the film kind of straining a bit.

But the entire third act of this movie is just insane because it's like all of a sudden, it's like they're going to try to change briefcases or something. But so Eddie Murphy shows up as a grotesque character of an African man. He's got like a whip that he's using to whip his back.

So first, just to establish, so Mr. Beek's has arrived on the train with the briefcase containing these top secret reports that would move markets if leaked or if someone had access to before they're officially released, which kind of doesn't make sense, but whatever. He's in his cabin that clearly, for whatever reason, he's not accompanied by any other security people, even though he's the head of the security company, doesn't make any goddamn sense. He has not reserved the cabin all to himself or locked it. So people start showing up.

The first of which is Eddie Murphy.

Eddie Murphy, who is in disguise as an exchange student from Cameroon who starts chant singing and has a thing for beef jerky that he offers him. Then he's joined by Coleman, who arrives as an Irish priest.

As an Irish priest, yes.

Again, this is unnecessarily...

Like why are they in costume? Because it's a costume party, but they're pretending to be the people that they're dressed as. So they're not in costume because of the costume party. They're pretending to be...

It makes no sense because it's like, why are they... It's an excuse for a bit. And then...

Jamie Lee Curtis shows up as Inga from Sweden, a backpacker from Sweden.

From Sweden, with an ample...

But she's wearing lederhosen.

But yes, and that confounds and almost tips their hand of their cover when Coleman observes, wait a minute, but you're wearing lederhosen. And this is all to distract Mr. Beeks, so they can swap briefcases, which they do.

And then Dan Ackroyd shows up in blackface as a Rastafarian named Lionel Joseph, who apparently knows Eddie Murphy's character from a meeting they had at the Haile Selassie Pavilion. And then they proceed to do this sort of strange African chant. Wow. Now, Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor did a version of this bit, I believe, in Silver Streak, where Gene Wilder was in blackface as well, right? And I guess that's what they're going for, but oh my god, like look, and I gotta tell you, when I was 13, this actually I thought was funny. As a grown up, I'm like, oh shit, this is not right. And all of it supposedly made funnier because Dan Ackroyd's blackface only reaches the part of his neck and his shirt is too big. So you see his white skin underneath it. It is Paul. What the hell?

It's horrible. It's insane.

It's insane because it doesn't make sense as a plot point. It's insane because racially, it is humongously insensitive. It is it is insane for it's just insane.

It's 1983. So I'm trying to say like, OK, it's 93. OK, this is a pretty big studio movie. A lot of people had to sign off on this again, not motivated or justified, much less required by the plot in any way, shape or form. It is a complete choice, optional choice indulgence. It's horrible. It is just it is just in in defense. It's indefensible.

And also, it's unnecessary.

And it's just dumb and it's just dumb. It's just bad.

And of course, of course, Mr. Beek's figure, of course, Mr. Beek sees through it. He likes to get through this. Mr. Beek sees through it, figures it out.

Yeah, there seems to be a bit where they almost like want to get caught here because then we see another briefcase swap like right top of it, but one that they want him to see and notice. So then he's like swaps them. Really?

I don't I don't even understand that part of it. But it doesn't make any sense.

This whole thing is just unnecessary and it doesn't make sense.

But Beek's of course, tweaks to it because it's the most obvious con ever.

Sees through them all. Meanwhile, our hapless baggage handlers who've been entrusted to accompany the gorilla in the baggage car. Their choice of personal snacks happens to be bananas, which the gorilla takes and so then they're hungry and they decide, oh, let's go to the the bar car and look for pretzels or something.

I don't even know what.

Then for some reason, unmotivated reason, then happen to think that in this cabin, they happen to walk into this cabin.

Right.

And we do then get, arguably, Mr. Beek's best line when.

Oh, yes, yes. Let's go ahead and yeah.

He threatens these unintentional intruders.

I'll rip out your eyes and piss on your brain.

Again, much like Terry Newassol, the first time I heard this particular word construction, which may seem weird for somebody who is as old as 14. So Paul, it's very visual.

By the way, not what I'm recommending for a bumper sticker. But I just admire the-

Please, please get me out of this bit. Please, Paul, please. I'm begging you. Please.

Mr. Beeks, Mr. Beeks then takes all four of our team.

At gunpoint.

At gunpoint. Is then going to take them through the car. I don't know for what purpose or reason, whatever, but he takes them prisoner. Then, Gorilla Jim Belushi spots Inga, disguised Jamie Lee Curtis, tries to put the moves on her, and interrupting Mr. Beeks' mission.

Basically, Mr. Beeks gets knocked out, they put him in the gorilla suit, they stick him in the cage, and the end of the sequence is that Mr. Beeks is in the cage with the real gorilla who's going to sodomize him. Done. We're out. We have the briefcase, and we're out of here. Paul, I can't handle this anymore. This bit is horrible. No.

Anyway, now- It's really bad.

Then we give the Dukes the fake crop report, we've got the real crop report, and then the movie becomes unintelligible because-

Paul does it?

Yes.

No.

It took me 40 years to figure out. Look, we know what happened, but basically, Coleman and Jamie Lee Curtis lend all of their money and all of their savings to Louis and to Billy Ray. Well, I assume this has literally taken 40 years to figure out. So they can buy orange juice before the market opens, so then they can short sell the orange juice at a profit, correct?

All that we need to know is that they have the real report.

Right.

It's going to be released at 9 a.m. Or no, trading is at 9 a.m. Anyway, after trading opens, it's going to be released whenever. But they have that knowledge. They have planted a fake report that they've sold to the Dukes. Eddie Murphy poses as Mr. Beaks in the shadows, and somehow cons the Dukes into giving them a briefcase full of $50,000 in cash. So they've got that money, they've got their money, whatever, and they're like, okay, we're going to basically do what the Dukes were going to do. The Dukes think they have the real report, and so they're going to go all in to court.

They're going to buy $300 million worth of orange juice.

But they've got the fake report, and so our heroes have the real report, so they're going to basically bet and wager and trade in the smart way, and make a shit ton of money.

Have they bought futures in orange juice before the market opens, or do they go in? No. Because they've got all this money.

Yes, they go in, and they have a plan to buy at a certain point, and then sell at a certain other point. That's all that matters.

The magic of this scene, and it is phenomenal, is that I have no idea what happened, and I did not understand it until yesterday, when I went on multiple Wikipedia pages and figured this shit out. Here's the thing. They go to the stock exchange. It's a big scene in the stock exchange, and this is the stock exchange before computers did the trading, but one of the things that's so great about this scene is that even if you don't understand what's happening financially, the scene is so well, it is a scene of trading. There are people are trading in the stock exchange. It is a scene that is kinetic and propulsive, and this is where Dan Ackroyd's character suddenly is revealed as having competence, which is great. In clip number nine, producer Brad, he explains what happens in the trading floor.

We get a walk and talk briefing from Dan Ackroyd to Eddie Murphy.

Nothing you have ever experienced can prepare you for the unbridled carnage you're about to witness. Super Bowl, the World Series, they don't know what pressure is. In this building, it's either kill or be killed. You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners. One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next, boom, your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?

Yeah, we gotta kill them, motherfuckers! We gotta kill them!

What's really nice about this is that now you see that Dan Ackroyd's character actually does have some merit. And then the resulting sequence where the dukes' guy is buying up everything and then...

The dukes tell their trader, buy as much OJ as possible.

Like before the cross report comes out. Yeah, and everybody figures out the dukes must know something. Everybody starts buying, the price shoots up. Our guys then make their short sale. And it's not done in computers. These are people in a trading floor yelling at each other, trading papers. So even if you don't know what's happening, it's so kinetic and propulsive and awesome. And it's all about, again, I don't know what's happening. I just know that whatever it is, it was great and our guys win. Okay. And here's the thing. Our guys do win. They short sell everything. And then of course, the crop report is announced in the middle of the trading floor. And everybody starts dumping their...

And the Dukes realize that there's a mistake. And they're like racing to try to like stop the damage. But it's too late.

It's too late. They've bought it all at way too high a price. And their trader gets caught in a tsunami of people and kind of buried so he can't even sell the stuff off. The market closes, Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd have made a fortune by short selling the Orange Futures and the Dukes are bankrupt. And then we get the beautiful clip number 10.

How could you do this to us after everything we've done for you? Oh, see, I made Lewis a bet here. Lewis bet me that we couldn't both get rich and put you on the poorhouse at the same time. He didn't think we could do it. I won.

And the bet was, in front of the... They take out the one dollar bill, show it to the Dukes, and trade the dollar bill. And it's a beautiful revenge.

That they know.

Oh, they know that they know. And you know that I know.

No, it's, again, as convoluted as some of the mechanics of that scene, you know, unravels. It doesn't matter because it's like the emotional, the beats, the dramatic beats are all very clear.

But the thing that bothers me about it, to be honest with you, is that this scene in The Exchange is so well done. It's so, it's almost an action sequence in how well edited, cut, the tension and everything. But it is preceded by this lunatic interlude in the train that is so bad and out of place in this movie.

Yeah. Yeah.

That it's, that it almost ruins it, but it doesn't. But it almost doesn't.

There's also this very silly, and I'm just like, God, he can't help himself, this silly side gag as they're, after they've entered the building, they go to the restroom and there are all these trailers, like traitors, prepping and stressed and whatever, and it's mainly to show, oh, our heroes are cool as a cucumber. They've got a plan, they're going to execute, like they're unfazed by everything. And then the bell goes off.

And all the stalls.

And then in unison, all the stalls open. Exactly, and they go out, and it's just preposterous, it's a cartoon.

This is preceded by two traitors. One of them is literally swilling pills with a bottle of whiskey. And the guy goes, how's the ulcer? It hasn't bothered me in days. How's the hypertension? It hasn't bothered me either.

So, yeah, it's a little bit of, it's a cartoon. But, you know, it's fun.

Then we come to a deeply satisfying sequence in which Coleman and Billy Ray are on the beach. What?

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? We're out. Come on, get me out of here. The Dukes then get hit with a $394 million margin call that they cannot cover. And so they basically lose everything and they are stripped of their position at the exchange, that they and their family found it. So it is this humiliation. It's again, it's adding insult to injury.

And Mortimer starts shouting.

And Randolph has a heart attack. He starts having a heart attack. And one of them is like, what is your brother? And Mortimer says, fuck him. He just cares about the money. He cares about the exchange more than his own brother dying in front of him, who's wheeled out then on a gurney. But like they've lost or heroes have won.

And then yes, we would be remiss if we didn't mention at this point that in a later John Landis movie, were you going to say this or am I? In a later John Landis movie called Coming to America, there's a scene where Eddie Murphy's character throws a humongous wad of money out the window of a moving car.

No, he hands it directly to them.

Oh, I don't know. Okay.

I just watched it.

Okay. And of course, the two panhandlers turn out to be Randolph and Mortimer, who have been rendered homeless. Like they're literally like hobo cut off finger gloves and all of that. And is it Mortimer who looks at the money and goes, Randolph, we're back!

Yes.

Yeah, that is a nice, that was worth mentioning.

It was a nice callback.

Anyway, I should probably not mention this because it's so bad, but is it the gorilla joke we're bad enough? We do get a cut away to Mr. Beak's still somehow not able to remove the gorilla costume, still trapped in the gorilla costume in the cage with the real gorilla that in no way, shape or form looks like a real gorilla being loaded onto a cargo boat for Africa.

Yes. So Mr. Beak's is going to be raped by a gorilla in perpetuity.

Yes. But then we get, yes, Billy Ray and Coleman are living it up on a tropical beach as Winthrop and Ophelia are enjoying life.

Billy Ray asks whether they're going to have the lobster or the crab crab. Coleman says, are we going to have the lobster or the crab crab? You think Coleman is still the butler, but then it is revealed that there is a new butler, a stereotypical Latino butler, because Coleman suggests, why don't they have both, the crab crab and the lobster?

Possibly the only Latino in the film. Don't remind me. In the last shot of the film. But I take it that he is well compensated, that he is maybe treated with an abundance of respect.

Well, look, here's the thing. And then of course we cut to Dan Ackroyd with Jamie Lee Curtis and a sailboat and we have a call back to an earlier scene.

Yeah, and we get curtain call credits.

Yeah, which is by the way, looking good Billy Ray, feeling good Louis. And that's our... Paul, now, what is the moral of this film? Is it that as long as you're rich is fine? What? Because, I mean, I don't know. I mean, look, our characters suffered and they deserve this boon, obviously. But there is a huge, like, sort of, you know, so much of what a competence in this movie is indicated by your capacity to make money. I don't know. It left me in... In 1983 or 84, whenever I saw this movie, I didn't... I was not left with a bad taste in my mouth about the materialism of the film and how our heroes are rewarded at the end of the film. But knowing what I know now about the billionaire class, it really kind of hit the wrong way. Is that... Am I being a prig? Am I just being... What happened?

No. This was a very interesting experience for me to watch the film, especially in the context of current state of things.

Yeah.

I had not seen this movie in decades. I had kind of scattershot memories of it and just had a vague general overall sense of it. Yeah. I can't help but wonder if it's only a matter of time before someone remakes this set present day and it's a billionaire. But that the twist is that billionaires should not exist. And the end of the film is we need to burn it down. Yeah. That feels like the movie that would or should be made right now to speak to the just unprecedented chasm of income inequality that exists beyond really our mortal brain's ability to comprehend.

This movie is a little bit harder to appreciate on that level of comedy when you talk about where we've gotten to in terms of exactly what these people are doing financially. It's quaint.

This movie is quaint by present day terms.

But you said the Big Short is a good double feature. But it literally just shows you that as much as we want to love these characters, they're committing an act of financial chicanery that ultimately help bring down the economy. That kind of thing. It's really difficult. I still like them. I still enjoy that they win and all that. But there's a weird undercurrent of just a bitterness for me with it. And when you look at a movie like Wall Street, which was so fundamentally socialistic and anti-capitalist, but this movie is very pro-capitalist, even though it's telling us that upper crusty white people are assholes.

Yes. So again, I can't take the movie too seriously because it is enlarged. So, the question of that, okay, they took down the Duke brothers, presumably, to what degree is not explicit, but significant. But the whole system that led rise to them remains.

Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, they were able to do their whole thing. They probably are in a non-extradition country because our heroes win by committing felonies. Like, so presumably, they have escaped to a non-extradition country. Right. And they can never return to the US., presumably, at least until their statute of limitations expires. I think that actually could have been a funny, like, end title card coda of the house. Like, these are the crimes they were committed. They committed. They stole the report. They then sold the stolen report.

They manipulated the market, yeah.

Which then turned out to be a fake, and so they committed financial fraud by... And so, they win, but they won by becoming...

The thing they beheld, yes. Yes, yes.

And so, it is a morally complicated victory, but also, they left the system relatively intact to continue to do damage.

So, producer Brad, how did this movie do? What was the final analysis on this movie? Box office-wise.

You're ready to leave this discussion so quickly?

Yes. Yes, I am.

Trading Place is open on June 10th, 1983, which is when we saw Octopussy instead of this. So, we were seeing this two weeks later on June 24th. For this weekend, it was number five at the box office behind Return of the Jedi, Superman 3, Porky's 2 and Twilight Zone.

So, literally, the other more problematic John Landis movie made more money than this problematic John Landis movie.

But it was released later, right?

Got it.

Okay, yeah.

Right. Well, Twilight Zone is in its first weekend when we're watching it. So, it's the new film. Trading Places was the fourth highest grossing film of 83 with 90.4 million. It was the second highest grossing comedy behind Tootsie, which made 136 million. All time, it ranks 955 behind Space Jam and Space Cowboys, but ahead of Terminator Genesis.

Wait, between Space Jam and Space Cowboys? That's an interesting place to be located.

Well, the numbers are the numbers, so it lands where it lands.

Okay.

So, what's next week?

Next week is July 1st, 1983, and here's the poster for the big movie opening.

Stroker Ace. Oh, God. Stroker Ace. Oh, my God. A film that was mentioned as being worse than Megaforce in our podcast about Megaforce. Paul, would you like to go see Stroker Ace?

I mean, there's part of me that thinks this might be the universe wanting to extract Burt Reynolds' revenge on you for misidentifying a trans-am as a chimera.

Let's see some other choices. Let's see some other choices.

Now, that is the only movie opening on July 1st, 1983.

Oh, God.

The only one. So, I can take you through the box office charts and show you what else is part of it.

I mean, it's like we shouldn't gloss over the fact that it's not just a Burt Reynolds movie. It is a Burt Reynolds, Lonnie Anderson, Ned Beatty, Jim Nevers movie by Hal Needham.

You know what, Paul? Let's go watch Stroker Ace. Let's do it.

I am tempted to channel my beloved son who will often pose a penetrating question when offered a choice of a film to watch, which is, how long is it? It is an hour and 36 minutes.

Let's watch it. And I'm the plot guy. The podcast will be 45 minutes long.

I think we can maybe do it.

Let's do it. Let's do it. I want to live dangerously. This could be our Grease 2. This could be our Megaforce. This could be our The Soldier. Let's go.

Don't forget, Burt Reynolds is hot on the track and off.

Oh, we're watching this. That's it. I'm in. I think we need to confront Burt Reynolds head on in this podcast, Paul, and I'm making...

Will Burt Reynolds redeem himself for last summer's Best Little Whorehouse in Texas?

No. He will not. Let's go. I can't wait.

Or are we past the Burt Reynolds apex irredeemably and just further descending?

No, we're watching the decline, and it's kind of amazing because it's not nearly as far as it's going to go. Yes. We're going to go see stroke arrays, god damn it.

In the summer that we're seeing F1, I kind of feel like, and it's about a NASCAR going into F1, we are obligated, there's an existential obligation, and a bookend last summer, yes, I feel like we owe it to hell neither.

And Paul, are you going to quiz Javi and the cars we see in the film?

You have no idea.

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we have made a precipitous decision today to watch Stroker Ace in our next podcast. So we will see you next week in line at the Multiplex.

Catch you later.

Now, yeah, go ahead, Paul.

This will probably be cut. In my ongoing aspiration to find appropriately aligned sponsors for a fine podcast, I wanted to just take the opportunity to wax Rapsodic about an unexpected discovery I made this most recent holiday season. As you may know, I am sadly and tragically being half-Dutch, lactose intolerant. Oh, God. But I love me some eggnog. I mean, not just for the festive holiday spirit, I just love that ambrosia of cinnamon and nutmeg.

It's the best. I'm right there with you. It's the best.

I feel like we're denied as a society, as a culture, as a civilization by not having eggnog available year round.

Right.

Now, I've always thought this, but this belief has turned into a more intense fury of fervent desire. Because this recent holiday season, I discovered a non-dairy eggnog.

Wow.

That-

This is a journey. This is literally an odyssey that we're going on with you, Paul.

That dazzled my senses. It is from, and I always forget which is the proper way to pronounce this brand. I promise if they sponsor, I will learn how to say it correctly. I believe it is Calafia or it's Califia.

Or Calafia.

Or Calafia, Califia, Calafia.

I say Calafia.

It's a Californian almond milk.

Yeah.

And it comes in this very shapely bottle, if I may say.

I'm aware of the shapely bottle, yeah.

Of an unusual specific quantity.

It is a very pleasing shape bottle. Producer Brad is like, wow, this is, this is, yeah.

It's the kind of bottle that you just want to correct.

Okay, okay. And it kind of-

Bear with me, bear with me.

Producer Brad, that took you way longer than I thought.

Bear with me, bear with me on this.

Because I didn't think it would help.

Please, yes!

No effect.

It's immune, it's immune to the buzzer.

No, come on, come on, come on.

Because so, so I, and it has like a really nice graphic design and an alternate color scheme for their eggnog, their seasonal eggnog, eggnog, caliphia, caliphia, almond milk. And so here's the thing. So I, on a lark, through my trusty HEB app, discovered it. And it was on a, there was, there was a, I love my HEB app coupons. I'm in Texas. HEB is a religion for any of us who go to work. Can we get back to the movies? It's a whole other thing. This is, we're almost there. We're almost there. I sampled, I sampled the, the mystery non-dairy caliphia eggnog, almond milk eggnog. Dear Lord, it, it is dazzling. It, it danced on my taste buds, like a Busby Berkeley musical number. It, it filled my heart with songs I never heard sung before. I was just in a new plane of, of existential joy that I had never ascended to before. I will tell you, I bought all the goddamn caliphia eggnog, and all the milk I could at H-E-B. And, and I kept checking till they had more. I kept this in stock in my fridge for a couple of months beyond, beyond the holidays. And I have been suffering, I've been suffering from, from eggnog, almond milk eggnog withdrawal ever since. Here's the thing.

Okay, okay, Paul, Paul, do you remember we're doing a podcast called Multiplex Overthruster?

Yes, yes.

Do you have a Safeway near you?

No, those.

Oh God, those producer Brad.

What are you doing? They sell it year round in Austin. The deuce you say.

Okay. Okay, guys, enough.