‘Eddie and the Cruisers’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

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Subject to credit approval, Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs, Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com. The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find Ringer Tailgate with Van Lathan. Absolutely. And Higher Learning. And Higher Learning. And the Midnight Boys. You guys got to raise the roof when we say Ringer Tailgate. Is this like the thing you guys do for it? Well, Joel invented raising the roof. Okay. We investigated that on the NFL Draft Show, and he's right. I believe he did invent raise the roof. Joel invented raising the roof. Didn't Arsenio Hall raise the roof? No, it was Joel. No, Joel invented it. Ringer Tailgate is like the… What was the album Michael Jackson put out before Thriller? Off the Wall. Yeah. It's in the Off the Wall stage. Thriller's happening this season. I feel like it's like the Velvet Underground first record. Like everybody who hears Tailgate is going to start their own podcast. Anyway. CR. Yeah. Just coming off CR month. America was captivated. Where do I go from here? America was sad. Yeah. America wants to know when it's happening again. You know what we did? We kept CR month going. We brought the little chocolates out at the end of the dinner. That's right. Put it on the check, and we said, Oh. Hey, here's a little extra free chocolate. I know you already paid. I thought, hold on for a second. You said we brought the little chocolates out at the end of it. I thought it was like, am I the little chocolate? I'm like, what's happening? No. Okay. Is that what I was saying? He kind of gestured towards me. He gestured towards me. We brought the little chocolates. I'm like, why? Bill and I were like, you know what we need for CR month is like an Amaro after the big meal. Yeah. Like a little after dinner drink. Compliments of the house. No, no, no. Drinks are on. It's the house. It's the house. A movie we've circled for five years, and this is a victory lap for us, because this is only a couple times this has ever happened. Yeah. Where we badgered America and the streamers and the companies to just basically revive movies that we love. One thing about corporate America is they listen. They do. Eddie and the crew, the cruisers is next. All right. Eddie and the cruisers. Best musicals ever. Grease. And that's it. There's only two drops off right after that. Those are the big two. There's no even big three. It's a big two. All that jazz. I mean, there's a lot of really big musicals. There's a lot of really big musicals. Grease. Okay. Drop off. Chicago. I don't want some Oscars. Right. I know my story with this being. I was surprised you liked this movie, because we never talked about it. And then you were like, I love this movie. So what was your history with it? The film beat me into submission. Yeah. Because it was on for eight straight years? It was on so much. This is the biggest fuck your algorithm movie ever. Everything now is controlled by algorithm. You get told what to watch. My eighties and nineties algorithm was just superior because they kept, there was some, probably not even a computer program with some guy named Jim that would be in charge of programming. What was on HBO? Some dude. Right. And they put this movie on until I had watched like major league and all. That's a guy from time to time. I had watched stuff with Ellen Barton. I had to go, you know what? Fuck it. I'm gonna watch it. And then after that, I watched it every single time it was on television. Every time. Same for you. I have a weird relationship to this movie, which is I'm sure I watched it. And it's heyday on HBO when it was on in the eighties, like every other minute. But I think that like, if I remember correctly, one day I was in the car and I was like, whatever this song is rules. And it was dark side because the soundtrack popped off in the mid eighties because of the HBO revival of this movie. So I think dark side, I was like, what's this band. And it was like, it's a band with a movie about it, but the band isn't real. And that blew my mind. My background was 1984 flipping channels and watch the last six minutes of this movie, including the surprise ending. Okay. And I was like, huh? Week later, watch it from the beginning. Now I'm furious. I know the surprise ending. Think about how long it was on cable though. And then it was on over and over again. And I think it's one of the 20 movies I've seen the most in my life. Yeah. I know all the words to everything. I know all the scenes like, and I'm not proud of it. It was just, on all the time we had less channels and they didn't have a lot of movies. Like CR, you have the HBO little guides next to you on that, uh, on that little stand over there. They didn't really have a ton of movies. They, cause they only had licenses for whatever. So they would just rerun the same, like they ran either the first or the second Rambo was just on all three times a week. Yes. Nine o'clock at night, back to school, Rodney Dangerfield all the time. So this was just in the thing. And the thing with music movies, is, you know, you, I'll just watch this part. And all of a sudden you've watched a half hour, the middle of this movie. There's what? 15 minutes in the middle when he goes to the lounge to see Sal. Yeah. That is just like one of my favorite 15 minute stretches in a movie. And, uh, I'm taking you back to HBO 1984, Craig. Here's what they had boxing. This is when, when Tyson was, was coming into his own. They had the comedy specials. Cause they had Eddie Murphy, delirious and George Carlin and some of those guys. When Scott is, is there a comic relief around that? Not yet. That's 86. Not necessarily the news that started, which was like their answer to SNL. The hitchhiker. Yeah. Which had nudity in every episode. Basically the premise of the hitchhiker was somebody fucks somebody else and then they die. And that would be the episode. Is there any hitchhiking involved or? At the end, the guy would, the guy would have his little, he would have his little fortune cookie. Right. Thing. CR thought CR month would give him immortality. What he didn't realize is it would kill him. And then he would just walk, go away with this. I'm at a first in 10 with OJ. They would have some concerts. Diana Ross had a pretty famous concert on there every once in a while. And then just movies, lots and lots of movies. They weren't really making the original movies yet at this point. I think that the Terry Fox story, maybe one or two others. So something like getting the cruisers once gotten the rotation, that was it. But what's crazy is this movie bond when it came out and found life on HBO. Yes. Which led to on the dark side, finding radio radio station, what an, a year after it came out. Yeah. And the fact is, is that the band Eddie and the cruisers from the movie almost mirrors the story that Eddie and the cruisers tells where people are like, wait, what's this band. And like, even, you know, John Cafferty winds up getting like a cup of coffee because of this band because of this movie. But like, it's essentially the same story as the movies minus the possibly missing Bob Dylan esque figure. So you think John Cafferty should have done that? Try it. Like 10 years. Yeah. It'd be interesting. But it doesn't just become like a regular hit. The song that like goes like number three. Yeah. It's like a gigantic. Yes. I actually have it. It became, it was the number one song on the rock billboard charts. It was number seven overall. Number seven overall. Um, there was a week where it was number one. The fix was number two, Bruce Springsteen, Lindsay Buckingham, David Bowie, and you two were the top six. That was the level. It was that it was, it was on all the time. Consider that though. Consider how much, I mean, obviously the song starts to get radio play and stuff like that, but think about how much the movie has to be on for that song. Then to make it from the movie. Yeah. Into people's minds. Then radio. Then, and this is a year after the film has already, it's like, that's almost would be impossible for it to happen. Also a crazy music year. It's not like 1980, 1984 was like a real huge. That was like so many major stars. I was reading the Washington post did an article about this movie staying power. Um, and they talked to the writer, uh, Sherman Alexie was this great novelist, wrote reservation blues. And he actually had this great quote. It was the VCR turned movies into songs into hit songs. So movies that you could play over and over and over again. And that's basically what this pod was originally about was about movies that you wound up just walking in midway through, maybe only sitting down for one or two scenes. I don't want to get up and go to jail. I don't want to go to dinner yet because this might happen in this movie. And that's kind of like what happens in any of the cruisers is if like you're passing by and you're like, Oh wait, is, are they about to go to the writing of dark side? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to stick around for watch them write dark side. What is the pod about now? CR? Well, it's just about, I think it's more about great movies, right? Yeah. Movies. But that was the initial conceit of the, of the pod. To me, it's like, there's maybe like five or six moments where HBO became like really part of pop culture. and the fact that it could take this movie that and was nothing and turned into an iconic rewatchable movie for everybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s. That's up there with the Eddie Murphy Delirious concert that really pushed him to another level. Comic relief. Them having real boxing. I think I watched, I want to say I watched Cooney Holmes or one of those in 81. Maybe it was Pryor or Arguello. Just fights that you would have to go closed circuit and instead they were on HBO. And some of the comedy specials they had, it just all of a sudden felt like, it's like, holy shit, they're mainstream. When they got inside the NFL, that was a huge deal. It's kind of the model Netflix is doing now, right? Yeah. And it's funny because I was going back and reading the perception of HBO in 83, 84, where they were like, we don't want people to come to theaters. It was basically all the same Netflix dialogue we'd have 40 years later. Michael Pryor in 2018, talking about this movie, said, the whole idea is to leave your mark on the world and impact people, to make them think. And in that way, I think the movie was pretty successful. We didn't get much of a theatrical run, but we've got history. Is that your Michael Pryor voice? I didn't do my Michael Pryor voice yet. But this movie is so beloved that they ended up making a sequel that for some reason Van watched recently. I don't acknowledge the sequel. I didn't like the sequel. I've seen it before. The sequel, just like, it wasn't even on as much. They didn't put it on cable as much. It was bad. Eddie has a mustache in it. The music's not good. You could tell that, obviously, like most sequels, they thought, hey, there's fertile ground to continue this story, but they didn't think of actually a way to actually story first, continue the story. So, Craig, we've talked about this movie for five years. You don't have to tell us what you thought yet. But what was in your head? What did you think it was going to be versus what was it? I got to say, when you texted, I didn't know what the movie was about at all. And when Bill texted us saying, it's a 95-minute musical, I was kind of thrown off my tilt there a little bit. You and musicals, I don't usually put together. I don't even know if I'd really call this movie a musical. It just has music in it. It's not a musical. Yeah, that's fair. There's like eight, nine musical moves, though. The musical performances are legion, and they're like, we're doing the whole song. Yes. I mean, the movie opens with pretty much that full song. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, you go ahead. I call something a musical if the music drives story. So, if the music in the movie drives story, a lot of people think that, it's a musical if the dialogue is sung at some point. Yeah. But if the music, like in this movie, the musical numbers drive different story points. And to me, that makes it a musical. Well, we got to talk about Michael Perret. Okay. This was literally the apex mountain for him. And he had a couple other at-bats, but Eddie became his signature guy. He's lip-syncing everything. Yes. And it's one of the best, I'm trying to think of a better lip-syncing where it really seems like he's singing, the voice of the band sounds like his voice. He's got the charisma of a leading guy. The way he moves around the stage, really convincing. The only other one I can really think of is Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody. Which won him the Oscar. Yeah. I think Chalamet's pretty good as Dylan. That's fair. I thought he was actually singing, though. I thought he was actually singing, though, wouldn't he? Yeah, I just mean the way he moves around with a guitar. But I'm saying Michael Perret never sings in this. Right. Like Chalamet sang, Val Kilmer, who we talked about in The Doors, was incredible, but he's actually singing. This is him lip-syncing the whole time and it actually works. It shouldn't work. He also pulls off mysterious rock star, super awesome. The whole movie is based around this mystery that there was just more going on with Eddie than we thought there was. Right? And even in death. And for your first role, this is his first big deal, right? Yeah. For your first role, They found him. Yeah, for him to be like brooding rock star, mysterious guy, he really sells that really well. And if he doesn't work, then obviously the whole movie is fucked. Being an actor in a band is probably like being an actor in a basketball movie. Like you can either choose to get the guy who looks right playing music or the guy who's like the good actor who you can like cut around. Like I don't think, I know Behringer like learned a bunch about like playing keyboards, but they are cutting around Behringer's, they never show Behringer's hands really. They are, they got Eddie like in full wide shots, like walking around with the guitar, his guitar, his guitar moves. Going into the crowd at one point. Kind of mimic, like they're pretty close. Like I don't know how, whether he learned to play guitar for this, but it was, it looks pretty good to me. I mean. He's also carries himself like the leader of a band. Like you actually buy that he's in charge of the band. He's ordering these guys around. And the movie taps into, I don't know, there's some pretty cool themes in this that I don't even really fully know if they, what they were getting into when they wrote this. I don't know how much thought they put into the script, but about the concept of like, how great can somebody be? Right. You know, that like they're making these songs, they're selling out this club every night. Everyone in the band is delighted to, to be there. And Eddie's like pursuing something that's a little higher than everybody else that he's with. And that's really all he cares about. And the other guys don't see it. It's kind of cool. We've seen this theme in some other movies and TV shows, but I like how they do it. Yes. Well, it's based on the novel, right? Yeah, it is. And the novel is more of like a mystery. Yeah. It's like somebody, it's like, did he get killed? Like was Eddie murdered? Interesting. I have thoughts on that at the end, by the way. Um, but it, it seems as if the, from what I've researched, the novel is like, uh, incredibly important. Like people were saying it's one of the best rock and roll novels. Yeah. So there was some sort of, P.F. Kluge? Yeah. Kluge? Kluge? Something like that. Uh, I give Michael Perret two possible awards that we have in flex categories. We never use the Sasha Jenkins award for actor. You can't believe that. Become a bigger star. Yeah. And the Ted Levine award for a performance so good and distinct, it might've inadvertently ruined his career. Ted Levine also on something very bad is going to happen. Oh, really? Yeah. Were you surprised when you watched this, that this was his peak, Michael Perret? Yeah. I had that same category written down as a flex possibility. I think he has incredible stage presence that like his physicality is so good. When he's the scene where Eddie's at the college and he's talking to the crowd, there's like that edge. There's a suspension where you're like, I think this could turn dark. He's angry. Yeah. And he kind of like commands the attention of everyone there and is holding you on that like edge of, I don't know if something's going to happen. It's pretty impressive. He's really good. He's good. He's good on stage. The stuff off stage where he's just delivering lines. He's not as great. He's, he's limited. He's great. Director gave him hell too. So it sounds like it was like a tough shoot in that regard. Yeah. Cause like in Greece, Travolta is just really good. Like you watch that and you're like, yeah, that guy's good at this. Yeah. And that's how I feel about parade. Except he's somehow not singing. And then you have Berenger. You mentioned word, man, who did this in big show in the same year, the word, big show, massive movie, like kind of a generational adult movie. Sure. He's with all these actors. This was Lawrence Kasdan, but he's also in this, which doesn't do well. And he's probably a little embarrassed by this one. And then somehow they both live on. Do you put Berenger in the William Peterson? Like what happened? Because he, both guys, William Peterson, of course, you know, I love William Peterson. Both guys seem like they have everything to be just like one notch higher. So I would argue he actually delivered on some of that. Okay. Cause he platoon, he gets nominated. That's a great part. Someone to watch over me, Ridley Scott. We love that movie. He's in shoot to kill, betrayed last rights and major league on like two years. Like he had like, I don't know, seven year run of like he was leading movies. It's not unlike if you take the group of guys who was in a big chill, you know, he and William hurt had really good eighties and then started to fade and get passed by the cost. And there's this whole next coffee. That's fine. Push through the nineties. Pretty much. So that's what I'm saying though. I'm saying that like, uh, I mean, when you think about it, the nomination for platoon is like big, huge deal. And he's fantastic in that movie. Like terrifying, but Klein and Goldblum is what I would have thought just like a little bit more. Cause he gets to a point then he went by the time you get to the sniper, he's almost out of, I love that movie and the substitute. Yeah. Like he's almost out of gas and being taken seriously possible. He led a mildly hard life. Yeah. I mean, he still looks pretty rough and sliver and that's 1993 and it looks like he's 20 years older than this. We're in inception, which is an inception. I haven't seen him much recently. Uh, there's an amazing, what if with him, do you know what TV show he turned out? No, Sonny, crack it. No shit. Turned it down. That's straight up. Doesn't work in no way, shape or form. He doesn't work. If he's Sonny Crockett, I think he has too much baggage at that point. Cause he's been in movies and we know who he is. Don Johnson had no, nobody knew who he was. Right. Don Johnson. I think Berenger could have done it though. Oh man. Don Johnson is, he's beautiful. He's a little slimy. He's a little mysterious. Like it's a completely different show of Tom Berenger. So Don Johnson's funny. No, you're not, you know, I love Don Johnson. Of course. But I think Berenger, it would have, it would have been okay. Yeah. Um, I always liked him. I always thought there's some, there's some costume with him. There's some leading man stuff. Like, like he, he's good in this role. He's good at playing a cop. Platoon's probably the biggest, I don't know, swing he took, but major league, he's just kind of like the good guy. Like you're like, that guy's a solid guy. I trust this guy. He's like, uh, Kevin Costner with like, with like a more like weathered face, you know what I mean? But he can play sports. He can play action. He can do, That stuff, yeah. Tell you one thing. Yeah. Pretty incredible. chemistry with him and Ellen Barkin. She's ready to fucking hop on him in every scene. They're like four, seven, and seven deep. She's sitting on his desk. Like, every scene she's bringing in. She's not in the movie. For some reason, I remembered her being in the movie more than she was. I know. It's like she's in three scenes that seem to have been shot in a completely different set. You know, it's wild to go back to movies like this and watch it when everybody in the film is probably like, it's like, Matthew Lawrence is in this movie. He's got more screen time than Ellen Barkin, right? To go back and be like, can you tell the Joey Pants, Ellen Barkin, and Tom Barringer are the ones that are really going to pop out of this cast? So, she was in Diner in the year before and this year was in Tender Mercies and Eddie and the Cruisers and started coming up. The smoking is, I don't know when we're going to cover that. I don't think she doesn't have a scene where she's isn't banging a cancer stick. The only place Barringer doesn't smoke is school. Is high school. It's a class. Elite smoking movie. Everybody is like, really smoking. They're not like, don't give me the fake cigarettes. They're sucking them down. It makes sense too, sucking them down. Wow. It makes sense too. Rock stars. The life they live. Making them seem cool. She's pretty cool. She's a cool character. She's not in the movie that much. She's smoking. At that time, that was seen as a little bit sexier. It's a character a little something to do. Do you like this movie ironically at all or are you like, sincerely, Eddie and the Cruisers is like, just a great film? I'm 100% sincere with it. Yeah. Well, it taps into something else that I really like. Well, I love bands kind of on the rise and bands coming up with songs on the fly and scenes that make no sense. They're two minutes long and they come up with a hit song. But I like the concept of, and this, we did this a little bit in the Counting Crows documentary when it seemed like he did the first album and then Duritz like, kind of goes off the deep end and it does, it seemed like they're ever going to record again and the guys in the band are like, I just was almost touching the sun and now I'm just back to my life. Like, what just happened? And I like the theme of like these guys for like 18 months had it and now it's like Salamato's at the fucking Holiday Inn Lounge with the Eddie Ripoff guy and Joey Pants is drinking Pepto and he's eating pizza in the locker room in his dressing room. They're followed by some lady on the piano who's like, but I, and the guy Kenny's a blackjack, a blackjack dealer and it just doesn't kind of work out for anyone. I think that happens a lot. Joanne's doing choreography. I think that happens a lot, yeah. You know, I think when I watch the movie again, to your point, it is dated, right? I mean, obviously it's dated. It came out a long time ago and even in performance, like all these people grew so much as performers like after this movie to me, like the, the scene when, when there's a fight between Eddie and Joey Pants' characters and it just like does not look real at all. It doesn't look like there's any real rage happening. It's very demonstrative. But the themes of the movie and like, we were a part of this really amazing thing and this was as good as it was going to get and we really didn't know it. We thought it would go on for like a long time and Eddie's, his search for greatness being the thing that actually sabotaged the run of the band, that, we see that. Or even like the idea that Frank coming into the band and being like, let's do Rambo poetry and like really get that deep is what breaks it up because that's always like one of my favorite moments is when Sal yells at him in the studio like, we were fine before you showed up. It was you. We could have played Tony Martz like, forever, you know? Like, we could have just been the best band in Ashbury Park, but instead. I mean, you could make this movie every 10 years. You could have done a hip-hop version of this movie in the 90s and set it, you know, set it with some group in like 1984 that self-combusted and were ahead of their time. But there's just like, the hardest thing to do about movies, in movies like this, is to make the song or songs, but the song specifically because there's always got to be one, a song that people want to hear. Yeah. And this one has like four. But it has one main one and then it also has, and it's the same thing for That Thing You Do. Like, That Thing You Do has some good songs, but what you want is to hear all these different iterations of That Thing You Do. Yeah. And the same thing with Dark Side. You want to hear them do Dark Side three times. All you have to nail in a movie like this is the music. That's it. If, if you nail, it's hard to even conjure a film to where you like the songs, particularly the main song, and in some way you don't respond to the music. Because if, like for That Thing You Do, which I'm going to talk about later, that song is so good, it's so catchy that you could see why The Wonders got famous so quick. Yeah. And why they couldn't recreate it because it was such lightning in a bottle. And with this one, they sell you on the fact that Eddie and the Cruisers are dope, and that's really all the movie has to do to, like, create the mystery around the band. Did you watch Daisy Jones and the Six? I did. Did you watch it, Greg? Did you watch it? Yeah. So, that has some of the themes of this, of like, you're watching this band try to put it together. It's going back and forth and it's trying to do all the 2020s, there's slight mystery to what we're watching, all that stuff. But for the most part, same kind of themes. And not being able to keep it together. And good music in that, too. Five Heartbeats, we'll talk about it later, like a movie like that, they, got a banger of a song out of it. It makes, it orients the whole movie. Joey Pants was the other one we didn't talk about. Who has this and Risky Business, Guido the Killer Pimp in 1983. Goonies running Scared La Bamba and then Midnight Run in 88. He is a full-fledged that guy in 1983. He's also, to my, my taste, blowing everybody off the screen in this movie. Like, he is clearly so good and not only that, knows exactly who this guy is, I can't tell if he's wearing a prosthetic nose or not or if he's just really young, but he looks. The hair is definitely a little weird. Yeah. But he, he is the guy who's like, to your point, he's like, I had it for one second. Like, you bet on all these bar bands and you get lucky with one of them. I struck oil and now I'm a DJ in New Jersey. And now I'm like, sitting in a overhead lighting in an overnight shift at a, at a radio station. So much so to where he pulls some Scooby-Doo shit. Right. Like, the desperation. We didn't get into that. Yeah, yeah. Like, trying to, like, take on Eddie's persona and do all of that stuff. It's like, they sell that, they kind of create that at the beginning of the movie. Look, he's working in this small little room. Word man comes in. He has all of these ideas. Maybe we can be technical consultants. It's the first time I ever heard of a technical consultant on a movie. Yeah. Maybe we can be in the movie. And do you know how desperate he is from that time on? So, I, I think my favorite Joey Pants in this is when they're on the roof. Which is a great scene. And they're just, Frank's, like, playing that song. And he's, like, can barely sing. And he's sitting there. Dark side coming. And he's just, he's out. And he's there laughing. And he's like, and he's like, this guy can't sing. Yeah. He can't write. He can't. And he just, like, eviscerates him. But it's just classic Joey Pants. And you can see all the seeds for. Who's the Sopranos character? Ralphie. Ralphie. Yeah. Ralphie, Cypher. It, like, it's, like, all of the characters that, like, made him famous. There's a little bit of them in that role. Mark Scone Bale Bonds is right there. Yeah. Did you tell fucking Jack? Everybody's telling me to go fuck myself. The Beaver Brown Band, we mentioned, they were found by Lou Eisen, the, uh, or Kenny Payne, the technical consultant for the film who was Lou Eisen, the executive, who's, like, a bunch of jerk-offs, $10,000. Found these guys and they wanted the Cruisers to be this Jersey bar band. So, there's some, there's some shades of Springsteen in this, which I think was a bigger deal in the 80s. Basically, massive, you're like, I watched this 100% seriously. I watched this, like, 70, 30. I think the 30 comes from the fact that there is a break in the space-time continuum of rock history that happens in this movie that I cannot get over. What is it? Tell us. Well, Eddie and the Cruisers sound almost exactly like Bruce Springsteen. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen would have started, in the early mid-70s and really starts to sound like Eddie and the Cruisers or vice versa in the mid-70s. They make tender years in 62 or 63 and they're working on Season in Hell in 64. That predates the Bob Dylan record, Bring It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited. It predates the Beatles doing Rubber Soul and Revolver. It predates. Eddie was ahead of his time, man. Bill, it's beyond ahead of his time. Ray Charles and the Shirelles is what was on in the radio. They would not have a rock band with a sax player doing rock opera 70s music and you're asked to believe that this guy is basically Dylan going electric but without Dylan having ever happened. The only thing that drives me nuts about this movie is that if they just said it in 73, then they would have been able to be like, yeah, we're trying to get this feeling back. And then it's just 10 years later and they're like, in 83 when they're like, Eddie disappeared but now 10 years later there's a revival. But the idea that this is happening at like Sock Hops is kind of like Marty McFly going back and starting rock and roll in Back to the Future. Oh, man. Those are all fair points. One of my favorite white supremacist scenes of all time. Yes. Marty invents rock and roll. I love that. Is this done to make Eddie seem like he's a once-in-a-generational rock visionary? I think the book is set in like the doo-wop era. I see what you mean. And they made it more like we want this to sound like Jake Isle's band, John Mellencamp. Because they go from runaround suit. They go from covering runaround suit straight to Darkseid. And then Season in Hell. And then Season in Hell, by the time Season in Hell comes out, they're like in excess. But when Season in Hell happens, they're like, this is like avant-garde. And I'm like, this sounds like an Eagles song from the long run. Like, it's not that. What other movies do you want to ruin now, CR? The Warriors? Could we ever get 40,000 gang members in one spot? No, I'm just saying, this is an easy fix that they chose not to make. I don't know why. I think they definitely could have made it three, four years later and probably not lost anything. I think they really wanted the innocence of the early 60s. Well, in that scene at the college, they literally pull up and Sleepwalk is playing, right? Which is the scene, the song, the instrumental that you play to say, hey, we're in the 60s and the 50s, it was a different time. Stand by me. And Sleepwalk is playing and then they come on there and just their energy completely disrupts everything that the college has going on. If they were playing that disruptive music way ahead of their time, CR, in 63, like, what would they have been playing? It's just, these guys are doing left at the Rolling Stones? Exactly. I wouldn't have because they didn't exist in this universe. You know what I mean? Like, apparently they don't go on Ed Sullivan. The Beatles are not on Ed Sullivan in this universe. They had the sax player from Beaver Brown, Michael Antunes is the sax player in the movie. That was the only one they cast over Wendell. No lines. Tough. Well, he does, he makes an impact. I got things to say. Zero lines. They re-released the soundtrack in the fall of 84, a year after the movie came out. And it goes quadruple platinum and all this shit. And even Tender Years peaked at 31. So two top 35 hits. And it just kept going and going. So the director is Martin Davidson. He wrote the screenplay of The Sister and basically got screwed over by the studio who paid for it. Couldn't figure out how to release it properly and it ended up on HBO and he was like nobody's ever going to see my movie. Not realizing HBO is about to come. And not realizing that the rewatchables would force streamers to put it on. I think Shout Factory. The real reason we're doing this is because we need Kiss of Death back. And if we have an Eddie and the we brought Eddie and the Cruisers back to life. Much like Eddie Wilson at the end of this movie. And now Kiss of Death has to be next. Craig, 95 minutes plus 5 on the Horlbeck scale. 5 under par. Pretty impressive. This movie is as good as it is and is as enjoyable as it is because it's 95 minutes. If this movie is two and a half hours, it's unwatchable. Oh my god. Unwatchable. And it just goes to show you how much that matters. Like the 95 minutes is a part of why this movie is so great. That being said, for my probably answerable questions, I have some questions about what you would like to see more of. So one of the reasons it hit on HBO was it was 95 minutes. They could put it on at 8 and it would be done at 9.35. And they could go right into a comedy special. $5 million budget made $4.7 million. Roger Ebert, two stars. Eddie and the Cruisers is all build up and no payoff. He wrote that. They could have had a good movie here. They had the cast for one. They even had the music. The soundtrack is terrific. But the ending is so frustrating, so dumb, so unsatisfactory. Gives a bad reputation to the whole movie. I have a counter for Raj. Go fuck yourself? Wow. First, go fuck yourself. Like, with a capital F. Like, to start there. I really like the ending. I love that he lived. I mean, granted, I saw this first when I was 15 years old, but him coming back with the beard and being like, oh my god, he's fucking alive. He was alive the whole time. Because they're hinting at it, but you don't actually think they're going to do it. And then they actually do it. I don't know. I'm still into it. But to Raj's point, it doesn't really mean anything. By the time we find out that he's alive. It's the last second. Yeah. What? Well, he wanted respect, right? He did want respect. Now he's watching through a window on his TV. He's watching a season of Hell and All of That Stuff. I finally got my respect. It's too bad you saw it the way you saw it, because I would like to know whether you thought watching the movie, you're like, is Eddie breaking into people's houses and looking for the season in Hell tapes? Yeah, I didn't see. I knew the ending. Well, let's find out from Craig, who knew nothing about the movie. So, the twist ending, what did you think? Well, unfortunately, I knew there was a sequel called Eddie Lives. That's tough, yeah. I think it's tough. I didn't have a problem with. I thought, yeah, I considered maybe. I didn't know what was going to happen in a nice way. I was let down by the Joey Pants ending, to be honest, because they just signaled that way too clearly. I actually thought that was going to be like a classic red herring, because he was so ridiculous. He would be my first culprit. I thought it was going to be like Sal Amato, who wanted to be the leader, and that's why he killed Eddie, or it was Eddie coming back or something like that. Sal Amato cut his breaks? Is that your take? Yeah. I thought he was like, you're screwing us up. I can lead us to the promised land by doing Runaround Sue for 20 years. But I didn't have a problem with the ending. To me, the movie's already over at that point, and it's just like a fun button at the end. It's definitely over. The movie kind of overs with the rekindled romance between Wordman and Eddie's girl. Classic Dirty Mackin, hatin', cucking happening in this movie behind Eddie's fucking back. Wordman, are you crazy? Some guy code being broken. He's lucky he just called him Toby Tyler and made him work for it. But the movie to me, it was always there's no real story. I enjoy this movie. Legitimately, this made me homesick for Louisiana. I watched the movie, and it felt like I'm back in General Jackson, Baton Rouge, Gardeer, Pizza, Eddie and the Cruisers, but it's not actually a real movie in any way, shape, or form. She starts off, and she's going to be looking for him. That just kind of goes nowhere. They get rid of that. They just fucking go, okay, really, if the movie was driven by her trying to get this story. You're talking about Ellen Barkin. Ellen Barkin. The payoff would almost make more sense. It's two framing devices, because they've got to get Ellen Barkin to Tom Barringer, but when they get to Tom Barringer, it becomes him going around meeting people from his past and having these reveries, remembering his days with Eddie and the Cruisers. I don't think we were putting a ton of thought into stuff in the 80s. But we were having fun, though. We were having a great time. Stuff didn't add up. We didn't care, because it was like, if Season in Hell somehow came out two years before Highway 61 revisited, who cares? But wasn't it better, though? But wasn't it better sitting down and finding reasons to like what the fuck you were watching? It was better to say, hey, this has great music. This is a cool story. You have an interesting lead, or I guess Tom Barringer's the lead. You have an interesting character here. Just sit down for 90 minutes and have a good time, rather than get off and pull everything apart and overanalyze it. Also, well, yeah. You just had more fun with movies. And it's what you get out of it being 95 minutes. You could explain it more if they added 20 minutes to get into some stuff, but then is it as enjoyable of a movie? No. Probably not. Take a break. We'll do the categories. This episode is brought to you by Viore. Alright, let's talk about a category we appreciate. Clothes that stay in the rotation. Viore earned that spot. Their core shirts are good for workouts, travel day, weekend, whatever. And the Strato Tech T, ridiculously soft. It's the kind of gear you keep reaching for because it's comfortable, while still looking put together. Get 20% off your first purchase at viore.com slash rewatchables and discover the versatility of Viore clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This episode is brought to you by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no-brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes. Get up to $3 million in coverage with no medical exam. Just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash rewatch. That is ethos.com slash rewatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Alright, most rewatchable scene. Opening credits. That's how it's done, CR. Cold open. Darkseid's coming now. Nothing is real. We have to meet everybody. Doing Darkseid at the college, I would imagine. And then it cuts to Ellen Barkin on her like 17th sig of the day. It's like 1230 in the afternoon. Dog walking every guy in the studio. She's just dropping lady all over them. They're all in love with her. She does, you ever hear of a poet named Arthur Rambeau? Committed suicide not of the flesh, but of the mind and soul. Pretty good hook. Yeah. Good song. Everybody's skeptical. You're fucking crazy. Eddie fucking died. Who cares, Maggie? What's the hook? What are you doing? What's the deal? And that's why you think that the story's going to be through her perspective. But the scene sets up the entire film. We got Wordman's flashback to meeting the cruisers at the Tony Mart. Wordman. Frank Ridgway. Jersey Source 62. Needed to see that. The Caesar. Yeah. Timely pause. Barking goes to see Frank at school. Sits on his desk. The night Eddie died, the cruisers died with him. He was my friend. You I just met. Fake cruisers band at the Sal Lounge leading into the memory of being on the roof crating on the dark side, which might have been the best seven minutes of the 80s. I don't know. Hagler Hearns and this. Better than Danger Zone, better than. Get away from her you bitch I love Fake Eddie Fake Eddie comes out With this 1983 lounge band And has the leather jacket And kills it We get the whole word of music thing Get the performance Coming back to the cover guy Wrapping it up But we get to I just love when Watching somebody create a song From scratch Yeah I also love Any scene Where a band Is together creating a song And there's an unexpected Missing ingredient Like there's an unexpected Look stout So he does it twice He does it When he's explaining to them We're gonna marry What we do At Bar Rock With high literary concepts And all of that But then he does it again Listen He's got something That nobody else has And the difference between Eddie and the rest of the band Is Eddie can hear it And they can't Michael Perret said This scene on the roof Which is awesome He said I've been told that That scene at top of Tony Mart Is the way rock and roll happens You take a melody And just make it rock And it just sort of happens It's one of the most Flattering things you can say I mean it's an awesome scene Nothing is funnier Than when a When a hit song Comes together in a movie In two minutes I fucking love it Like hey come in Play the bass Perret is like What are you on vacation? And he literally comes in On time No perfect And he's like Boom boom boom The sax guy comes in He's got a soul Already planned out Girl comes in On the drums Joanne Banging the thing I love also when like Everybody catches the vibe Yeah And then they have to be A part of it People start dancing Hitting the tambourine And adding melodies All of a sudden they got a song When that Beatles documentary Came out Did you watch that? Yeah it was a little like this It was It was It was like It just took 15 minutes Yeah and there would be like Lots of like dudes being like Did you watch the Johnny Carson show last night? Right That was really good Cause you think about Get Back And you think that like When you think about Some of the songs That the Beatles made You think that these songs Were like handed down From like the gods And given to Lennon and McCartney And you just see him going What sounds best? Tucson? Is it fucking Tucson or Phoenix? What should we put in the song? And that's They fucked around Till they hit on something That people will remember forever But they just have this Like Darkseid comes out Fully formed Right Yeah I thought Berenger does a good job Even though you never see His hands of like Yeah He's got like this head knob And And And uh Parade in that scene Where he's like He's just so happy It's happening And you can feel like the uh The Eddie charisma Yeah It's a good scene Um That leads to Sal's last song With the fake Eddie band Right into uh Wild Summer Nights We go back to 63 We go Wild Summer Nights Right into Tender Years Um Really good parade performance again But ending with the Berenger piano The sax guy coming over Yeah That's fucking awesome Yeah Putting the elbow on the piano And just like Yeah Do you have a favorite Not dark side Eddie song? Tender Years is good Tender Years is good It's like just A flat out solid song Um I don't know if you noticed this though But it comes back to Sal After Tender Years And they're wrapping up And they play some oldie But goodie song And all the people in the Audience are holding Cigarette lighters Later on they lighters up And he finishes it And it cuts to the crowd And there's this lady In the front row Who's like this Like Cut him off Be a really funny social clip This extra's just going for it She's making like five bucks For three hours Just like throwing herself into it Um Sound word man eating pizza I enjoy I So I Let me test drive this one for you Cause Sal's really going for it He's got the sweaty lip Seating pizza He's about to start crying I think he might be a Peter North award For most effort Loaded into one movie Matthew Lawrence Yeah It's like He's got this nothing bass part He's Throwing himself into this Full speed 100% You kind of need him In this movie too Yeah you do Think about the little Soliloquy that he does After the song And he's sitting down there And he's telling them Remember when you used to Driving around Yeah yeah Things getting wild In the backseat You're touching on her And all of this And everybody's starting to feel Remember that first time Remember that first time This is my flex What is it Salamato I used the bam out of bio Where the fuck did that Performance come from Melt from 90210 Dude nuts He's going nuts Salamato in the nightclub Like he could have been At the Copacabana He was smooth as butter Because he always had that He was just like I can't beat Eddie But I'm really close He's fucking nice On stage that night He's pretty good So he had He was in He was the gay guy In San Elmo's Fire He lived across the Hall from Demi Moore And then peaked At 90210 He was David Silver's dad David's pops He served He served Donna Martin Champagne Got her drunk She passed out At the high school graduation And then Wasn't allowed to graduate And they revolted And it was like It was all because of Salamato Salamato serving Underage kids Champagne I thought he was Great in this The Toby Tyler move We mentioned Into Frank and Maggie Which I think I think every scene With Barringer and Barker Is just really good Yeah And I had this coming later But Barker Like hates this movie Yes Hates it She fucking She shit all over it She shit on it That was to pay the rent That was to pay the rent We didn't know Who was in charge The movie fucking sucks Everybody was On drugs Everybody was on drugs And she She hints To being actually Mistreated on the movie In a way If you watch how Just viciously She treats the film Hurt my feelings Wendell dies Right into Eddie crying And being able to sing Tender Years Yeah Good scene My best friend died last night Season of hell Going sideways This is what I've been Waiting a year for A bunch of jerk offs Making weird sounds That guy What the fuck That guy is funny as fuck He's so fucking mad What is that Lou Eisen Yeah He paid that 10,000 dollars He gave him 10 grand Yeah And they came back With some experimental bullshit When he's trying to get the kids At the fucking sock hop to dance Really funny And uh We ain't great We're just some guys from Jersey If we can't be great Then there's no sense In ever playing music again Sal That's how That's why I think Before every tailgate It does haunt Eddie Through the sequel Eddie lives You know he's like I just don't wanna get up on stage Unless it's gonna really mean something You know And then the ending Um That's it for rewatchable What do you got I'm gonna go Rooftop Riding dark side Yeah I think that's me too That's what it is Yeah No Did you enjoy Eddie In the flashback In the fucking Junkyard castle Palace depression The palace of depression Which apparently actually exists It did Yeah Like I love that scene Cause that's when Eddie When Eddie starts to crash out Towards the end of the movie The middle to the end of the movie Those are my favorite parts of the movie He crashes out in front of He's comparing himself to the Edsel Yep I think it's cool Because for the most part It's all of Barringer's Happy memories Of it And then it's like When Joanne is like Kenny and Joanne Are like the ones Who were like It wasn't all happy You know Like it was like There was some dark shit Yeah And then CR's like This wouldn't have even existed Two years for Dylan You dumb motherfucker What's the most 1983 thing about this movie No caller ID Oh Really jumps out Yeah When Joanne keeps getting these calls Now you would just be like Who's this number She couldn't even I don't even think they had Star 69 yet Watching a row of TVs Through a department store window Definitely Is very 1983 Yeah That doesn't exist anymore It's a trope That Continued to come back up Now it would be like A homeless guy With no pants on Watching through a Best Buy And then peeing on the window And that would have been The end of it In the business What the fuck You guys What the fuck Are you talking about Is Eddie the homeless guy Eddie's the homeless guy Yeah Yeah I have a couple Here for the 83 One is Darkseid just sounds like Brian Adams Or Southside Johnny Or John Mellencamp So like very Classic early mid 80s Rock sound And then Ellen Barkin Working for Media Magazine Which is like A television news program Was like A very big thing At least in Philly They had one of these I think it was called We had one too In Boston I think it was called Like Entertainment Magazine Or Entertainment Week Or something like that But it was like Two hosts Yeah And then they would be like Hard hidden stories Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepard They're back on screen For Moonstruck Season Yeah Like And it's It was just like A really weird phenomenon Back then Regional entertainment News programs Yeah it would be The celebrities that Passed through That they were in an interview Yeah But then it would be like A hard hitting piece about Some school that lost It's funding For the school play Yeah One The smoking Very 1983 How much smoking They have in it Maybe even more than 83 was They had non-smoking sections By then True The smoking Also The fact that In this part of the 80s They just did not Give a fuck About aging Or de-aging Or anything like that In any way shape or form This is Like in no way shape or form Berenger's exactly The same age They don't give a fuck They would take you Mess your hair up a little bit Yeah Put you in an open shirt You're 14 years old Like Yeah You're 14 He in this movie Is 83 right He's 34 or whatever So when he joined the band He was 14 or 15 years old I think it's supposed to be 17, 37 But this is This is another problem With the space time Continuing Right It's like Joey Pants He looks the same Then they give him A little baldy He's 20 years older or the whole nine. Just in the 80s, just didn't care. You're younger, it doesn't matter. barely looks different. She looks almost exactly the same. They just changed her wardrobe. I would say she just looks great. Yeah. Yeah, they didn't put a lot of thought into this stuff. It almost makes you think they thought it was going to be 1968 and then they decided in the editing to shave six more years out of it or something. I think it's just closer to the book, yeah. Berenger basically looks exactly the same. There's no difference at all. For the Floyd Gondali butter on my ass and lollipops in my mouth for something I just enjoy. I said it already, but watching in a movie or a TV show a band create a song from scratch gets me every time. I have when the quiet part of a rock song makes way for the loud part of a rock song via isolated guitar riff and hand claps. It's just good stuff when it's just like Here we go. Dark side's about to kick in. Sleepwalk being like a fucking soundtrack for like the 50s and 60s. Yeah. It always gets to me. But also, I like Frank's Dirty Mackin, man. Frank Dudley, the word man don't even give a fuck. She walks into the bar. He sees her. He's like, oh shit, something walking in. What's going on right now? And then fucking Eddie comes in and he kind of taps it down. But as soon as Eddie is gone, he's right back on his shit trying to steal Eddie's girl. Ben College, some bad things happen. Yeah. I actually watched it like two or three times being like, did I miss the part where she's like, me and Eddie are on a break? It's like, no, she's right back in Eddie's arms like the second after he makes out with her. It's tough shit, man. Can't trust him. Can't trust him. Chris Brown will do a song about it. Woman Empowerment, 1963. She can sleep with whoever she wants, Bill. She wasn't being shaggy. He doesn't own her. Wood Sage the best. Mentioned a couple already, but I think Wendell is a home run in this movie because he has no lines, but you feel him in the movie, which made me wonder, do we create the Wendell Newton Award for best performance with no lines? Zero lines. Have we ever had a no line? It's weird because it's not even like, hey, man, grab me a coach. It's nothing. Doesn't speak. Yeah. Doesn't even say like, yeah, nothing. Not even one word. Heroin, very powerful. Yeah. But you know his whole fucking life story by watching him play with Eddie and the Cruisers. Yeah. You know exactly. He's playing for a long time in a jazz band. Eddie heard him someplace, brings him into the Cruisers and changed his fucking life. Him and Eddie have a whole song. He even taught Eddie some music. He was Eddie's like musical Obi-Wan. That's right. This was the Springsteen issue for this movie when they thought it was a Springsteen ripoff because Clarence Clements was the probably the biggest he'd ever most famous he'd ever What's up, big man? Yeah. Hall of Fame smoke we mentioned. I like Jersey Shore in the 60s. I have Jersey Shore. Also like Jersey Shore in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. It was really fun to go to. I like when Eddie gives Frank the green light to write songs and then he does the that's the most you'll ever get out of me word, man. They little like bonding on the beach and then Berenger just is completely committed to this the whole time but I like at the end the end's ridiculous when Joey Pants is like I'm going to get the tapes. I'm working again. I'm going to make the best deal we can and he drives away and Berenger comes flying in and he's like go get him, dog! Just makes me laugh. What do you have for what's the best? Like this is oriented around a conspiracy theory that Eddie is still alive. Yeah. That was very much alive then. That was the heyday of Elvis is somewhere hanging out in Montana. We did it again in the 90s. Was D.B. Cooper a big thing? D.B. Cooper. Tupac lives in Jamaica. Tupac's the best one. Yeah, like still like 30%. 30% he might be. Andy Kaufman people thought. Andy Kaufman. Like the conspiracy theory that the movie is wrapped around that's really aged good. I want to hear your Tupac theory though. What happened to Pac? If Pac's alive like where is he? Just saying I don't believe that one the most. Did he get shot though? Like he's like in hiding. No. Sadly he died. But that was the one I really wanted to believe. In the late 90s I really tried to talk to Pac. It's a Bill Simmons exclusive. He can confirm that Tupac is dead. If you put drinks in me in like 1998 I would have gone nuts for it. We all thought it. Like everybody was in and it was so funny. Because he was still releasing music. Bro, it was funny because like my mom caught me up on it one time. My mom goes remember how stupid you used to say we looked when we would say that Elvis was still living or something like that. Remember I said y'all are doing the same thing. I was like but this is different. I got pieces of autopsy. Music is still dropping. He said this on this song. If you listen to it right there these Jordans that he's wearing in his video mama these Jordans wasn't even out. It was really good. It died I'm going to say like early 2000s it became ridiculous but it did have a really good two year run. Great shot Gordo Award. Most cinematic shot. I don't have a specific cinematic shot. I want to give a shout out really good extras acting in this movie. All the bar scenes with the crowd everybody's like acting like someone out of bar. The college concert's great. Big Kahuna burger where Bessie's food and drink. Sal's pepperoni pizza. Yeah. As you know I love a good old school greasy slice. He never takes a bite out of it though. There's also a lot of people drinking what seemed to be seven and sevens. Which is a very 83, 80 you know like that early kind of like 80s drink. Chess Rockwell They both come from that scene. The PBRs though. The PBRs tells you what kind of guys these fucking are. One of beer is a fucking PBR. And Schlitz. They're drinking Schlitz too. Chess Rockwell best character name. Frank Ridgway is pretty good. The word man Frank Ridgway. I had Salamato but yeah. Salamato's good too. Denethy's Benihana word scenes too. So in location it's got to be the junkyard, right? Yeah, it looks great. Sierra, you have a flex category. Vincent Chase Award. Are we sure this character was good at his job? Frank. Oh, word man. Yeah, word man. Oh, I thought you were almost certainly going to go with Joey Panty. I wouldn't say that word man is blowing my mind with his words. Like Dark Side's a good song but I don't know if you deserve the title word man for Dark Side. Whoa, whoa. Tender years. Won't you wash away my tears? He also steals his bandmates girl which it's a knock for me in terms of being in a band and having a bandmate and he kind of forces them into a life of obsolescence when he springs season of hell on them. It wasn't for Frank. They probably would have made Tender Years Part 2 and done fine. Could barely play this synth. Yeah, exactly. Had to be taught. Just had to do this. He's like, no, play these cool chords. He's like, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee, dee. Word man kind of a bitch. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. No, you know, I thought this. I'm having a great time. Word man fucked up everybody's life. Also, word man stole somebody's girl. Class traitor. Exactly. He's basically like a liberal arts. Word man is straight up ho. He gets to the college. He is like really slumming it. What did they say to the party? You're dropping your ass, hanging out. That's what word man is doing. Word man sucks. That's what Eddie says to me. He's like, I didn't say better. I said different. You'd like this movie. Of course I do. You're like 90-10. Yeah. I didn't like the 70-30. Butch's girlfriend award weak link of the film. Doc's plan of torturing Joanne and everyone else for the tapes and wrecking their apartments over just asking them if they had the tapes. I don't know. I have some notes. Maybe just ask Joanne. Hey, do you have the tapes? We never really come back to the fact that he walked into his apartment and it looks like someone was killed there signs of a struggle. Like going crazy. He was like, all that stuff, it just comes from the movie. It's just like, go get him, Doc. What's the worst is Tom Barringer's acting when he sees that his apartment has been trashed. First of all, he's working at a, he's a school teacher in a trailer park in Vineland, New Jersey. But he walks in and it's completely destroyed. He's like, okay. Starts smoking a cigarette and answering his phone. Answering his phone. What's the worst? The sequel. Oh, tough. Why did they do this? 89 for some reason gave us, wait, 88 and 89 gave us Caddyshack 2. Another 48 hours. Fledged to another 48 hours which we've begrudgingly decided we liked. There's just a bunch of bad ones where they were just just trying to capitalize I think on the rewatchability of these movies on cable. Being like, maybe these dumbasses will go see a shitty version of a sequel. You know how you don't remember the pods we did during COVID? Yeah. Did we do another 48 hours like two months ago? Yeah. We did. We did. We did. We did. Did you get the COVID vaccine again? No, I just got it. Boy, Bill's going forward. I can't wait until what happens in a couple of months. What happens? Bill's right on the edge, guys. Just hear the things that are being said. But what's going to happen? Did you get the COVID vaccine in a little bit? It's going further. Watch. Oh, you think he's getting red-pilled? Oh, no. Bill, it's happening. I don't remember anything that happened in 2020 or 2021. But you're saying it's because apparently the Bucs played the Suns in the finals. I'm telling you. It's getting. Look, it. So, what's Asia's worst is that. Okay, so there's. How many black guys are in the group? One. It's one. He died. No, it's. It could have been the drummer. It would have been one thing if everybody in the cruisers had a drug problem, if they were sharing needles and the whole deal. It was the 80s. They missed an opportunity. One of the guys could have become HIV positive. I shared a needle with fucking. Two black guys. Two black guys because there's another guy, too. The poor guy gets replaced and he's just like, I just want to say that the greatest saxophone player who ever lived died. And this motherfucker was holding his saxophone like, God damn. I'm trying to keep up with this. And that's what's Let me ask you a question. It's probably unanswerable. Mm-hmm. End of the day, Wendell goes home. You think he's like, man, I'm in this great band. It's Eddie and the Cruisers. I play sax. I don't talk a lot. But man, I love being in this band. Or do you think he's like, shit, I got to get back into a hard bop combo. I got to get back to jazz. What a good question. Is he calling home being like, man, some of the stuff Eddie wants to do is stuff like I've never fucking heard before. Yeah. Or is he like, fuck, how did this happen to me? Yeah. How am I playing a 12 second solo over a terrible blues rock band? So do you think Frank never, it's realistic that Frank never would have known that he overdosed on heroin at the Ebted Motel? I mean, it's crazy. Like, I guess that. Because Kenny the Blackjack Taylor is like, where were you, man? When are you going to wake up? This goes into my hottest take later. Okay. Yeah. What stage is the worst? None of these characters ran into each other for 20 years. And they all live in the same state where there's not a ton to do. 20 minutes apart. Yeah. They never had some sort of 10 year reunion. Nothing. I thought that was weird. The Springsteen shadow we mentioned, mentioned Owen Barkin hating this movie. I have one more big one. Does anyone have anything else? They hinged the entire insult of, Eddie's insult of Wordman on stage at the college on the Toby Tyler character from like a Disney movie that was around back then. I don't really know if that's really hidden in 2026. People are like, oh yeah, it's Tyler. And Van mentioned it. Barringer and Schneider look like, they don't look at all day older than when they were in high school. Oh, one more thing. We got to fix this. Amazon and Apple, their posters for this movie are the Salamato band. Oh. It's fucking crazy. And you're like, neither Eddie nor Barringer nor Barkin are in the poster. It's Salamato and his Holiday Inn band. That ties into what, by what stage the worst was. And this is, I'd like to do this as a public service to all the streamers watching this right now. All of them. Including Netflix. Um, so this movie's ending, right? Surprise ending with Eddie in the window and he's got the beard and the, and the closing credits come on. Amazon's counting me down in the bottom right corner because it's about to send me to the next thing. Yeah. And now I really want to hear the ending and you have to like grab your phone or your remote frantically, try to stop it. So they don't send me to like fucking Harry Potter season seven or whatever they're going to send me to. And it's like, fuck off. Yeah. Let me enjoy the end of a movie. For 20 seconds before you're sending me to your next thing. So you can bill your fake streaming hours to me when all I did was leave my TV on and you pretended I watched something else. Fuck you. Some of your best work, Bill. This is what, this is the fucking shit, bro. This is the shit. Yeah. It's fucking bullshit. I fucking can't stand it. Can I finish? God forbid they don't push you to the next show. You know what, Bill? Good for you. Thank you. Good for you for saying it despite current business situations. No, it's like, it's like, it's like the board. Yeah. Let me watch the fucking movie before you give me five different things to watch. Or let me change my settings and be like, you know what? You can't do this for 30 seconds. I don't want to live in a country where we can't say it's time for me to watch the next episode. I'll click over to that now. If you need someone to spoon feed you the next episode of the next movie before you've come to the conclusion of the artistic statement that you were taking in. We can't see any closing credits. We're done as a country. If that's the case. You know what? I wonder what the actual calculation is here because I bet they don't want it to get too deep into the credits before you've already. They don't even want you to think. Yeah. They want us on the next thing. They want you on the next thing to keep you on the thing. It's ruining. And for shows, if you end on a cliffhanger, you're counting on the fact that somebody's like, I have to see what happened to this nurse in the pit. Start the next episode. Anything to add, Craig? It's anti below the line. I want to see who lit the movie. Let me see their names. Say their names. Who's the AD? Hey, sorry. I care about these things. Stop telling us you actually care about the movie industry and you won't let us see closing credits for anything I watch. Who was Salamato's assistant on set? I want to know. It was the key grip. Really annoying. All right. We'll take a break and then come back with Vans Flex. This episode is brought to you by the active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. That's a mouthful, but that's because it packs a lot in. Earn unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases with it, big or small. So whether it's buying tickets to the game and grabbing a coffee, it earns unlimited 2% cash rewards on purchases. Say it with me. The active cash credit card from Wells Fargo. Be a 2%-er. Learn more at wellsfargo.com forward slash active cash. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Sleep Doctor. Let's say a good sleep is wildly underrated. You can do everything right. Eat well, work out, sleep seven or eight hours and still feel exhausted. If you snore, wake up tired or crash during the day, it might be worth looking into. Sleep Doctor. Offers an at-home sleep study done in your own bed. They accept most insurance plans so you can pay as little as $0. Visit sleepdoctor.com. Ruffalo Hanna-Rubinick Partridge overacting word. Kenny the drummer. I had Joey Pants. What are you getting so mad at Wordman for? He really goes for it. Yeah. He's like, this is my one scene. I'm going to get really mad at Joey. You guys are going to like it. I have Eddie whenever they're not on stage. Oh. Whenever they're not on. Just going for it? Eddie is just fucking going for it. He puts his whole body into when he shoved, what's it called? Like, whenever they're not on stage, Eddie is dialing it up in the middle of it, man. My favorite part of that Kenny scene is when he's like, you remember those days in the backseat of a car balling some shit? And then your song comes on. I should put balling in what stage is the best. Balling some shit. When was the last time balling was said? It was funny. And then they cut to the audience and all the guys, and the audience were like, yeah, I remember that. That's Chris and Sean. You remember back in the day we were balling some chick? The watch comes on. Ben, you have a flex. All right, so what's the list? Top five fictitious bands ever. Okay. I do not have Eddie and the Cruisers in this just because we're doing the movies. Number five is Josie and the Pussycats. Okay. You got to count them. Iconic shit. Number four, I got the Wonders, man. I'm a. That thing you do, truther. Punch it in. Yeah, like, I love that movie. It's almost lost time. Nobody talks about it as much as they should. I love that movie. Should we add it to the list? I think it's a really good rewatchable. Okay. Yeah, I love that movie. Number three, Spinal Tap. Got to have Spinal Tap in there. Rest in peace, Rob. Number two, The Five Heartbeats. Okay. Now, this is an underrated fictitious band. The music is fantastic. Robert Townsend. Robert Townsend. Shout out to him. The story is very reminiscent of Temptations, obviously, but they're amazing. The music was amazing, too. I like that movie. Number one, for me, Stillwater. Stillwater from Almost Famous. They sound like a real band. They have the real band chemistry and angst. Stillwater. Can I ask a follow-up question? Good lead singer presence, too, by Jason Lee. Forget the movies that those bands are in. Best music. Best music of a fictitious band. So, to me, it would be The Five Heartbeats, The Wonders, Eddie and the Cruisers. They got to be up there. And the Stillwater stuff is awesome to me. It sounds kind of like. Stillwater's really good. I just don't think Fever Dog is as good of a signature song as Dark Side or that thing you do. Yeah, that's fair. It was a good list. I want to nitpick and say you missed one, but I can't think of one that you missed. No, so there was one thing that I couldn't really decide. I went back and forth with Ken Berg about this. Is The Revolution and Purple Rain. Doesn't count. Okay, because he's not playing Prince. No, it doesn't count. I think they're called. Because Wendy and Lisa are in his other band. Everybody has the regular names. The Time is in it. But we couldn't decide whether or not that was technically a fictitious band or not. Because if they are, they're obviously number one. We just did an 80s soundtrack draft. And The Time doesn't count either. Yeah. The only one I would add to it is Sex Bomb from Scott Pilgrim. From Scott Pilgrim. Yeah. That's a fucking Miz by Van. Yeah. What about the Matt Damon band in Europe? As he's calling himself the third one. Europe trip. Scotty doesn't know. Scotty doesn't know. Dan Band, real band, right? The Dan Band? Oh, hey, that's my bike. Yeah. Hey, that's my bike from Reality Bites. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Oh, CB4. So we never see Citizen Dick in singles. We just hang out with them. But they are Mudhoney. So. They're pretty good. Yeah. Wait. Wait a minute. Oh, yeah. No, they're the only fictitious band in singles. Because everybody else is like Alice in Chains. They never perform, though. No, but we hear Touch Me, I'm Sick. Yeah. Or Touch Me, I'm Dick. Touch Me, I'm Dick. Yeah. No, no, no. We see them on stage doing it? No, we just hear their record. Yeah, yeah. We don't see it, though. Touch Me, I'm Dick. That's a good one. CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. I don't know how hot of a take this is, but if this movie had two. Two more great songs in it, what happens? Does this become Grease? The level to which Grease is better than this movie is difficult to articulate. So, no. I mean, Grease is better in every way, right? I'm aware. Except for. Right. Except for everyone in the movie is 38 years old. In Grease? Playing high school kids, yeah. Yeah, true. So, would you want another song that was like Dark Side? Or do you feel like we needed like another Joanne solo song? I don't know. Well, I was going to do this later for either nitpick or unanswerable, but you assume all the songs we hear on the dark side, Tender Years, they're all on some album, right? They're on Tender Years. That gets released in 63. Yeah, they're on Tender Years. We don't know anything about the release of that album, how well the songs did, how famous were they, did they get to go on the Ed Sullivan show? No. We know nothing. We only know that they're back in the studio, that they got $10,000 to do their album after it. We don't know if John and Paul saw Eddie and the Cruisers on TV and were like, we should start the Beatles. Right, right. But there's this whole missing section. So Craig asks, I love that this movie's down to five minutes. I actually agree with him. I think you could maybe cut out seven minutes and add. I just want to know what happens when the album comes out and did it make them more successful? Did one of the songs become a top song? And then could we have heard another song during that whole stretch? Here's my take on that. Is that most records in the early 60s like that were a collection of singles for the most part? Yeah. And so I think that those songs were probably a collection of the 10 things that they were playing that were the biggest original songs that they had when they were playing live. But it wasn't like, here's our LP. It was songs people were pretty familiar with. So was The Dark Side on Tender Years? Yeah. But I thought Frank helps them write Dark Side. So Frank knew them before Tender Years? I bet they don't do Dark Side. I don't think they did Tender Years until after he, he had been in the band for a while. So then what did Sal mean then when he was like, we were doing Just Fine Without You when they weren't? Because I think he was like, we were just playing bars doing Run Around Sue. They were already moving. But Tender Years took them to a whole nother level. I know, but it seems like that was uncalled for from Sal. Yeah. It feels like that word man joining the band was the final piece to them becoming like a mainstream kind of successful band. But to your point, we don't know how successful. If there's one more great song in this movie, I think it's going to be I think it's going to be I think it's going to be I think something different. Can I do a hottest take of piggybacks off of this? Which is that the best part of this movie, which is also like the thing that I think fucks this movie up is that they play Darkseid first. And it's out of context of the entire movie. They just play the best song that these guys have to open the film. Yeah. And even though that happens at the college, which we know is a dark moment for the band, if you make us wait to hear Darkseid and you get to see them do the big full band version of Darkseid after you've seen them write it, it blows the fucking top off the movie. It's so much better. But that would denote that the movie had a regular story structure, which it doesn't because it really is not that conservative. So that's where if you had that extra great song, that song leads the movie and then it all leads to Darkseid, which is their biggest song. But if the movie starts with Tender Years, Oh, you can start it with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess, but I think people would be like, yeah, it's a pretty good song. But it starts with Darkseid, you're like, whoa, holy fucking shit. This is pretty good. You know what? Two, to your question though, at the beginning of the movie, I guess, is when they frame how successful of a band that they've become. Yeah. She's trying to talk about, but even as she's doing it, she's almost informing them of how big they were. It's not like they had, like, it's not like they were like, oh my God, it's Darkseid from Eddie and the Cruisers. It's still kind of ambiguous to a degree. There's a talk show, five minutes, them going on a talk show or an Ed Sullivan type show that could have been in this movie. Yeah. That would have been fun. Did you have a hot stick? I do. I think Wordman tried to kill Eddie. I think he actually killed the saxophone player. I think this entire movie He cooked up a hot shot for Wendell? I think he did. That's why he lived in a trailer. To your point, there's no way he didn't know. I think actually, his jealousy, because I watched this movie, it doesn't make any sense. He's openly trying, Wordman's fucking crazy, guys. He's openly trying to fuck with Eddie's girl. Can you imagine? We all work together. We're a band. Can you just imagine we're at like, I don't know, a ringer party or something like that and I'm just over there with one of y'all's wives trying to figure out what the fuck is up? The shit is, it blows my mind every time I watch this. My dad used to fucking hate it. Also, maybe she didn't, Eddie didn't make her toast, girl. Van is really onto something because if you come to the end and it turns out Wordman is the one who's been flipping people's apartments up and down and it's Kaiser Soze, and he did his own, the reason why he didn't get upset when he saw his apartment is because he's like, I know I did it. Oh, you have the Kaiser Soze ending at the end? Yeah, where he's just like, all I wanted was the tapes to get out of there so I could get out of my dumb teacher job. Yeah. Guys, let me tell you something. In Eddie and the Cruisers 2, Eddie is performing music, but he still refuses to let people know that he is Eddie. He's like, I'm Joe West. He's Joe West, right? Do you know why? Because he's fucking scared of Wordman. The whole reason why Eddie has gone into hiding. Is that true? I haven't seen Eddie in the Cruisers. Eddie lives there a long time. Yeah, he's a pseudonym. But is he scared of Wordman? No, this is in my brain. He's scared of Wordman because he knows Wordman tried to kill him, which is why he's hiding. This whole thing, Wordman is fucking crazy. So when we see Eddie at the end of Eddie and the Cruisers, there's one walking away. Wordman's behind him with a weapon. Wordman is stalking him. But you don't see it because Amazon has already cut to the next Harry Potter Season 7. Casting what ifs. Parade claims they were ready to replace him with Rick Springfield. Oh, that's interesting. And that he had to do that first concert where he had to lip sync all the songs and act like Eddie and if he sucked, they were going to replace him. And Rick Springfield admitted that he did think about trying to get the part. Would've been cool. Instead, he lives on in Jesse's girl on Boogie Nights. That ends up being his legacy, even though we don't see him. If Rick was in it, it would've been a box office success, I bet. More people would want to see it. Parade was discovered in a New York City restaurant working as a chef. So, still hope for Dave Chang. Even in his mid-40s, he might still be an actor. Weird one. This isn't a casting what if, but one of the people in the opening scene that when Maggie's telling them about Rimbaud, he's got the mustache, Barry's sand. He was an original Letterman producer in the first five years of the show and was on camera a lot. Really? And I never understood why he was in this movie. It's really strange. I mean, that's like a deep, deep Letterman. That's the NBC stuff. Only you would grab that. But it was just fucking weird. It would be like if Daniel Kellison was in the movie just randomly, just in a scene. Best Act Guy, Joey Pants Not Eligible. John Stockwell is in this, the lead guy from Christine and also in Top Gun. He's the guy that knows. He's Wizard from Top Gun, yeah. Oh, yeah. Or Werewolf, I can't remember, yeah. But the winner is Mitchell Lawrence. Yeah, for sure. Matthew Lawrence. Mitchell Lawrence was his brother. Twin brother, right? Yeah. Twin brother. Okay. Matthew Lawrence. Yeah. Not Mitchell Lawrence. Matthew Lawrence also now does or did Sports Talk Radio in Lexington, Kentucky. Wow. How many episodes does David Silver's dad in 90210 do you think? If you had to guess. How many episodes is what? Was he on 90210? Yeah, do you watch 90210? No. Yeah. 36. Oh, you're basically on the show at that point. Yeah. They did over 200 shows. What we've never talked about is a 90210 parent ranking because you have. He's the best one. What about not. What about. What about Dylan's fucking dad? Dylan's dad was the man. Who was Dylan. Who played Dylan's dad? No, that guy. What was the. We've seen this guy. That guy. Jack McKay. Yeah. Like, Jack McKay was the man. He's shady. What did he do up to? Should have looked out for his family better. He was like some kind of fucking mobster or something like that. I would have thought you were like David Silver's dad because he was like constantly messing around with the dental assistants. You don't like Brandon and Kelly? Brandon and Kelly's parents got on my nerves. Yeah, they were terrible. They got on my nerves. The whole family I didn't enjoy. Actually, my favorite was Kelly Taylor's mom because she had the drug problem and was. Oh, Brandon and Brenda? Is that where. Brandon and Brenda? And then also Steve's mom because she was like famous. Yeah, famous. She was kind of cool. Dion Waiter's award. Ellen Barkin? Unless you want to give it to the. I didn't pay for a bunch of jerk-offs to make it where it sounds. No, I think Barkin. Recasting couch director city. Can I offer you Michael Keaton as Kenny the drummer just randomly being in this movie? Yeah, I'd like to take that. That's good. It's like a year after Night Shift just looking for work still. Yeah. Yeah. Gets this big scene playing as a blackjack dealer. It's going crazy. I like it when Kenny puts the comic book down and just gets on a kit and just immediately just like lays into it. The Van Latham award for did this movie need more black people? No, we were treated poorly. But no, it doesn't. Perfect. And that's another thing about these 80s movies. Don't fucking put it. Not where we. Just do the thing. Okay? Just do the thing. It's a white band or a black saxophone player? It's a white band, black saxophone player. That's cool. You know what I'm saying? We don't need to just. It's fine. I'm telling you, it's fine. Craig has a flex category. I did it. It was the Bam Adebayo to Salamato. Oh, yeah, you did. Where the fuck did that come from? Him at the nightclub? First time somebody did Bam Adebayo is a flex category. The 83-point game. It's going to live on forever. Half-assed earned research. Berenger said he did not try to learn piano. Did practice some keyboards in his trailer. Well, he read Big's chilled dialogue. Is that a euphemism? Yeah. Practice some keyboards. Don't bother. Matthew Lawrence did learn how to play the bass. Peret remembers that when they all played together, it was a little like Stillwater. It was a college concert. The extras were into it. Everybody was going nuts, and they were really pretending they were the band. And then the Palace of Depression was a real place in Vineland, New Jersey. It does not exist anymore. Fraternity House was at Haverford College. Where's that? Outside of Philly. Tony Martz was an actual place until they were early eighties and then demolished and then we didn't mention this. Joanne played by Helen Schneider was a pretty famous German music star in the 70s and 80s. A lot of success apparently. I kind of like and wish there was like 10% more of her losing it a little at the end. Where she's like, I have to get ready. Eddie's here. And it's like kind of glorious wantsoning out. And I'm like, oh yeah, do more of that. She's been hanging on, waiting for this call for 20 years. That's great. Like you go in her room and it's just all weird Eddie mannequin shit. Eddie voodoo dolls. Fake Eddie. Did some research on him. John Cafferty or the Eddie that was with Salamato. The Eddie with Salamato played by Joey Balin who put out an album in 1994 if you want to download it on your way home. Joey Balin's solo work. Apex Mountain. Michael Perret definitely. Oh wait, I had one more half-assed internet research. Yeah. In that same Washington Post article that I mentioned Barringer claims that they filmed a scene in a roadhouse with the cruisers watching the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and making fun of it. And he has like a whole thing he talks about. And then after this quote, Martin Davidson's like, we never shot that. That's full shit. But I really like the idea that they at least thought about the Beatles in this movie. Yeah. I love when there's like violent disagreements like that. Yeah. It just goes to show you like people were probably using substances while making it. Like they were fucking high as shit. Yeah. I mean, it was 1983. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Apex. That's why we're the Grantland oral history will never happen. Because of the amount of drugs. No, because of 20 years later, people can just start making up shit. Right. Like Bill came back from the All-Star game and he got in this huge fistfight with C.R. Just like after 20 years, you overrate submarine movies again. Apex Mountain. Michael Perret. Yes. Tom Barringer. No. Ellen Barkin. No. Matthew Lawrence. I'm going to say David Silver's dad. Probably so. That show's pretty big. Yeah. Beaver Brown Band. Yes. Jersey Shore movies. No, but I also can't come up with a better one. I'm going to get killed for this for not knowing. Do you claim the Jersey Shore? What's your relationship with the Jersey Shore? I mean, it's adjacent. It's like the summer destination for most of Philadelphia. But I don't know of a better Jersey Shore movie than this. They've really figured it out as a great location. Yeah. I mean, not a movie, obviously, but the Jersey Shore. Yeah. Yes. The show is probably. Oh, the show. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. Did you like that show? No. No. Of course not. Did you ever hang out with those people during your early Hollywood days? I saw a couple of them. I think, I think, do you in this situation ever go partying with them? See a couple of them. No, I never liked that show. As a matter of fact, that show to me is when I realized, oh, you know, I don't have to fucking, fucking like what everybody else likes. It never made, it's grotesque in a way. Wow. That got dark. No, no. I just, I never understood it. I get it. Like everybody was so into it. I never liked it either. No, everybody was so into it. I loved it for two years. See, I just never, everything else that had come from MTV, like fucking Roll Rules, Challenge, all that stuff into it. For some reason, Jersey Shore just never fucking. Arthur Rimbaud. I think that he's had bigger moments than this. Yeah. Helen Schneider. Sounds like Germany was pretty hopping. Yeah. What happened? You would have thought that she'd have been around. She was like, went back to Germany. Interesting. 1957 Chevys, probably not. Cruz or Hanks? What about Hanks as word man? I had Cruz as Eddie. Because Cruz has priors of doing The Outsiders. Do you have Cruz as Eddie? Cruz as Eddie. He basically played a greaser in The Outsiders, and that's kind of the way Eddie dresses. Like, Eddie is just full outsider. Oh, Craig's all in on this one. Come on. Yeah. Come on. I don't know what you're doing. That makes a lot of sense. And I think you could actually, this is one of the rare times where you could do Cruz as Eddie and Hanks as Frank. Scorsese or Spielberg? I have Scorsese. Scorsese. Tri-state area. Yeah. Best hang, worst hang. Best hang, Sal. He has pizza, fun dressing room. Best hang is absolutely Maggie. Like, I got Ellen Barkin as the best hang. Good point. Yeah. I gotta add Maggie. I got Ellen Barkin as the best hang. I got worst hang, Sal. Well, how come? Just talking about the old days? No, Sal. I had Doc as the worst hang. When you think about it. Doc. Doc's a tough hang. Sal, you come in there. He offers you a slice of pizza. He sits down. The pizza's in his hand. He never fucking eats it, right? He's just hanging off. He's always fucked up. He's crying and sweating. He's crying. He's sweating. He's doing the whole thing. Wordman, he's skeptical of Wordman, which is probably because he knew that Wordman was a psychopath. Yeah, right. I think probably Kenny would be best hang. Yeah, tell him Blackjack's story. Yeah, just talk about ball and chicks. These guys count cards, and then we balled in a car. Why didn't you have Maggie in the throw your life away area? That's a good question. You took it out of flex, but that's a really good one. Pick a nitz. Would there have been more interest in Eddie's disappearance or way more interest? I feel like this would have been one of the bigger stories of 20 years. I think that there is something to be said for how local news was back then, so I think it would be a huge deal in New Jersey and maybe get to Philly, but I don't know if it cracks the Big Apple. This speaks to the question of how big of a band they were because that's a part of it. However, they never found a body. Being that they never found a body, it's always funny in 80s movies where they go, something, something happened, a body was never found. People would never fucking let go of it. That's the D.B. Cooper thing. Don't know where he went or what happened to him. We mentioned Barringer's too old for Wordman. We talked about Wordman and Joanne kissing. At the end, this is a super nitpick, but Media Magazine's doing their big feature on Eddie and the Cruisers and Eddie Wilson, how brilliant he was and they're showing video of him at the college concert. How were they filming that in 1963? Full-color video with close-ups is what I had. Probably no full-color video with close-ups and editing at the 1963 spring dance event in college. There were nine cameras. Apparently there, but they're showing the crowd. It's like Sunday night football. Yeah. Pretty tough. Come on, man. You're not stinking that by me after I've seen this movie 78 times. I love it. I agree. Any other nitpicks? Just that the one bit we hear of Season in Hell is pretty vanilla compared to like, they were like, this mind-blowing avant-garde noise. You can't put it out. It's like, this is just a slow, blue song. This is not that complicated. I guess my big nitpick that I've always had is like, is Wordman fucking Mozart? Like, how'd you learn to play piano that fast? Wordman's fucking around. He doesn't know what he's doing. All of a sudden, he's playing piano. He's got solos. No. Wordman knew how to play piano, didn't he? Yeah. He has the piano solo earlier. He has the piano. I'm talking about earlier. Oh. Earlier. Like, if I'm not. Doesn't Eddie. No, no, no, no. Eddie's showing him rock chords. Oh, so he already knew how to play piano. So he's like, I know how to do it. But Eddie's like, no, you have to groove down at this end of the keyboard. Yeah. That's why I love this podcast. Eddie, nitpicks? I've thought that for 30 years. No. No? Craig's ready to go home. It's not the movie for nitpicks. Sure. I don't think any of these people would have hung out. Like, this band makes no sense as humans outside of the band. Oh. I think Sal and Joey Pants would have hung out. Yeah. And that's it. That's it. Yeah. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. So, prestige TV, I think you could do this, and you'd probably make it an 80s band, and you set it in 2000. Or maybe you make it, like. Ooh, yeah. Strokes. Like that era, early 2000s New York, and then it's like today. Coming back today? Yeah. Where it's like the. Somebody has a Strokes, like. Some song has gotten big on TikTok. Yeah. Yeah. Think about what we already did. This is begging, begging to be like a Tupac situation. Begging to be like some big prestige deal where some rapper that we thought was killed in a beef back, but he's alive and the whole nine. This is begging to be remade with that exact spin to it. There is. You would do it with the yeah, yeah, yeahs because you'd change it and make it a female singer. The coolest thing to do would be to basically try to Blair Witch it, where you're like, we've discovered these tapes. Mm-hmm. Oh. And it's like. And now this band. It would be basically like a viral marketing campaign. Blair Witch crossed with Eddie and the Cruisers. Yeah. That's pretty good. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist. Why don't we both do it? So many others. Or Zane Lowe? Eddie, man. Zane, here you are. You've just seen your own face on Media Magazine, the lovely Maggie reporting it out. Season in hell never even came into fruition, never came to harvest, never came to flowering. But you, what's you. What have you been doing, man, since Palace of Depression? Tell me, take me to the palace and let's get out of this depressive zone. I'm so glad Zane finally got to. Talk to a musician instead of a cop. Bring me back to Tony Mark that day. The other option would be Zane interviewing Wendell, but Wendell doesn't say anything back. Wendell, man, you played with Berg, you played with Dexter Gordon, now you're on Chunk. And Wendell's like, no one's ever asked me a direct question. Oh, man. Just what Oscar who gets it? Soundtrack or original song? I go original song, Dark Side. I'll give you. best music original song that year our winner was flash dance what a feeling By the one and only Irene Cara Oh man Banger Fame Irene Cara Tough nude scene For her and fame Saw fame recently Really emotionally scarring As a 10 year old Yeah It's like Now take your shirt off That creepy photographer guy Yeah Do you like fame? Yeah I do Fame like Well at first I watched the TV show first That was the first thing I saw The TV show And then I went back And watched I saw fame in the theater Probably a little too early Probably Age 10 You know fame? Really good idea For a movie I'm actually surprised They haven't Run that back Are you a Flashdance fan? Not totally Yeah Maniac from Flashdance Was also nominated Over You From Tender Mercies And then two Yentl songs I feel like we could've Snuck in Dark Side Dark Side in there And maybe bump The second best Yentl song That would be incredible If it was like Academy Award winning Eddie and the Cruisers Probably an Unanswerable questions What happened to Media Magazine? Maggie moves on To where? I think she Does she get that Like doing like Live at 5 in New York City Replaced as Sue Simmons? Maybe she moves up To People or Newsweek Or Time? Um Did Eddie always And then gets lung cancer? Yeah So my question is Did Eddie always pull out Or did his boys not swim? How did she not get pregnant? Who? His girl Joanne? Yeah Joanne They're on the road All together Music field Lusty love Making sweat Falling in the back of a car Listening to your own songs Or maybe not a lot of sex Cause he was so driven by the art That's why she was Looking at the word man Or like That's why she got with word man But something doesn't Make a lot of sense How there was no like Eddie baby at some point Yeah one of my Possible answerable questions Was just like What did word man think Was gonna happen when he Like When he shows up After his long date With Joanne And he's like Is it time for us to play? Like of course Eddie's gonna fuck with you now Right yeah Yeah Yeah Toby Tyler He got off easy Yeah What did Doc sell the tapes for And what happened next Is the unanswerable The musicals you want Neo Uh It's like I think it's a I think it is Anticlimactic I think people are like This isn't that good I like I'd prefer dark side And it just doesn't go anywhere Does it come out on 8 track? In 83 What were those things Not the Between cassettes and CDs 8 tracks 8 tracks Yeah I think the 8 track is dead By 83 though right? I think it's still around In 83 That was the last year Yeah like Cassettes right? No cassettes I don't think Season of Hell does that well Me neither I think it's a big bust And Doc probably Is arrested for fraud In some way How do they position it? Do they do music videos Where they Get like Cause it's The age of the video Is starting to happen They don't But the cruisers Well they have all that Incredible footage of Eddie And the cruisers Playing Benton College So they can use some of that Secret Handshake Club Memorabilia That you'd want From this movie I like the photo of Joanne with the two guys That's in her place Yeah It'd just be a weird one To just have on the wall Right now People are like What the fuck is that? Eddie and the cruisers 1983 That's the original Staff of Grantland Coach Finstock Mr. Miyagi Were for Best worst life lesson Guys like Guys like me and you They strike oil Under your garden And all you get Is dead tomatoes Oh shit But that was pretty good By Salamato Philosopher That's good If we can't be great Then there's no sense In ever playing music Again Best double feature choice That thing you do Who won the movie? Beaver Brown Band? And they're still Dining on this 40 years later HBO Good call HBO I was entertaining Paray But I think I think you're right I think it's Beaver Brown Band Cause those songs Still get played Those guys still Probably make money off this Craig let's hear it Had a great time Loved it Super likable Did you watch it with Liz Or Sola? I tried to get her I badgered her To watch the movie with me And she wasn't interested Unfortunately Just not She doesn't care as much About the ringer I was like 15 minutes in I was like This would be fun We can just throw this on And you can like Half watch it She didn't want to do it But And I think she would've liked it You should've told her There was like Some sort of ad potential Out of it She would've done it At that point There's a great sponsorship She'd be like Bill's actually in this movie I was almost certain You'd hate it No No I knew I knew he was gonna like it We don't First of all 95 minutes You're 80% of the way there With Craig Yeah like Music provides such a high floor Like it's You're just gonna win 48 games with A couple good songs in it Yeah And I don't know There's a level of like How much you take the movie seriously And then that allows you To be comfortable and enjoy it Yes Which is why I think like I went into LA Confidential And I don't think I loved it As much as everybody else did But the expectation Versus reality Were you saying that? I didn't I liked LA Confidential I didn't love it I don't know You need to watch it a couple times I don't know I don't know why LA Confidential? First watch There's a lot going on You know what? I thought it was a little cheesy Can I be honest with you? I get it It would be hard for me To understand that Because the movie Was legitimately The biggest fucking thing In the world Everybody was talking about it And you saw it eight times And I saw it eight times I saw it in the theater And you didn't go into it Being like This is Chinatown That was That was a Boomer response I could see that I could see now It being a little tough for people Also with this movie I love I do I've always been interested In like the second album theory Of a band You know I always find that to be interesting There's a little bit of like Pet sounds to this Brian Wilson Eddie Wilson Sure With the Beach Boys And like the controversial Pet sounds album Nobody liked it And then you know Down the road It is a masterpiece This movie People liked Pet sounds It was like Wild Honey or whatever The next one No I thought Pet sounds Was considered Very abstract Oh no it has a good I mean it's abstract But it was like It blew up Oh I thought it came out The gate and was And was not reviewed well Oh okay Maybe you would know better I mean Pemberton is like that From Weezer Like albums that come out And people go What the fuck are you doing And they But is this And maybe one close to me Was like this is amazing What the fuck is Pemberton Is this kind of movie The 80s equivalent Of like A current Netflix movie Like Gaslit by my husband Which I have great disdain for A movie like that Nowadays But I'm like Is that just what this was In the 80s I don't know You know Bill was like What's the double feature In a weird way I feel like the double feature For this movie Should be Legend of Billie Jean Because Yeah That's great It's kind of like The same kind of like Regional Local Sensation Huge story in my town But Wouldn't have Wouldn't have made it out To like LA Where people were like That's a good point And I think I think It's hard to almost Replicate that now Because of social media It's just weird That like this movie Has looked Like you guys are looking Back on it With like charm And nostalgia But I feel like A lot of the current Like Netflix movie slop Or the streaming movie slop Is not looked at that way Nobody Like honors those films Anyway And they will disappear Even if people watch them But these movies We look back on And we're like Oh Eddie and the Cruisers Like such a fun Easy watch But no one's gonna do that To Gaslit by my husband Yeah but we don't know What would happen With some of those movies If there were only Seven movies on Netflix And they played them For a year I would say Give Gaslit by my husband In a couple years To me The difference in that Is that like Those movies You First of all You have to be active In watching those films You have to go Search for the movie And then put it on That right there Means that there had to be A reason for you to do that People weren't doing that To this movie It was on HBO Didn't it just come on Yeah but like We didn't have as much Else stuff Other stuff to do Like people barely had Atari 2600s back then Yeah With Gaslit by my husband Or any of these other movies There's like This cultural conversation That gets you to go Watch the movie Because you heard With Eddie and the Cruisers There's none of that Like I never had One conversation This is the first conversation I've ever had with friends About Eddie and the Cruisers Ever My only My only was only my mom Because my mom loved this movie My dad would watch it My dad would be like You're watching them Saying people again Why are people always on TV But like It's like This movie was just On all the time And you just had A situation with it It was almost like You know what I compare it to You know what I mean If you listen to an album a lot And you listen to it Like 20 times And then like The 8th best song in the album You're like This song's fucking awesome Yeah I really like this I love when that happens When there's that song Where you're like I don't know about this one Does that happen anymore Because these songs Are just all released Almost like You can cherry pick them On Spotify now I think it still happens I don't know that it does I don't think it happens Because I don't think The albums last long enough For them to like For that to happen Like I think That The artists are dropping music So much Like you're getting So much more stuff There's so much I don't think that that happens I think it happens here and there Like the Geese record's A good example of like There was My original run through it I was like I love these five songs Then there was like Two more Three more That came Became really favorites of mine It's also crazy How much Hollywood Screwed up Like I can't believe That John Cafferty And the Beaver Like the fact that They didn't turn into anything Is insane to me It might have been Because of the band name I think it was And it might have been Because people were like You're Eddie and the Cruisers I mean there's like A little bit of like A poison chalice to that That song you said Was number three In the Billboard charts that year Seven Seven I mean like Like a legitimate hit In a monocultural time We're in a different Completely different world now But like nobody even knows Who the singers are Of the K-pop Demon Hunter songs And yet that's like The biggest band in the world Literally no one knows Who sings it And yet They knew this band And these people And they couldn't get them relevance And they couldn't get them Another album That's crazy to me when Jacko and House were here like a year ago, you told me this was on TCM. And I recorded it. I was like, let's tape it, yeah. And we watched it in the morning and we were all like completely into it. I don't know. I just think that. I don't think there's a lot of these movies, which is one of the reasons why it's endured a little bit. There's just not enough music movies. If there are, like, or if they're in the works, I think all of it is based on whether the song. And whether you like the band, right. Well, think about like Rock of Ages with Cruz was a bomb. Yeah. It's so stupid, though. Like, you know what I mean? Like, that movie almost doesn't take itself seriously. This movie takes itself incredibly seriously. Yeah. Like, you get the. There's a sincerity about this. Maybe it's obviously not perfect, but there's a sincerity, like, about the movie. Would you watch a movie about. Done love story, JFK Jr. style, about Lenny Kravitz falling in love with Lisa Bonet? We'd love it. We get all the Lenny's music. The entire thing. We'd love it. I'm obsessed. That'd be. It's a good idea, right? Zoe Kravitz plays Lisa Bonet? Oh, shit. You like that type of shit. I'm into that. I'm into Lisa Bonet. I'm into Zoe Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, sure. Everyone loves Lenny Kravitz. I don't even mind that I don't like the NBA, NBC song. You don't mind that you don't like it? I just. I'm never gonna. I'm never gonna be mad at Lenny Kravitz for anything. All right. CR month. This was. It's no longer CR month. That's okay, man. The little chocolate right after. Yeah. Those little gum things. What's the one that's. It's got the. There's, like, different ones that they'll bring out. Well, they've got the mints. You know, chocolate-covered mints is usually. That's. I feel like that's lazy when the restaurants do that. Okay. I like when I felt like the dessert chef made me something. I like when they. I feel like they prepared something for me. It's true. That's it. I don't know what's coming next week. This was fun. Good to see you, man. Of course. Good to see you. See you guys in San Francisco if you're. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. San Francisco. Two days from now. If this will come out on a Monday, we're there Wednesday. Yeah. I'll do the. A little intro for that. But, yeah. We're going to be doing Basic Instinct. Oh. The three of us with Mallory at the Tony Rempe Theater. Yeah. I think that's what it's about. Doesn't that guy play for the Rangers? That's Mike Rempe. Tony Rempe. He hit, like, 280 last year. Yeah. We will be there in San Francisco. Thanks to Gahal. Thanks to Eduardo as well. And we'll see you next week in the rewatchables. We'll be right back. Kroger. Fresh for everyone. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh, my gosh. They're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. 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