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

Blowing out budget on metrics that look great till the CFO sees them. That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in... Dashboard Confessions! I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bull spend. LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend 200 pounds on your first campaign and get a 200 pound credit. Go to linkedin.com slash lead. Terms and conditions apply. The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find Ringer Tailgate with Van Lathen. Absolutely. And higher learning. And high learning. And midnight boys, baby. 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 raising the roof. Joel invented raising the roof. Didn't Arsenio Hall raise the roof? No, it was Joel. 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 just came coming off CR month. America was captivated. Where do I go from here? America was sad. 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 I was like, am I the little chocolate? I'm like, what's happening? No, no. Okay, gotcha. He kind of gestured. He gestured towards me. We brought the little chocolate. I'm like, wow. 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. House. Uh-huh. The house. A movie we've circled for five years. And this is a victory lap for us because this is only a couple of 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 Cruisers is next. Yeah. All right. Eddie and the Cruisers best musicals ever. Grease, Eddie and the Cruisers. 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. There's a lot of really big musicals. Corborating. Eddie and the Cruisers. Okay. Drop off. Chicago. I don't want some Oscars. Right. I know my story with this being what I was surprised you like 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 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 it was probably not even a computer program with some guy named Jim. There would be a charge of programming what was on HBO. Some dude, right? And they put this movie on until I had watched like Major League. You know, that's the guy from time till I had watched stuff with Ellen Barton. I was going, you know what? Fuck it. I'm a 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 in a tater 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. OK. 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. 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. Yeah. And that on that little stand over there, they didn't really have a ton of movies because 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. We ride in 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 watch the half hour. The middle of this movie, there's what 15 minutes in the middle when he goes to the lounge to see Sal Maile. Yeah. That is just like one of my favorite 15 minute stretches in a movie. And 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 because Eddie Murphy, Delirious and George Carlin and some of those guys. When is comic relief around now? Not yet. That's 86. Not necessarily the news that started, which was like their answer to SNL. The hitchhiker, 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 have his little continuous adventure, little fortune cookie thing. C.R. thought C.R. month would give him immortality. What he didn't realize is it would kill him. And then he would just walk away with this on that first and 10 with O.J. They would have some concerts. First Diana Ross had a pretty famous concert around 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 Eddie and the Cruisers once got in 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, and 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, Esk figure. So you think John Cafferty should have done that? Try to figure out death for like 10 years. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting movie. Come back. 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. There was a week where it was number one. The fix was number two. Bruce Springsteen, Lindsey Buckingham, David Bowie and you two were the top six. Yeah. That was the level it was at. It was it was on all the time. Consider that though. Consider how much I mean, obviously the song starts to get radio playing 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 this is a year after the film has already it's like that almost will be impossible for it to happen. Also a crazy music year. It's not like 1980. Not cracking 1984 was like a real huge. That was like so many major stars at that point. The I was reading the Washington Post did an article about this movie's staying power. And they talked to the writer Sherman Alexi, who's this great novelist, 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 dinner yet because this might happen in this movie. And that's kind of like what happens in any of the cruisers of like you're passing by and you're like, oh, wait, is are they about to go to the writing of Dark Side? OK, I'm going to stick around for watch them write Dark Side. You should see what is the pod about now? Well, 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 bombed and was nothing and turn it into a iconic rewatchable movie for everybody who grew up in the 80s and 90s. That's like up there with the Eddie Murphy delirious concert that really like pushed him to another level, comic relief. Them having like real boxing. Like I think I watch I want to say I watch Cooney Holmes or one of those in 80s. Maybe his prior Guelph just fights that they would have just you would have to go close circuit and instead they were on HBO and and some of the comedy specials they had, but it just all of a sudden felt like it's like, holy shit, their mainstream and 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 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. That we'd have 40 years later. Michael Paray 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 Michael Paray voice? I didn't do my Michael Paray 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 know. I didn't like the sequel. I had seen it before the sequel. Just like it wasn't even on as much. They didn't put it on on on cable. It was bad. He had a must Eddie has a must-ass in it. Yeah. 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 drama, I was kind of thrown off my tilt there a little bit. Are you in 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. There's eight, nine musical moves. The musical performances are legion and they're like, we're doing the whole song. Yes. I mean, the movie opens was pretty much that full song. Yeah. The movie. Oh, good. 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 Paray. Okay. This was, this was literally the apex mountain for him. And he had a couple of other bats, but he, 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, is Rami Malek as, as Freddie Mercury and Boogie Me and Rhapsody, which won him the Oscar. I thought, I think Shalame is pretty good as Dylan doing like when they were like, I thought he was actually singing. He wasn't singing though, wouldn't he? Yeah, I just mean like the way he moves around with a guitar and like, like. But I'm saying Michael Paray never sings in this. Right. Like Shalame sang, Dal 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. He also, 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 anything we thought there was, right? And even in death. And for your first role, this is his first big deal, right? Yeah, yeah. For your first role for him. 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's. 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 Berenger like learned a bunch about like playing keyboards, but they are cutting around Berenger. They never show Berenger's hands really. Yeah. They are they got Eddie like in full wide shots, like walking around with the guitar, his guitar moves. Going into the crowd at one point. Kind of mimic like they're pretty close. Like I don't know whether he learned to play guitar for this, but 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, like they're making these, they're selling out this club every night. Everyone in the band is delighted 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 say 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. Yeah. 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 is like, did he get killed? Like was Eddie murdered? Interesting. I have thoughts on that at the end, by the way. But it seems as if the from what I researched, the novel is like incredibly important, like people were saying is one of the best rock and roll novels. Yeah. So there was some. P.F. Kluge. Yeah. Kugel. Yeah. Kugel for something like that. I give Michael Paray two possible words that we have in flex categories we never use. The Sasha Jenkins Award for actor you can't believe didn't become a star. Yeah. And the Ted Levine Award for performance so good and distinct it might have inadvertently ruined his career. Ted Levine also on something very bad is going to happen. By the way. Oh, really? Yeah. Were you surprised when you watched this that this was his peak, Michael Paray? 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 suspense or 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. I mean, he's he's limited in that. But director is great. Director gave him hell too. So it sounds like it was like a tough shoot in that regard. Because like in Greece, Tremolta is just really good. Like you watch that and you're like, yeah, the guys get at this. Yeah. And that's how I feel about Paray, except he's somehow not singing. And then you have Beringer, you mentioned Wordman, who did this in Big Show in the same year. The Wordman. Big Show, massive movie, like kind of generational adult movie. Sure. He's with all these actors. This is with 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 Beringer and 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. OK. Because 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, Major League all in like two years. Like he had like, I don't know, seven year run of like he was leading movie. It's not unlike if you take the group of guys who was in Big Chill, you know, he and William Hurt had really good 80s and then started to fade. And get passed by the cost. There's like Goldblum and Klein pushed through the 90s. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. I'm saying that, like, I mean, when you think about it, the nomination for Platoon is like a 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 because he gets to a point then he went by time you get to the sniper era, 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 let a mildly hard life. Yeah. I mean, he's still. He looks pretty rough and sliver. And that's 1993. And it looks like he's 20 years older than this. Inception, which is an inception. I haven't seen him much recently. There's an amazing what if with him. Do you know what TV show he turned down? No. Sonny Crockett. No, shit. I just turned it down. That straight up doesn't work. In no way shape before. He doesn't work if he's Sonny Crockett. I think he has too much baggage at that point because he's been in movies. And we know he is. Don Johnson had no, nobody knew who he was. Right. Don Johnson. I think Bairinger could have done it though. Ah, man, Don Johnson is he's beautiful. He's a little slimy. He's a little mysterious. Like it's a completely different show. Tom Bairinger. Don Johnson is funny. No, you're not. You know, I love Don Johnson, of course. But I think Bairinger, it would have been okay. Yeah. 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's good in this role. He's good at playing a cop. Catoons, probably the biggest swing he took. But major league, he's just kind of like the good guy. Like that guy's a solid guy. I trust this guy. He's like 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 Elin Barkin. She's ready to fucking hop on him in every scene. They're like four, seven and the death. Yeah. I mean, she's just sitting on his desk like every like every scene. She's bringing it. She's not in the movie. For some reason, I remembered her being in a movie more than she was. I know. It's like she's in three scenes that seem to have been shot like in a completely different set. Yeah. You know, it's wild to go back to movies like this and watch it when like everybody in the film is probably like it's like Matthew Lawrence is in this movie. He's like got more screen time than Ellen Barkin, right? Yeah. To go back and be like, can you tell the Joey Pants, Ellen Barkin and Tom Bairinger are the ones that are really going to pop out of this cast? Right. So he 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 does isn't a barringer's always banging a canter. The only place barringer doesn't smoke is school. Is is 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 they're sucking them down. It makes sense to suck them down. Wow. It it it it it it it it it it it it it makes sense to rock stars. Yeah, life they live making them seem cool. She's pretty cool. She's a cool character. Is she not in the movie that much? Yeah, smoking at that time that was seen as a little bit sexier. So can't do a little. Do you like this movie? Ironically at all. Or you like sincerely, Eddie and the Cruisers is like just a great film. I'm 100 percent sincere with it. Yeah. Well, it taps into something else that I really like. The well, I love I love bands kind of on the rise and bands coming up with songs on the fly in scenes that make sure 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 Count and Crow's documentary when it seemed like he did the first album. And then there it's like kind of goes off the deep end and it doesn't seem like they're going to record again. And the guys in the band are like, I just was almost touching the sun. 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 and lounge with Eddie ripoff and Joey pants is drinking 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 dealer. And it just doesn't kind of work out for anyone. I think that happens a lot. Joanne's doing choreography happens. Oh, 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 scene where there's a fight between Eddie and Joey passes characters and it just like does not look real at all. It doesn't look like there's any real rage happening. It's a 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 really get 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. Like we 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 we're headed at a time. The hardest thing to do about 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 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 know, 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 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 a 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 bed. 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. Almost 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 to 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 the Bomba in the 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 is the guy who's like, I, 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 now. I'm a DJ in New Jersey. And now I'm like sitting in a overhead lighting in an overnight shift at a radio station. So much so to where he pulls some Scooby Doo shit. Right. Like the desperation. We can get into that. Yeah. Trying to like take on Eddie's persona and 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 where a man comes in. He has all of these ideas. Maybe we can be technical consultants. The first time I ever heard of a technical consultant on a movie. Yeah. Maybe we can be in the movie. It and do you know how desperate he is from that time on? So I think my favorite Joey Pants and 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't barely sing. And he's sitting there. Like side coming. He's just a sound. He's there laughing. Yeah. And he's like, this guy can't sing. Yeah. He can't write. He can. And he just like of distraits him, but it's just classic Joey Pants. And you can see all the seeds for who's this pronto's character? Ralphie. Yeah. Ralphie, Cypher. It's like all of the characters that like made him famous. There's a little bit of them. Mars Goan Bale Bonds is right there. Yeah. Did you tell a fucking joke? Everybody tell me to go fuck myself. The Beaver Brown Band we mentioned. They were found by Lou Eisen, the or Kenny Payne, the technical consultant for the film who was Lou Eisen, the executive who's like, bunch of jerks off ten thousand dollars, 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 does 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. Like Ray Charles and the Charelles 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 like this guy is basically Dylan going electric, but without Dylan having ever happened. Like 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 like this feeling back. And then it's just 10 years later in 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 Future. Man, fair points. One of my favorite white supremacist scenes of all time. Yes. Marty and Vince Rock and Roll. I love that. Is this done to make Eddie seem like he's a once in a generation rock visionary? Book is set in like the doo-wop era. See what you mean. And they made it more like we want this to sound like J. Giles band, John Mellencamp. Because they go from run around suit. They go from covering run around suit straight to dark side. And it's like and then season and hell and then season and hell by the time season and hell comes out, they're like in excess. So it was like when season and 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 you want to ruin? 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 they chose not to make. I don't know why I think they could have made it. Definitely could have made it three, four years later and probably not lost anything. I think they really wanted the innocence of the early sixties. Yeah. Well, in that scene at the college, they literally pull up and sleepwalk is playing, right? Yeah, which is the scene, the song, the instrumental that you play to say, hey, we're in the sixties and the fifties. It was a different time. Yeah, stand by me. 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. Yeah, they were playing that disruptive way ahead of their time. See, 63, like what would they have been playing? It's just these guys are doing left at the Rolling Stones. Exactly. I wouldn't know because they didn't exist in this universe. You know what I mean? Like any apparently they don't go on and Sullivan. Beatles are not on it. 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. Yeah. No lines. Tough. Well, he does. He makes an impact. He makes an impact. I got things to say. Zero lines. They re-release the soundtrack in the fall of 84 a year after the movie came out and it goes Cudruple 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 was about to come. And not realizing that the rewatchables would force streamers to put it on. I didn't shout factory. The real reason we're doing this is because we need Kiss the Death back. And if we haven't any of the we brought any of the cruisers back to life, much like Eddie Wilson at the end of this movie. And now Kiss the Death has to be next. Craig, 95 minutes plus five on the Horrible X scale. 500 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. Though that being said, for my and probably I answer for questions. I have some questions about what you would like to see more of. Yeah. So one of the reasons it hit on HBO was it was 95 minutes. They could put it on an eight and it would be done at 935 and they could go right into a comedy special. Five million dollar budget made four point seven 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 one. I was 15 years old, but him coming back with the beard and being like, oh, my God, he's fucking alive. Yeah. 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. And I don't know. I'm still into it. But to Roger's point, it doesn't really mean anything. It by the time we find out that he's alive, the last second. Yeah. By the time we find out that he that he's alive, what? Well, he wanted respect, right? He did want to hear this. Right. Now he's watching through a window. He's watching a season of hell and all 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 or like, is Eddie breaking into people's houses and looking for the season and hell tapes? Yeah, I don'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. So that's the stuff. Yeah. I think it's tough. I didn't have a problem with. I thought, yeah, I considered me. 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 Salamotto who wanted to be the leader and that's why he killed Eddie or it was Eddie coming back or something like that. But Salamotto cut his brakes. Is that your take? Yeah. Because I thought he was like, you're screwing us up. I can lead us to the promised land by doing run around Sue for 20 years. But I didn't have a problem with the ending. To me, like 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 over is with the rekindled romance between word man and Eddie's girl. Classic dirty macgin, hating, cooking, happening in his movie behind Eddie's fucking back where it man. Are you crazy stuff? Some guy could be broken. He's lucky. He just called him Toby Tyler and made him work for it. But like the movie to me, it was always there's no real story. Like I enjoy this movie. This is like legitimately this made me homesick for Louisiana. Like I watched the movie and it felt like it. I'm back in general Jackson, Baton Rouge, Gardier, it's nice pizza, Eddie and cruises and so on. But like it's not actually like 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 and they're really that. Yeah. Like they just fucking go, OK, like really, if the movie was driven by her trying to get this story, you talk about Ellen Barker, Ellen Barker, the payoff would almost make more framing devices because it's got they've got to get Ellen Barker and to Tom Bairinger. But when they get to Tom Bairinger, it becomes him going around meeting people from his past and having these reveries remembering his days with Eddie and cruises. I don't think we were putting a ton of thought into stuff in the eighties. But we were having fun though. We were having a great time. Yeah. We were fucking having fun. We didn't care because it was like. If season and hell somehow came out two years before Highway 61 revisited, who cares? But wasn't it better? But wasn't it better? Wasn't it better sitting down and like finding reasons to like what the fuck you were why? Yeah, it was better like to say, hey, this has great music. This is a cool story. You have an interesting lead. I guess Tom Bairinger is the lead. You have an interesting character here. Just sit down for 90 minutes and have a good time. Rather than get off and like pull everything apart and overanalyze it. Also, yeah. You just had more fun with movies. Well, it's what you get out of it being 95 minutes. It would be 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. All right. Most of you watch will seem opening credits. Sounds done, CR. Yeah. Cold open. Dark sides coming down. Nothing is real. And this is to me to everybody doing dark side at the college. Yeah. Yeah. And then it cuts to Ellen Barkin on her like 17th sake of the day. It's like 1230 in the afternoon. Yeah. Given dog walking every guy in the room. Full of guys. She's just dropping lady all over them. They're all in love with her. And she does. You ever hear of a poet named Arthur Rambo? Committed suicide. Nine of the flesh. Put up the mind and soul. Pretty good hook. Yeah. Good song. Everybody's off. Everybody's skeptical. You're fucking crazy. Eddie fucking died. Who cares, man? Who cares? What's the hook? What are you doing? Like what's the deal? What's the... And she's like... And that's why you think that the story is going to be through her perspective. But it's seen sets up the entire film. We got Wordman's flashback to meeting the cruisers at the Tony Mart. Wordman. Frank Ridgway. Jersey Shore, 62. You needed to say Zor. Yeah. Timely pause. Barkin goes to see Frank at school. Sits on his desk. The night Eddie died, the cruisers died with him. Right. He was my friend. You, I just met. Fake cruisers band at the Sal Lounge, leading into the memory of being on the roof, creating on the dark side, which might have been the best seven minutes of the 80s. I don't know. It's a whole fucking big thing. Hagler-Herns and this, I think. Better than Danger Zone. Better than... It's a Hagler-Herns and maybe this. Get away from her, you bitch. I love Fake Eddie. Fake Eddie comes out with this eight, nineteen, eighty-three lounge band and has the leather jacket and kills it. We get the whole word of music thing. Get the performance with the 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 going to marry what we do at Bar Rock with high literary concepts and all of that. But then he does it again. Listen, like 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 Paré said, the scene on the roof, which is awesome. He said, I've been told that that scene at the 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 hit song comes together in a movie in two minutes. I fucking love it. Like, hey, come in. Paré is like, what do you want? Vacation? Chopin literally comes in on time. No, perfect. And he's like, boom, boom, boom. The sax guy comes in. He's got a solo already playing 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 add 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 that. It was. It was. It was like... It just took 15 minutes. Yeah. And there would be like lots of dudes being like, did you watch the Johnny Carson show last night? That was really good. Because you think about Get Back and you think that when you think about some of the songs that the Beatles made, you think that these songs were handed down from the gods and given to Lenin and McCartney. And you just see him going, what sounds best? Two-song? Is it fucking two-song or things? When 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 dark side comes out fully formed. Right. I thought Barencher does a good job, even though you never see his hands of like, he's got like this head knob and a parade in that scene where he's like, he's just so happy it's happening. And you can feel like the Eddie Charisma. Yeah, it's a good scene. That leads to Sal's last song with the fake Eddie being right into Wild Summer Nights. We go back to 63. We go Wild Summer Nights right in Tender Years. Really good parade performance again, but ending with the Barencher piano, the sax guy coming over. Yeah, that's fucking awesome. 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. I don't know if you notice this though, but it comes back to Sal after Tender Years and they're wrapping up and they play some oldie book Eddie song and all the people in the audience are holding cigarette lighters. Lighters up. And he finishes it and it cuts to the crowd and there's this lady in the front row is like this. Going to be a really funny social clip. This extra is just going for it. She's making like five bucks for three hours, just like throwing herself into it. Sal and word man eating pizza enjoy. So let me test drive this one for you because Sal's really going for it. He's got the sweaty lip, see pizza, he's about to start crying. I think he might be a Peter North award for most effort loaded into one movie. Matthew Orrins. Yeah, it's like he's got this nothing base 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 a song and he's sitting down there and he's telling them, remember when you used to driving around and things are getting wild in the backseat and you're touching on her and all of this. And everybody's starting to feel, remember that first time? Yeah. This is my flex. What is it? Sal Amato, I used the bam out of bio. Where the fuck did that come from? It's from Mel from 902. What else? Dude, Sal Amato in the nightclub. Like he could have been at the Copa Cabana. He was smoothest. He always had that. He was just like, I can't be Eddie, but I'm really close. He's fucking nice on stage that night. He's pretty good. He was the gay guy in San Helmos Fire. He lived across the hall from Demi Moore. And then Pete the Nanna, Tom Noe 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 all because of Sal Amato. Sal Amato serving underage kids, Champagne. I thought he was greatness. The Toby Tyler move we mentioned into Frank and Maggie. Which I think every scene with Bairinger and Barkin is just really good. Yeah. And I had this coming later, but Barkin hates this movie. Yes. Hates it. She fucking shit all over it. She was like, 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 hints to being actually mistreated on the movie in a way if you watch how 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 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's like the $10,000. He gave him 10 grand. And they came back with some experimental bullshit when he's trying to get the kids into fucking sock hop to dance. Really funny. And 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, South. South. That's what I think before every tailgate. It does haunt Eddie through the sequel Eddie Lips. You know, he's like, I just don't want to get up on stage unless it's going to really mean something. You know? And then the ending. That's it for rewatchable. What do you got? I'm going to go writing Dark Side. Yeah. I think that's me too. That's what it is. No, did you enjoy Eddie in the flashback in the fucking junkyard castle? Palace of Depression. The Palace of Depression. Which apparently actually actually did. It just did, yeah. I love that thing because that's 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 us. He's comparing himself to the Ansel. Yep. I think it's cool because for the most part, it's all of Beringer'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 is like, this wouldn't have even existed. Two years first deal and you've done motherfuckers. What's the most 1983 thing about this movie? No caller ID. 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 think they had Star 69 yet. Watching a row of TVs through a department store window. Definitely. It's 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. Now it would have been the end of it in the distance. It's all fucked. You're making sense. What are you talking about? Eddie the homeless guy? Eddie the homeless guy. Yeah. Yeah. I have a couple of your for the 83. One is, Dark Side just sounds like Brian Adams or Southside Johnny or John Millicamp. So very classic early-mid-80s rock sound. And then Ellen Barkin working for Media Magazine, which is in fact a television news program, was 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 Entertainment Magazine or Entertainment Week or something like that, but it was two hosts. Yeah. And then they would be like. Hard-hidden stories. Bruce Willis and Sybil Shepard, they're back on screen for Moonstruck. Yeah. And 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. But then it would be like a hard-hitting piece about some school that lost its 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. The barrengers exactly the same age. They don't give a fuck. They would take you, mess your hair up a little bit, put you in an open shirt, you're 14 years old. Like 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 another problem with the space time continuum. Right. Joey Pants, he looks the same. Then they give him a little baldy. He's 20 years older the whole night. Just in the 80s, he didn't care. You're younger, it doesn't matter. Joanne barely looks different. She looks almost exactly the same. They just change 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, the shave six more years out of it or something. Yeah. I think it's closer to the book. Yeah. Barenger basically looks exactly the same. There's no difference at all. For the Floyd Gondale, Butter in My Ass, and Lollipops in my mouth for something I just enjoy, I said it right, but watching in a movie or a TV show, a band create a song from scratch gets me every time. I have one though, Quiet Part of a Rocks On, makes way for the loud part of a rocks on via isolated guitar riff and hand claps. This is good stuff when it's just like, here we go. Dark sides about to kick in. Sleepwalk being a fucking soundtrack for the 50s and 60s that always gets to me. But also, I like Frank's Dirty Mac in Man. Frank Dunley, Word Man don't even give a fuck. She walks into the bar. He sees her. He's like, oh, shit, what's up, what's going on right now? And then Eddie comes in, and he kind of taps it down. But as soon as Eddie is gone, he's trying to get that ass done. Are you back on his shit? Ben College, some bad things happen. 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 them. Chris Ronald did a song about it. Woman in Paramount, 1963, had her time. She can sleep with whoever she wants, Bill. She wasn't being shabby. He has an old her. Wood stage the best. Mentioned a cup of 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? He had 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, but I'll tell you what. heroin very powerful. You know, just a hell of a drug. But you know his whole fucking life story by watching him play with Eddie and the Cruisers. You know exactly. He's playing for a long time in a jazz band. Eddie heard him someplace, brings him into the Cruisers and changes his fucking life. Him and Eddie have a whole song. He even taught Eddie some music. He was Eddie's musical Obi-Wan. That's right. This was the Springsteen issue for this movie when they thought it was a Springsteen ripoff because the Clarence comments was probably the biggest most famous. What's up, big man? Yeah. How a famed smoke we mentioned. I like Jersey Shore in the 60s. I have Jersey Shore. I also like Jersey Shore in the 70s, the 80s of 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 ever get out of me, word man. They little look bonding on the beach. And then Barencher just is completely committed to this all the time. I like at the end, the end's ridiculous when Joey Pants is like, I'm going to get the tapes. We're going to get it. I'm going to make the best deal we can. He drives away and Barencher comes flying in and he's like, go get him, Doug! I can't hear you! He 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 it with D.B. Cooper a big thing? D.B. Cooper. We did it again in the 90s. Tupac lives in Jamaica. Tupac's the best one. Yeah, like all of this 30%, 30% he might be. Andy Kaufman, people thought. Andy Kaufman, like the conspiracy theory that the movie is wrapped around that's really age good. I want to hear your Tupac theory though. What happened to Poc? Poc's alive. Like where is he? Just saying I 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 him. It's a Bill Simmons exclusive. He can confirm the two parties. If you put drinks with me in like 1998, I would have gotten nuts for it. We all thought it. Like everybody was in. And it was so funny. He was still releasing music. Bruh, 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 was doing the same thing. I was like, but this is different. Yeah. 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 this 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. Right. Great shot, Gordo word. 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 a bar. The college concert's great. The college concert's great. Yeah. Big Coonerberger wore a best used 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. 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 beers, the fucking PBR. And Schlitz, the drinking Schlitz too. Chess Rockwell, best character name. Frank Ridgway is pretty good. The word man, Frank Ridgway. I had Salamado, but yeah. Salamado's good too. Denethe's Benjana word scene still in location. It's got to be the junkyard. Yeah, that was 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 with Joey Pansy. 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. Would 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. To barely play this synth. Yeah, exactly. Had to be taught just how to do this. He's like, no, play these cool chords. He's like, dee dee dee dee dee dee. Word man kind of a bitch. What's him saying? No, you know, I thought this. We talked about it. I've had it a great time. Like word man kind of a bitch. Word man fucked up everybody's like, stole somebody's girl. Class traitor. Well, yeah, exactly. He's basically like a little arts. Word man in a straight up hoe. Yeah. Like he gets to the college. He is like really slumming. What did they say to the party? You're dropping your ass hanging out. Like that's what word man is doing. Word man sucks. Eddie says to me, he's like, I didn't say better. I said different. Yeah, you'd like this movie. Of course I do. 90, 10. Yeah. I didn't like the 70, 30. Butch's girlfriend award week 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 so I had to struggle. Like going, he was like, all that stuff. He just comes to the movie. He's just like, go get him, Doc. What's age the worst is Tom Bairinger's acting when he sees that his apartment's been trashed for as long as he's working at a school teacher in a trailer park in Vineland, New Jersey. But he walks in and it's completely destroyed. He's like, OK, start smoking a cigarette and answering his phone. Answer his phone. What's age the worst? The sequel. Oh, tough. Why did they do this? 89 for some reason gave us, 88 and 89 give us Cadyshack 2. Another 48 hours. Another 48 hours, which we've begrudgingly decided we liked. There's just a bunch of bad ones where they were just trying to capitalize, I think on the rewatchability of these movies on cable. I've been 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. Yeah. We did. We did. Did you get the COVID vaccine again? No, I just got it. Boy, Bill's going for it. I can't wait till what happens in a couple of months. 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 a little bit? It's going further. It's watching. Oh, you think he's getting red pills? Oh, no, Bill. I don't remember anything that happened in 2020 or 2021. But you're saying that because apparently the bucks playing the signs for the finals. He's just saying that for years. I'm telling you, it's getting. Look, so what's age the worst is that, OK, so there's, how many black guys are in the group? One. It's one. He died of it. Oh, my God. It could have been one thing if everybody in the cruisers had a drug problem if they were sharing needles in the whole deal. Like it was the 80s. They missed the opportunity. One of the guys could have become HIV positive. I shared a needle with two black guys. Two black guys. The other guy. The other guy. The other guy. The poor guy gets replaced. And it's just like, I just want to say that the greatest saxophone player who ever lived died. This motherfucker holding the saxophone like God damn, we're trying to keep up with this and that that's what's age. Let me ask you a question. It's probably unanswerable. End of the day, Wendell goes home. You think he's like, man, I'm in this great band. It's like 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. Or is he like, well, how did this happen to me? Yeah. I think he loves Eddie. I knew fucking Miles Davis. 12 second solo over a terrible blues rock band. So do you think Frank never would it's realistic that Frank never would have known that he overdosed in heroin at the Abtide Motel? I mean, it's crazy. Like, like, I guess that's because Kenny the blackjack Taylor is like, where were you man? When are you going to wake up? He goes into a Mahada steak later. OK. Yeah. Uh, 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 spring steam shadow we mentioned mentioned Elin Barkham hated this movie. I have one more big one. Does anyone have anything else? They hinge the entire insult of Eddie's insult of word man 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 hitting in 2026. People are like, oh, yeah, 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 Salamado band. Oh, it's fucking crazy. It's Eddie and the Cruisers. And you're like, neither Eddie nor Barringer nor Barkin or the poster. It's Salamado and his holiday in band. That ties into what by what stage the worst was. And then 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. So this movie's ending, right? Surprise ending with Eddie in the window and he's got the beard 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 moat, 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 build your fake streaming hours to me when all I did was leave my TV on and you pretended I watched something else. Fuck you. It's some of your best work, Bill. This is what this is the fucking shit, bro. This is the shit. Yeah. I fucking bullshit fucking can't stand it. Can I finish God forbid I 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, I'm like, I'm like, let's cross the board. Like let me watch the fucking movie before you give me five different things to watch 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 say 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 don't even want you to think. They want to send the next thing. They want you on the next thing to keep you on the thing. It's really 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. Who's the AD? Sorry, I care about these things. Stop telling us you actually care about the movie industry and you won't let us see crows closing credits for. It was the key grip. Really annoying. All right, we'll take a break and then come back with Vans Flex. From working title, producers of Bridget Jones and Love Actually. I'm looking for this girl called Emily. Oh, help me find her. Comes the truly feel good British romcom that's being called a five star instant classic. Tell me you didn't have the school email. What message every Emily. Hailed as hilarious and original. Hey, Emily. It's Notting Hill for a new generation. I don't think I was wrong. Number just didn't write number you to check. Finding Emily only in cinemas May 22nd. Book tickets now. Ruffalo, Hannah, Ruben and Partridge overacting word Kenny the drummer. He's what are you going to wake up? I had Joey pants. I'm getting some mad at word man for he really goes for it. Yeah, yeah, he's like, this is my one scene. I'm gonna get really mad at. We joy. You guys are going to like it. I have Eddie whenever they're not on stage. Oh, whenever they're not on stage. Just going for it. Eddie is just fucking going for it. He puts his whole body into when he shoved what you call it. Like, whenever they're not on stage, Eddie is dialing it up in the middle of it. My favorite part of that Kenny scene is when he's like, you remember those days in the backseat of a car balling some. Some. And then your song comes on. I should put ball in him. What stage is the best ball and she's last time balling was said. It was funny. And then they cut to the audience and all the guys in the audience are 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 it's a list. Top five fictitious bands ever. OK, I do not have Eddie and the cruisers in this because we're doing the movies. Number five is Josie and the pussy cats. OK, you got to count them iconic shit. Number four, I got the wonders, man. I'm that thing you do. Truth or punch it in. Yeah, I love that movie. It's almost lost time. Nobody talks about as much as they should. I love it. To the West. I think it's a really good rewatchable. OK, yeah, I love that movie. Number three, Spinal Tap. Got to have Spinal Tap in there. Resident P's Rob. Number two, the five heartbeats. OK, now this is an underrated fictitious band. The music is fantastic. Robert Townsend. The 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. Fantastic. They sound like a real band. Yeah, you have the real band chemistry and angst. Stillwater. Can I ask a follow up question? Good lead singer presence to Jason Lee. No, forget the movies that those bands are in. Best music of a fictitious band. So to me, it would be, excuse me, the five heartbeats, the wonders. Eddie and the Cruisers. Yeah, they got to be they got to be up there. And the Stillwater stuff is awesome to me. It sounds kind of like it's really good. I just don't think Fever Dog is as good of a signature song as Dark Side. Dark Side, yeah. Or that thing you do. Yeah, that's fair. It was a good list. I want to like nitpick and say you missed one. But I can't think of one that you missed. So there was one thing that I couldn't really decide. I went back and forth with Kenberg about this is. The Revolution in Purple Rain doesn't count. OK, because he's not playing Prince. Actually, I think they're called the Wendy and Lisa in in his other. Everybody has the regular names. The time is in it. Yeah, 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 80's soundtrack. And the time doesn't count either. Yeah. The only one I would add to it is Sex Bomb from Scott Pilgrim. Scott Pilgrim. Yeah, that's a fucking Miss Ba-Van. Yeah, what about the Matt Damon band in your trip? Scott doesn't know. The Scott he doesn't know. Dan band, real band, right? The Dan band. Oh, hey, that's my bike. Yeah, hey, that's my bike for reality bites. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Oh, see before. So we never see citizen Dick and singles. We just hang out with them. But they are mud honey. 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 now. No, but we are touch me on sick. Yeah, touch me on dick. Touch me on dick, yeah. No, no, no. We see them on stage doing that. No, we just hear their rap. Yeah, yeah, we don't see it. Touch me on dick. That's a good one. See, our thanks. Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. How does take a word? I don't know how hot of a take this is, but if this movie had two more great songs in it, what happens? Does this become Greece? The level to which Greece is better than this movie is difficult to articulate. So no, I mean, Greece is better in every way. Right. I'm aware. Except for everyone in the movie is 38 years old. In Greece. High school kids, yeah. Yeah, true. Yeah. So would you want another song that was like Dark Side or do you feel like we needed like another Joanne solo song? Well, I was going to do this later for either Nipik or Unansible, but you assume all the songs we hear on the Dark Side, Tender Years, they're all on some album. They're on Tender Years. I think it's 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 really started to beat us. Yeah, right. But there's this whole missing section. So Craig asked, I love that this was 95 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 we heard another song during that 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 like I think that those songs were probably like a collection of like 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 like songs people were pretty familiar with. So was the dark side on Tender Years? I thought Frank helps them write Dark Side. So Frank knew them before Tender Years? I don't think they did Tender Years until after 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? Because I think he was like, we were just playing bars doing Run Around Sue. They were already moving. Like Tender Years took them to a whole other level. I know, but it seems like that was uncalled for it 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 I think something different. Can I do a hottest take of Piggy Backs 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 Darkside 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 Darkside and you get to see them do the big full band version of Darkside 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 storage structure, which it doesn't because it really is not that concerned. So that's where if you had that extra great song, that song leads to movie and then it all leads to Darkside, which is their biggest. But if the movie starts with tender years, I mean, you can start with that. I guess. But I think people would be like, yes, pretty good song. But it starts with Darkside. You're like, whoa, holy fucking shit. This is pretty good. You know what? To 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. It's 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 they it's not like they were like, oh, my God, it's Darkside from Eddie and the Proozers. 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. That would have been fun. Do you know how it's taken? I do. Um, I think workman tried to kill Eddie. Um, I think he actually killed the saxophone player. I think this entire thing he cooked up a hot shot for Wendell. I think he did because there's no way. I lived in a trailer. To your point, there's no way he didn't know. I think actually his jealousy, because I watched his movie, just it doesn't make any sense. He's openly trying to work. Man'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. Dude, can you, can you, can you, can you just imagine we're at like, I don't know, Ringer party or something like that. And I'm just over there with one, like one of y'all's wives, like trying to figure out what the fuck is up. Like what is, is, is the shit is, it blows my mind every time I watch this. My dad used to fucking hate it. Also, maybe she didn't edit in make her toast girl. Fan is really onto something because if, if you come to the end and it turns out word man 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 cause he's like, I know I did it. Kaiser Soze ending at the end. Yeah. Well, 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. 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? Cause he's fucking scared of word man. The whole reason why Eddie has gone into hiding. Is that true? I haven't seen Eddie in the Cruisers. Eddie lives a long time. Yeah, he's a pseudonym. He's a, you scared of word man? No, this is in my brain. He's scared of word man because he knows word man tried to kill him, which is why he's hiding this whole thing. Word man is fucking crazy. So when we see Eddie at the end of the cruisers one walking away, word man's behind him. He's stalking him. But you don't see it because Amazon is already caught to the next Harry Potter season seven. Casting what ifs. Parade claims they were ready to replace him with Rick Springfield. Oh, it'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. He did think about trying to get the part. We'd be cool. Instead he lives on in Jesse's girl and bookie nights. That ends up being his legacy. No, we don't see him. If Rick was in it, it would have been a box office success. I bet there were more people who would have seen it. Parade was discovered in a New York City restaurant working as a chef. So still hope for Dave Chang. Even in his mid forties, 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, Scott, the mustache, Barry 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 cut. That's the NBC. Only you would grab that. But it was just fucking weird. It would be like if Daniel Kelleisen was in the movie, just randomly, just in a scene. Best that guy, Joey Pants, not eligible. John Stockwell was 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. The werewolf, I can't remember. Yeah. But the winner is Mitchell Lawrence. Mitchell, yeah, for sure. Matthew Lawrence as a Mitchell Lawrence was his brother. twin brother, right? Yeah. Twin brother. OK. Matthew Lawrence. Yeah. Not Mitchell Lawrence. Matthew Lawrence also now does or did sports talk radio in Lexington, Kentucky. Wow. How many episodes as David Silver's dad and Nana Tuna, do you think fit to guess? How many episodes is what? Was he on Nana Tuna? No, no. Yeah. 36. Oh, you're basically on the show at that point. Yeah. Yeah. They did over 200 shows. Well, we've never talked about as a now to an old 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 doing who played Dylan's dad. Now that guy that was that we've seen this guy that that guy. Mackay. Yeah, like Jack McKay was the maze. Shady, what is it? He was up though. Should have 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 would like David Silver's dad because he was like constantly messed around with the dental assistance. 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. You're famous. She was kind of cool. Deon Waiter's word Ellen Barkin. And then she wanted to give it to the I didn't pay for a bunch of jerks. 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 like to take that. That's good. It's like a year after night shift. Just looking for work still. 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 Lathen Award for did this movie need more black people? No, we were treated poorly. It but no, it doesn't perfect. And that's another thing about these eighties movies. Don't fucking put it. Not where we just do the thing. OK, just do the white band. But it's a white band, black saxophone player. That's cool. You know what I'm saying? We don't need to. It's fine. I'm telling you, it's fine. Craig has a flex category. I did it. It's the BAM out of bio to Salamato. Oh, yeah, you did. Where the fuck did that come from? Him at the night first time somebody did BAM out of bio is a flex category. The 83 point game is going to live on forever. Half a century search. Bairinger said he did not try to learn piano. Did practice some keyboards in his trailer. It's well, he read Biggs, showed that. Is that a euphemism? Yeah, the practice and keyboard still bother me. Matthew Lawrence did learn how to play the bass. They parade remembers that when they all played together, it was a little like still water. 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. Does not exist anymore. Fraternity House was at Haverford College. Where's that? Outside of Philly. Tony Martz was an actual place until the early 80s and then demolished. And then we didn't mention this. Joanne, played by Helen Schneider, was a pretty famous like German music star in the 70s and 80s. A lot of a lot of like 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, lonesome. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this do more of that. Like 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. She was Eddie Rudolph's fake. Eddie did some research on him. John Cafferty or the Eddie that was with Salamada. The Eddie with Salamada played by Joey Balan. Who put out an album in 1994. If you want to download it on your way home, the Joey Balan's solo work. Apex Mountain, Michael Paray, definitely. Oh, wait, I had one more. A half-assed internet research. Yeah. In that same Washington Post article that I mentioned, Bairinger 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 that, after this quote, Martin Davidson's like, we never shot that. That's Bairinger's whole 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. Yeah. Highest shit. Yeah. I mean, it was 1983. Yeah. Apex, that's why the Grand Land Oral History will never happen. Because of the amount of drugs we're all going to. 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 overrated submarine movies, Dickhead. Apex Mountain, Michael Paray, yes. Tom Bairinger, no. Ellen Barkin, no. Matthew Lawrence. I'm going to say David Silver's Dad. Probably Silver's. That show is pretty big. Yeah. Beaver Brown Band, yes. Jersey Shore movies, no, but I also can't come up with a better one. I might 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 a decent, it's like the summer destination for most of Philadelphia. But I don't know of a better Jersey Shore movie than this. Never 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, do you like that show? No, of course not. Do you ever hang out with those people during your early Hollywood days? I saw it a couple of times. I think, I think, do you in this situation ever go party with them? See a couple of them. Not, 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 me just go testing away. Wow. That got dark. No, no, I just, I've 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 Rolls Rules, Rolls Rules, Challenge, all that stuff is doing. For some reason, Jersey Shore just never fucking. Arthur Rimbo. I think that he's had bigger moments in this. Yeah. Helen Schneider. Sounds like, to Germany, it was pretty hot. Yeah. What happened? You would have thought that she'd have been around. She was like, went back to Germany. Interesting. 1957 Chevy's probably not. Cruiser Hanks. What about Hanks as word man? I had Cruiser. 1983 Hanks. Cruises Eddie. Because Cruiser has priors of doing the outsiders. Do you have Cruises Eddie? Cruises 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. Eddie and the Cruisers. Come on. Yeah. Come on. How are you doing? Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And I think you could actually, this is one of the rare times where you could do Cruises Eddie and Hanks as Frank. Scorsese or Spielberg. Yeah. I have Scorsese. Scorsese. Tri-state area. Yeah. Best hang, we're saying. Best hang, Sal. See, you know, his pizza, fun dressing room. Best hang is absolutely Maggie. Like I got L Barker. Oh, good point. Good point. Yeah. I got to add Maggie. I got Ellen Barker as the best hang. I got worst hang, Sal. Welcome. Just talking about the old days. No, Sal. I think Doc is the worst hang. When you think about it, Doc. Doc's the 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? Yeah. He's just hanging off. He's always crying and sweating. He's crying. He's sweating. He's doing the whole thing. Word man, he's skeptical of Word man, which is probably because he knew that Word man was a psychopath. Yeah, right. Yeah, so like that. I think probably Kenny would be best hang. Playing, yeah, telling Blackjack stories. Just talking about ball and chicks. I requested these guys count the 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 Knitz. Would there have been more interest in Eddie's disappearance or way more interest? I felt 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. Yeah. It maybe gets a 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. Yeah. Being that they never found a body. It's always funny in 80s movies when they go, something, something happened, a body was never found. People would never fucking like Bolvid. That's the DB Cooper thing. Don't know where he went or what happened to him. We mentioned Bairnger's Tool for Word Band. We talked about Word Band and Joanne Kissing. So 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 concerts. Yes. 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 of Benton College. There were nine cameras apparently there. And then, but they're showing the crowd. It's like Sunday Night Football. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty tough. There's stuff. 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 and 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. Like, this is not that complicated. I guess my big nitpick that I've always had is like, is Wordman fucking Mozart? Like, how you learned to play piano that fast? Wordman's fucking around. He's know what he's doing all of a sudden. He's playing piano. He's got solos. No, Wordman had to play piano, didn't he? Yeah, he has to piano solo earlier. He has to play. I'm talking about earlier. No. Oh. Earlier, like, if I'm not, doesn't Eddie, am I? No, no, no, no. Eddie's showing him rock chords. Oh, so he already knew how to play piano. 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. I've thought that for 30 years. No. No. Craig started to go on. 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, the strokes. Like that era, early 2000s, New York. And now, and then it's like today. Coming back today. Yeah. Where it's like the somebody has the strokes. So long as God's been 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 bag, 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, yes. Because you change and make it a female singer. The coolest thing to do would be to like basically try to blur which it where you're like, we've discovered these tapes and it's like, and now this band, like it would be basically like a viral marketing campaign. Blair Witch crossed with Eddie in the Cruisers. That's pretty good. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Flourist, so many others or Zane Lowe? Eddie, man. Here you are. You've just seen your own face on media magazine, the lovely Maggie reporting it out season and 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 like Wendell doesn't say anything bad. Wendell, man, you played with bad. You played with Dexter Gordon. Now you're on junk. And Wendell's like, no one's ever asked me his record. Oh man. Just want to ask her who gets it. Soundtrack or original song? I go original song, Dark Side. I'll give you best music original song that year. Winter 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. Do you like fame? Yeah, I do. Fame like, well at first I watched a TV show first. That was the first thing I saw. TV show and then I went back and watched it. I saw fame in the theater probably a little too early. Probably. H10. You know fame? Really good idea for a movie. I'm actually surprised they haven't run that back. Are you a Flash Dance fan? Not totally. Yeah. Maniac from Flash Dance was also nominated. Over You from Tender Mercies. And then two Yental songs. I feel like we could have stuck in. Dark Side. Dark Side in there. And maybe Bump the second best Yental song. That would be incredible if it was like Academy Award winning Eddie and the Cruisers. Probably an answerable questions. What happened to Media Magazine? Maggie moves on to where? I think she. Does she get that like doing like Live at Five in New York City? Replaces to Simmons? Maybe she moves up to People or Newsweek or Time. Did Eddie always. Blunt Cancer. So my question is did Eddie always pull out or did his boys not swim? How does she not get pregnant? Who? His girl. Joanne. Yeah, Joanne. They're on the road all together. Music field. Lusty lovemaking. Fallen in the back of a car. Listen to your own songs. Or maybe not a lot of sex because he was so driven by the art. That's why she was looking at the word man. Or like that's why she got what 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 prepositions was just like what did word man think was going to 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 going to fuck with you now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Toby Tyler, you got off easy. Yeah. What did Doc sell the tapes for and what happened next? Is it on its musicals? You want Naio. 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 eight track? In 83, those things, not the seat between cassettes and CDs tracks. Eight tracks. Yeah. I think the eight track is dead by 83. I think it's still around 83. That was the last year. Yeah. Like cassettes, right? No. I don't think season 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, because it's the age of the video is starting to happen. They don't. But the cruisers are all that incredible footage of Eddie and the cruisers playing bet in college. They give you 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. Just be a weird one and just have on the wall right now. People, what the fuck is that? The cruisers, night to day three. That's the original staff of Brentwood. Coach, Finstock, Mr. Miyagi work for best worst life lesson. Guys like you guys like me and you, they strike oil under your God and all you get is dead tomatoes. Oh, shit. But that's pretty good by, by Salamada 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. Hmm. Good call. HBO. I was, I was entertaining Parry. But I think, I think you're right. I think it's Beaver Brown band because 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. To watch 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 as she used to. I was like 15 minutes in, I was like, you, 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 have liked it. You should have told her there was like some sort of add potential out of it. She would have done it at that point. Yeah, we can, there's a great sponsorships. You should be like, Bill's actually in this movie. I was almost certain you'd hate it. No, no, I knew, I knew he was going to 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 going to win 48 games with a couple of 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. 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 my, the expectation versus reality. I didn't, I liked LA Confidential. I didn't love it. I don't know. You need to watch it a couple of times. I don't know why. But 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. You know what? That was, that was a boomer response. I could see that. I could see now it being a little tougher 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 it 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 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. And I don't know. It has a good part. I mean, it's abstract, but it was like it blew. Oh, I thought it came out the gate and was and was not reviewed. Oh, OK. I mean, you would know better. I mean, Pemberton is like that from Weezer, like child homes that come out and people go, what the fuck are you doing in the. But is this. Pinker, Pinker, Pinker, Pinker. This is amazing. Yeah. What the fuck is Pemberton? Is this kind of movie the 80s equivalent of like a current Netflix movie, like Gas Lit by my husband, which I have great disdain for. And I a movie like that nowadays. But I'm like, is that just what this was in the 80s? I know. Like, 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 that's kind of like the same kind of like regional, local, sensation, huge story in my town, but wouldn't wouldn't have made it out to like LA where people were like, good point. And I think I think it's hard to almost replicate that now because of social media and it's just weird. That's like this movie is 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 cruiser is like such a fun, easy watch. But no one's going to do that to Gas Lit 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 Gas Lit by my husband and Jim a couple years. Yeah. 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. Right. People weren't doing that to this movie. It was on HBO. Didn't it just come on? And you know, that's the difference. So the difference. We didn't have as much else stuff to other stuff to do. Like people barely had a tarry 2600s back then. Yeah. With Gas Lit 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 it. With Eddie and the Cruisers, there's none of that. Like I never had one. This is the first conversation I've ever had with friends about Eddie and the Cruisers ever. My husband was only my mom because my mom loved this movie. My dad will watch it. My dad would be like, you watching them saying people again, why don't 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, and if you listen to an album a lot, you listen to it like 20 times. And then like the eighth best song in the album, you're like, song's fucking awesome. Yeah. I really like this. And I love when that happens. But there's that song where you're like, I don't know about this. It doesn't happen anymore because every these songs are just are released almost like you can you can cherry pick them on Spotify. I'm a kid to rule with you. 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 Records is a good example of like there was my original run through. I was like, I love these five songs. Then there was like two more, three more that came became really favorite to mine. It's also crazy how much Hollywood screwed up. I 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 might have been because they're people really you're Eddie and the cruisers. I mean, there's like a little bit of like a chalice to this song. You said it was number three and the billboard charts that year. Seven seven. I mean 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. Same thing happened to Eddie. When Jacko and House were here like a year ago, you told me this was on TCM. And I recorded it. 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 like there's you got whether you like the band. Right. Well, think about like Rock of Ages with Cruz was a bomb. Yeah. So stupid, though. Like, you know what I mean? Like this did that movie almost doesn't take itself seriously. This movie takes itself incredibly seriously. Yeah. Like you get this is sincerity about this. Maybe it's obviously not perfect, but there's a sincerity of like about the movie. Would you watch a movie about done love story JFK Junior style about Lenny Kravitz falling in love with Lisa Bonet. We get all the goll, Lenny's music. The entire thing would love it. It's a good idea. So we cravis plays Lisa Bonet. Oh, shit. You like that type of shit. I'm into that. It's a good idea. I'm into Lisa Bonet. I'm into Zoe Kravitz and Lisa Bonet. Sure. You 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 going to I'm never going to be mad at Lenny Kravitz for anything. All right. See our month. This was it's no longer see our month. This was the little chocolate right after. Yeah. Little little those little gum things. What's the one that's got the there's like different ones that they'll bring out? Well, they've got the mints, you know, chocolate covered mints. It's usually that's I feel like that's lazy when the restaurants do that. OK, I like when I felt like the dessert the dessert chef made me something. I like when they prepare 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, Ben. 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. Yes, I'll do the I'll do the little intro for that. But yeah, we're going to be doing basic instinct. The three of us with Mallory at the Tony Rempe Theater. Yeah, that's I think that's this guy play for the Rangers. San Francisco Tony Rempe. Yeah, like 280 last year. Yeah, we will be there in San Francisco. Thanks to Gahau. Thanks to Eduardo as well. And we'll see you next week in the real actuals.