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Hey look — it’s another GLoP podcast! This week, we ponder why some movies don’t age well (and others do), do some Rank Punditry® on Bolton and Comrade Bernie, wish a fond farewell to a podcast sidekick, and generally act silly.
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I remember re-watching Porky’s about 10 years later, and realized how juvenile it was.
I feel the same way about Blazing Saddles. By the time Stripes was released, I had already done enough time in the military that I didn’t find it funny. I found that younger members that had gotten out of boot camp within, say, a year did like it.
Regarding The Jerk and the new phone book scene, I can still relate to it. I rented my first place in the early 1980’s, and also acquired my first phone number. I remember looking my name up in the phone book and feeling that I had passed a small milestone.
In the era of cell phones, social media and no phone books, young people just starting out aren’t going to relate to that.
What is amazing is that actual adults wrote Porky’s.
It’s true the phone book scene in The Jerk won’t resonate with “the kids”. That could be an opportunity. I loved watching and discussing old movies with my parents. It really helped me to understand the life they lived and the world as it once was. Now I’m sharing my old movies with my grown children. They want to understand what their folks lived through. It’s funny that there is often some “truth” that has to be rebutted.
My nephews love Ghostbusters.
The police academy films are all going to be on Netflix, it will be interesting to see how they hold up.
Caddyshack was one that didn’t hold up for me
Chuckles the Clown did not shell himself.
I watched A Shot in the Dark (1964) a while back. Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau still works for me. Last year on a visit to France, I heard a siren of a French emergency vehicle and immediately had an image of Clouseau in one of his absurd undercover costumes under arrest for lacking a ‘leezahnz” for something.
Not liking Ghostbusters is a mark of philistinism.
I can’t not notice the fact that each network seems to have its own standards for how their shows are shot. CBS seems to favor soft-focus where everything and everybody has a slight halo. Some of their shows practically have Vaseline on the lens… Fox likes oversaturation. NBC is fairly cinematic in all of its presentations (Frasier for instance was a bit of a departure as it was filmed at Paramount’s studio… so it was basically a CBS show.) ABC is a mess.
Had the exact same issue with The Jerk… my kids were bored quickly… and came to realize that what I loved about the movie were three or four specific scenes… the oil can shooting scene, and the snails on her plate scene plus a few more, but the rest was pretty slow. Still love all of Caddyshack, Groundhog Day and Blazing Saddles…
Any Chuckles the Clown reference gets my vote.
I wondered whether John meant the original or the female version.
Not terribly well. There are scenes, certainly, but many of the characters are one-dimensional, like the black girl who is very quiet until she isn’t.
I had to google it. But found the episode:
JPod: Your mistake was in seeing the Eddie Murphy version of “Nutty Professor.” Always go for Jerry Lewis.
Don’t just go back 20-25 years from NOW.
Rob: Just saying “Here’s $4, I’ll just throw it into the street” is not funny without context.
And “go into a closet and suck eggs” is not from the “crime fighter’s oath.” It’s from the “be happy” song his mother/grandmother/whatever taught him.
You know what’s really a bad word? When a movie or whatever is described as a “meditation.” Bleh.
Finally saw that two years ago, didn’t find it funny at all. Not even Rodney.
Am I wrong to see the “R” in BERNIE as reversed? I first read it as BEANIE and laughed and then looked closer … Great illustration. Bernie looks especially prickly.
And Rob made a good point about show running times too, something I’m always reminding people of. When you watch a show like Cheers now, on TBS or Me TV or whatever, they’re inevitably cutting at least a few minutes from each episode. And it’s inevitable that you’re missing some important stuff as a result.
Ditto.
There is a Cyrillic letter that looks like a reversed R (Я), but actually is pronounced “Ya.” The Cyrillic R looks like Р, which is why you used to see the СССР initials, since their version f their country name was abbreviated SSSR. And of course, the Cyrillic P is П. So, my guess is that it was an attempt to make Bernie’s name look more Russian/Soviet, but resulted in “Beyanie,” I guess.
To really spell Bernie in Russian, it would look more like: БЕРНИЙ in all caps or Берний in mixed case.
Jonah’s recollection of the “cultural oomph” of being on Larry King 20 years ago reminded me of King’s interview of that popular animal expert from the zoo:
Zookeeper brings out a large lizard which is obviously using its four legs. King: “Is that a snake?”
Zookeeper brings out a wingless bird and explains that its wings were lost in a mishap with some high voltage cables. King: “Will it ever fly again?”
What a pro! Kudos to his agent, though, for keeping him on the air so long, and to King himself for having more wives than a Saudi king.
Sure, but that’s not funny. “BEANIE” is funny.
But not all at once.
Could Fox just seem to be routinely oversaturated because they run so much animation?
The really amazing part is if it wasn’t for the success of the juvenile humor of ‘Porky’s’, we don’t get Jean Shepard’s childhood memories encapsulated in ‘A Christmas Story’. The success of the former movie allowed director Bob Clark to get the later one green-lit by MGM.
Of all the Panther movies, “A Shot in the Dark” probably holds up best, in terms of balance between the slapstick, and not going too far overboard with the gags and plot lines. The original Pink Panther movie is probably too heavy on plot with not enough Clouseau, while the 70s ones ramped up the bumbling to the point the movies are funny the first time, but not as much when you know what’s coming on repeated viewing.
(“A Shot in the Dark” also has by far the most interesting history of coming into being, since it began life as a French play that was turned into a Broadway play with William Shatner in the Peter Sellers role, which in turn was modified to fit his Clouseau character after it was a hit in “The Pink Panther”, with the adaptation done by Blake Edwards and “The Exorcist” author William Peter Blatty.)
“Old” Movies I’ve watched with my 10 year-old son that he liked:
1930s serials
Anything with Charlton Heston prior to around 1975, even The Omega Man.
Young Frankenstein, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Plenty more… Dad’s crap filter makes sure we don’t see the crap that Hollywood put out then and now.