#70 - A Few Good Men

[00:00:00] Hello Properly Howard fans, because this is the final episode of our Few Good Films season. Steve and I wanted to do something extra special for this podcast. After much discussion, what we decided to do was have Steve's microphone crap out about halfway through this podcast. So you can look forward to that. As is our way, there's no telling how long our delay will be between seasons. We will come back. Who knows when?

[00:00:25] In the meantime, check out all of the fine work that's happening with the Lorehounds. Nevermind the music, Silmarillion stories, Wool Shift Dust, and of course, Severance. We do appreciate iTunes reviews. They will get read on this podcast. You can send emails to cocoonsofhorror at gmail.com. Alright, enjoy A Few Good Men. You'll try it. Why not night, Brian?

[00:00:54] Please, you will! The Properly Howard, a podcast that reviews classic films and other full fiction. Today we wrap up our A Few Good Film season with a look at its namesake, A Few Good Men.

[00:01:21] Starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Jack Nicholson, and a host of Hollywood A-listers, A Few Good Men lifts the veil to expose military cover-ups and its preoccupation with softball rivalries. With me, as always, to discuss this film is Dr. Anthony Ladoff. I was big into softball back in the day. Big in a softball. I wouldn't berate my second baseman as much as Tom Cruise does.

[00:01:50] Oh my goodness, he really... You know, it's funny, that's his Jessup. That's his code red is reserved to the softball. That's how he knows he can get Jessup. He's like, hey man, I've been out there. I've been on the diamond. You want me behind first base. You need me behind first base.

[00:02:12] Steve, we could begin in a lot of places. We could begin with You Can't Handle the Truth. We could begin with Tom Cruise's career. I want to begin with Kevin Bacon. Okay. I think he's the coolest guy in this movie. And this movie, I mean, he's like maybe the fourth lead in this movie? In a movie rife with cool guys. He's the coolest. He's...

[00:02:39] Look, there's just something about Kevin Bacon. Every scene he's in, I can't take my eyes off him. But, the scene where he's playing basketball. And, he's like dripping in sweat. And he's walking off the court to talk in the hallway with Tom Cruise and Demi Moore. Just watch him walk off the court.

[00:03:08] He struts. He just... I think that there's never been a better cinematic strutter... Than Bacon. Than Bacon. Bacon is the best... There's a lot of things that you could be known for. But, that strut... The Bacon strut is just magnificent to behold. Yeah, I mean, it's...

[00:03:34] I wonder if this is maybe the same cinematic universe as Footloose. Right? Like, so... He's kind of conquered a town. He's danced his way into the heart of a stoic preacher. Enough so. Such a good dancer that... That John Lithgow just kind of forgets the fact that his son died because of dancing. And... And now he's like... Now he's infiltrating the Marines. Well, maybe he had to get out of town.

[00:04:03] Maybe at some point it was like... Well, I think... He's like quantum leaping into different worlds, I think. Sure. Yeah. He's like, look, I saved this town. I brought dancing back. Now I'm going to bully... See, he doesn't... He knows that Jessup's a problem. Yeah. And he's not... He's like, I'm not here to... Like a true angel, right? Like, he's not going to just come in here and save the day.

[00:04:29] He's going to use his influence and nudge all of the right players in the right spot, right? I mean... I mean, he even tells, you know, Cruz straight up, hey, you got bullied into this. I bullied you into it. Like, and he's... Even though he's telling him that, he knows he's doing it further. He's just nudging. He's nudging his way into peace. And then now that Jessup, as soon as he read Jessup's rights, he's off to the next thing.

[00:04:57] He's off to go be a pedophile in about a dozen movies for some reason. That's when he falls from grace. I don't know. I don't know what his end goal was and all that. At what point was he inspired by Guile from Street Fighter 2? That flat top is perfectly Guile from Street Fighter 2. Yeah, it's true. And he's... Yeah, he's triangular. He's at his most triangular. All right. What's your relationship with A Few Good Men?

[00:05:27] I'm fascinated by it. I think... Yeah, I saw it when it first came out. The Nicholson gravitas, right? Like, it's just... I think he pulled us all in. And, you know, obviously with Batman 89. And I feel like I maybe became more aware of Nicholson as an actor later in life. He was the elder statesman. Right. And, like, Nicholson was always, like... He was one of those... Like, he's a true star. Like, a true Hollywood star. I'm not saying that the other folks aren't.

[00:05:56] But to the degree where, like... If you'd never seen a Jack Nicholson movie, you still were like... Oh, he's the man. Like, he's something else. Well, and he was one of these guys that... If you brought him into the movie for a part like this, it absolutely would elevate everything else that's going on in the movie. Right. Because he's not really in this movie all that much. It was the same time when De Niro and Pacino's stars were falling. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:24] You know, they were sort of not great at being elder statesmen. They were making bad choices. They were turning... Like, even the performances that they were being... praised for... were kind of panned in retrospect. Yeah, they're like... They almost became self-parody. A little bit like that. Nicholson... did this a little bit later. But at this point in 92,

[00:06:53] to have him in this movie playing a part that he really had never played before. In his previous career, his younger career, he was kind of like the iconoclast. Mm-hmm. Or the guy who's living outside the law, or the anarchist, or something like that. Now he's the man. Right? He's... He's the rep... He's the highest-ranking officer in this film. And he's got all the gravitas.

[00:07:24] Just a thing to behold. Just a thing to behold. And this really increases his star. Like, he was the biggest star in 1992. And he does this movie almost as a... You know, he's clearly a supporting actor. And yet, he steals the movie. Right. I mean, he's very much... Like, I'm trying to remember the advertising for this. Right?

[00:07:52] Like, I just don't really recall... Like, why... Obviously, it had to be a Nicholson thing. But, like, why did we... Like, I mean, you saw this in the theater, right? It's possible. I don't remember the first time I saw this. I feel like it was always on. It was, like, always on TBS or something. Oh, gotcha. I remember watching and re-watching this a lot in college.

[00:08:20] And a lot of my doormates would simply memorize mass... You know, huge monologues from this film. I had a guy down the hall who could just... He could do the whole Jessup... He, like, memorized every word from Jessup in this film. See, I actually... I had it. I did two. I don't know if you remember. So, in high school, I was... I would do this. I think it was, like, senior year. Like, on demand? Like, people would just put a...

[00:08:49] Pop in a quarter and listen to this? People would walk up to me and they would say, I want the truth. And I'd have to... I'd have to let them know. And part of it was because I was actually considering auditioning for a play at our school, which I had never done. Interesting. And one of the requirements was a monologue. And so I chose that as a monologue. Oh, so you set out to memorize this. So interesting. So interesting. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. No, this was... Okay.

[00:09:19] So, for Men Our Age, this was the kind of film that kind of piqued our interest in acting. I mean, for you, literally. True. Yeah. It was sort of like some scrawny little kid from Canada who had no investment in, like, U.S. foreign policy or wanted to join the Marines or anything like that would just be enthralled by this...

[00:09:48] Really, this anti-hero monologue just because of the musicality of the language. It could be, like, the best angry monologue in film history. I don't know. Yeah. Whatever it was, it was magic. It was magic to young men who just absolutely wanted a vehicle to express their rage or something. I'm not sure what it was. Well, we're watching this and I love that you used the musicality

[00:10:17] to describe the language because it is... It's a very sing-song movie. The movie is almost a musical without music because the dialogue in the way that it flows and the way it's delivered. I watched... Watching it this other day, I was like, wow. I always attribute the cadence and the rhythm of Nicholson's monologue to, like, specifically that scene.

[00:10:46] It's throughout the entire movie. Yeah. The way that Sorkin constructs these words and even the way that they're delivered, it all feels rhythmic and it almost has the same... Like, it all feels like it's the same rhythm as his big monologue is actually happening conversationally throughout the movie. It's really interesting. I didn't watch plays. I wasn't really into musicals.

[00:11:15] I've watched several musicals but, like, it feels like you're singing along, I think, to this movie. And it's been several years since I had seen it so watching it again I was kind of struck at how much... How many phrases I'll use from this movie and not necessarily... Some of them are kind of trope-y or cliche so they're throughout but, like, I wonder how much of these phrases that I might use the origin is from this movie

[00:11:45] just because of how compelling and how powerful the language was and how it was delivered. Yeah, so I was going to save this for later but I might as well do it now. So, I'm probably in the top 500 Sorkin fans in the world. Right? So, this doesn't sound like a lot but if you think of the amount of people in the world like, that's pretty high. I love Aaron Sorkin. I think he's got a lot of really weird qualities as a person as a writer

[00:12:14] I think he's got a lot of misses but I feel like I've been on the Sorkin ride from the beginning. Right? So, this was sort of his first this was his play even before it hit Broadway it was already optioned for a movie he wrote the screenplay and he's got a lot of Sorkin-isms but one of the things that is pretty common to a lot of Sorkin movies it's it's men performing masculinity verbally

[00:12:42] that's what he does best and you can see it in the West Wing you can see it in Moneyball you can see it you see it a lot of things that Sorkin does and if you think about the best context for doing that the courtroom is pretty good because it's like you win or lose based on your ability to compellingly deliver an argument right? and then you add on top of that

[00:13:12] this world of military masculine hierarchy where it's like who's ever got the most stripes on his arm that guy gets to monologue whenever he wants to you know sort of like alright everyone else kind of has to stand around and watch because that guy's got more stripes and if he wants to monologue for the next five minutes we all have to sit and pretend like what he has to say is the most important thing so you add these

[00:13:40] two dimensions the courtroom the military aspect and you you can just it's just the perfect environment for Sorkin to do his thing and he's one of these guys where once he writes it down he really wants the actors to say the exact things like he'll he will he will give notes you know he was sort of famous on the West Wing set for saying okay yes but you missed the and there or

[00:14:10] you there was supposed to be a pause in between that word and that word so with a lot of you know a lot of actors can just kind of riff Sorkin really wants his dialogue to be delivered exactly how it how he envisioned it this is sort of his perfect entree into the industry and then on top of that you add you add Jack yeah

[00:14:39] you know you add Jack to that equation and it's just a perfect confluence of this world building that Sorkin does through dialogue right and it is and it is that I mean it is as dialogue a movie you'll find this is certainly a tell don't show approach to to movie making which is kind of fascinating because if you were

[00:15:09] to watch this with the sound off you're like I guess nothing's happening they're at the restaurant again yeah messy messy seafood well if it's not romance yeah but if like there's no romance coming out of it well if you watch it with the sound off you would look at demean Moore's eyes and

[00:15:47] she's just making love to him with her eyeballs the rest of the movie and interest another sorkiny thing I think that there was a sex scene in the movie that got cut out but it's not really about the love story it's about something else the love story isn't even like an F plot in this movie it he will

[00:16:17] be to her how snappy would that dirty talk have been oh man I mean yeah so demean Moore was up for this and she got the part over against Jodie Foster over against Linda Hamilton because she was willing to work for less money yeah but I kind of

[00:16:47] like her in this movie it's one of these things where like it's called out from the beginning that she's not a great lawyer she's got a lot of passion she's she's adept but not you don't want her like well and it's interesting too because it's like I don't is that how it's read or I mean I did read it that way a little bit but

[00:17:19] passion but she's not the kind of person you want on the lead of a thing like this right but I was having a different read maybe a little bit on this I couldn't quite tell first off I think there was a misogynistic factor for sure and then I think secondly the whole point of getting Cruz or Caffey in this situation is because they don't want this to go that's a really crucial part of this movie right and her passion would

[00:17:49] be detrimental to what their end goal is to just settle this and move on and putting her in the lead I don't know if it was so much passion or maybe she is good maybe she is thorough maybe she doesn't have all of the street smarts of lawyering but she might you know and she does demonstrate a few times that she does her passion kind of gets in the way a little bit in the courtroom

[00:18:20] and but also her passion is valuable to the team because it was going to go the path of just settle this and move on okay here's I was going to say this earlier I think Bacon is the only good lawyer in this entire film Bacon seems to be playing by the rules he knows the rules he plays by them pretty well he's he's he's believably a good lawyer yeah and so much so when

[00:18:51] he sees that more stuff is coming out he understands the task at hand so he's like alright I'm willing to I'll bring this down I will give you a sweetheart deal for your clients because that is Caffey Caffey's all about the plea bargain he's not going to take anything seriously because he feels like

[00:19:21] this is all kind of a game and I've gotten pretty good at winning this game there's a little you were talking about Street Fire 2 there's a little bit about me like me with eHonda it's like once I figure out how to do the thousand hand slap why do I need to know how to do anything else yeah so so just so your entire mission is not to necessarily know how I'm playing or what somebody else is doing or what the other people's moves are it's like I just

[00:20:03] so that's his fatal flaw and then she's all heart right I think she's sort of written as sort of the typical heart overhead female in one of these movies and then Kevin Pollack he does nothing he he he's he's happy about doing nothing he kind of is a little bit put out that he has to go and observe people other people

[00:20:33] but he also wants to not do nothing more he wants he he's got a newborn child at home and he just wants to dote over his new daughter so Bacon is the only one that is actually taking his job seriously for the entire movie at one point Caffey decides that he's going to take the case and the reason why he decides he's going to take the case is he realizes why would they put me who has never been in a courtroom on a case of such

[00:21:03] importance the only reason why division would appoint me to this is because they want it to be settled out of court and that pricks my little masculinity a little bit right it's like I'm predictably a used car salesman and that's you've consulted my honor as a lawyer right so that's the way he gets in because of hubris it's

[00:21:33] not even a matter of like yeah because I in his big strategy is he's going to prick the hubris of Jessup he's going to say he

[00:22:02] acknowledges I have no case against this guy unless I can get him to be so arrogant on the stand that he just can't help himself but confess because he's that self righteous that's his whole strategy that's his whole strategy it almost is finding I bet you there's something we have in common I'll bully you into using your honor against you and to a certain

[00:22:32] degree that's how he gets to where he's at if he knows he can do that he's like look I'm here because of this type of thing right because I don't want I'm not coming that's why I stay out of the courtroom so if you're going to get me in there I'm going all the way it's the same thing he's thinking here with Jessup is like Jessup not going to come in here and just like one thing he's he's not really gonna lie right I mean like if you watch him he's he's very careful

[00:23:02] like and like the whole thing when you get to like even the terms like with McKittrick it's like did you order the code red and he's like he can say no I did not because I didn't call it a code red I he is lying on the stand it's like

[00:23:32] not not to the degree that he believes he is or he you know because everything is about you know technical verbiage this is one of those things where it's going to defer to him

[00:24:02] and he's in the habit of having being in those rooms right you know for maybe the last 30 years of his life he just got to monologue he got to boss people around on the and if I go

[00:24:32] in and I'm the most hateable that I can be he's not going to be able to resist he's to want to take me in the courtroom

[00:25:01] he's able to play Jess up by pricking his hubris and that's how he wins it's kind of a goofy courtroom drama right it's sort of like like I said I don't know if anyone's that great of a lawyer but Bacon in this room yeah it right I mean

[00:25:31] they're typically it feels like courtroom dramas are like like they're just they're dumbed down enough so that an audience can can kind of keep up but it it's

[00:26:01] paced so well and it really doesn't bog down I mean it really is like I said it's a lot of dumbing down it feels like but it still works but it works almost again this is where I think I go back to like it feels like a musical like it just feels like the dialogue moves this along in such a way that like a song would in a musical I guess we're singing now and yeah it's almost like the rules of the courtroom

[00:26:31] are who can who can most convincingly like demonstrate their righteous indignation with an emotional speech right who's gonna win not the person with the law on their side it's the person who delivers the most emotional speech it works for this movie and I don't know if it could work for any other movie it's a little it's kind of like I said it's a vehicle for Sorkin to have his

[00:27:00] monologues on display I don't know if like like I would be interested to talk to someone in the JAG corps to figure out like where are all the problems with this movie but anyway I enjoy even though I think probably a pretty janky courtroom drama when you talk about Hail Mary everything feels that way right because it could have easily just been like nope not going to happen you know I mean obviously there's a requirement of

[00:27:31] this fiction that's in there because this guy's got a lot at stake you know he's about to the thing that makes these men supposedly so strong is their code and ultimately it's the thing that can bring them down their greatest strength is their greatest weakness so the other thing that is

[00:28:01] a little bit janky about this is the whole flight log thing like if you were going to explain to me why the flight logs are important like there's no doubt that they're important jessup doctored the flight logs how does that connect with anything that's going on in the plot yeah the whole point being that like if i guess they're saying they had a wait like they couldn't get him out

[00:28:46] it was not going to happen so like it would it be so bad to say like yeah we didn't send him out on the first flight we had to do some paperwork and we got him it

[00:29:16] it it it almost like the cover up is worse than the crime in this case right and ultimately you need to have a

[00:29:46] again a total bluff there's not there's there's going to be no value if these guys testify but but Jessup is under the impression that if anything shows that something was altered now there's another case right I mean that's yeah it's a way to raise the stakes of the film and

[00:30:16] this doesn't help the plot along at all right like would it be better to prove that the transfer order was written after he was already right yeah that would be more effective if there was a way to do that that seems more well and

[00:30:46] if we could find this guy if we get this guy to testify this will be our smoking gun and all he has to do is say no this is what we are supposed to do that's right and then of course he

[00:31:16] wrote princess bride he wrote butch casted and sonette's kid also wrote a great book about hollywood and how to write screenplays so he looks at the script by sorkin and he makes a note and says at the end you should reveal that these guys were a total bluff that they were actually not going to testify to the earlier flight

[00:31:46] because I guess what sorkin did originally was they were in the room because they actually did remember and they were going to testify that they remember that there was an earlier flat that landed and Goldman's little note was it would be more satisfying at the end

[00:32:45] engine alive even after the release valve has been set yeah i like it and i like the way it ends i like it it ends right at the end of the the trial you don't even leave the courtroom i think it's the same kind of camera shot they used in inherit the wind and uh you know the the old timey script you know the the old timey font the end yeah which

[00:33:12] interesting it was it was one of these it's one of these things where it's like no that was it that what else are you going to be able to deliver that's going to make this movie better probably nothing let's end right here that's the perfect ending how did you feel about the the end of part i like the ends i kind of miss them yeah it's a little little nostalgia for me

[00:33:40] i mean it was but yeah because it's i i just found myself really like musing over it after a while like i'm like why though like it it gives it almost it almost reads a little self-important and there it is it's all finished it's like yeah i mean oh no that's that's a sorkinism like

[00:34:05] self-importance is like fundamental to sorkins everything that sorkin does but but but but rob rob reiner doesn't have to do that that's true this is this is a so and and so i think we should talk about reiner too okay before we talk about reiner i do i want to talk about this font at the end right i remember the first time i saw a marvel post-credit scene it was like oh cool i like

[00:34:33] i thought this was over and it's not over and oh that that's gonna get me excited about the next film right that might have worked twice for a while it gets old and then it was like oh come on man i just sat through a half an hour of commercials i sat through your three-hour movie

[00:34:57] i sat through all of this these cgi set pieces now i've got to sit through all of the credits to get to what might be a throwaway joke at the end right that may or may not get me hyped up for the next movie and even if i want to go home and just watch it on youtube eventually

[00:35:22] my kids are not going to want to leave the theater until they see this thing right so i must have sat in 17 movie theaters a good 10 minutes longer than i should have if i could have an old-timey curse of the end on all these marvel movies giving you permission to go oh i would i would take it in a heartbeat i would take it in a heartbeat i don't think i don't think

[00:35:50] people know how to end movies usually um but i thought this worked really well i didn't mind the i didn't mind the uh the self-importance of it yeah i i because i i try to read it like i'm you know like this just doesn't feel because it's such a specific thing to do uh in movies that don't do it anymore and the movie wasn't like i don't know if it was i i started reading like is this trying to put

[00:36:18] itself into sort of this pantheon of like as far as it's concerned this is a classic movie already you know and i think that is what it said it worked it totally worked i also i also read it as um a bookend of formality because like this movie is very very well structured in the way that like

[00:36:40] it spends a lot of time in the beginning in the opening credits um watching the uh watching how the synergy of marines working the gun drills in unison yeah and it's like such an important part of what this movie is going to be talking about right it's like look at this look at this precision this precision does not come by accident and there's a classicness to it so that's why i saw that the the

[00:37:06] end almost to me book ended like there's a classic quality to this this is it's there's a formality to it and it ended formally okay let's talk about the beginning so that first scene you got the the gun drills this does a couple things for the film in sort of economy of space it establishes a world

[00:37:28] these guys must have practice for hours and this ritual makes no sense in my life right but in their world it's it's important enough to practice over and over and over and over and it's very performative and they're wearing uniforms that you know it's like it's not just military uniforms it's dressed uniform

[00:37:52] so this is all about pomp and circumstance this is a world wherein a devotion to this ritual makes sense and also i think it's it's yeah so it sets that up but it also sets up um whether the viewer realizes or not say the things that you just said just like this makes no sense to me why is this important this almost seems uh you know contradictory to what i'm viewing like you know there there's this

[00:38:22] this mentality going throughout the film especially from the marines which is like we save lives we protect lives we protect lives like i hey you know the unjustifies the means because at the end of the day you want me to protect you i'm you know i'm a badass and watch me do this little dance um that like this it's a performance that is elevated in their minds but at the same time it's like to what end could you have been spending any of that time when you were doing your choreography

[00:38:48] into just you want me on that wall you need me on that one also you like to watch me do gun tricks you need me pirouetting you need me plié you can't handle my two-step i said military i wrote down military gun drills are break dancing for white guys yeah i like that's that's good i like that it's like

[00:39:14] yeah it's like it's you're you're using your body to kind of create an optical illusion but for white guys they need a rifle to make it happen that's right they're popping locking and loading okay all right let's talk about reiner um were you an all in the family guy um like it existed

[00:39:43] in my house i remember watching it and thinking why what is why why is this on tv like yeah right i mean it was it was one of those things where like my my family seemed to like have a reverence for for it right um and i you know most of it i think is just because uh my father was racist and so was archie bunker so it's like if you felt like he was finally

[00:40:11] getting representation on tv for all those years your dad wasn't around you could at least pop on archie bunker yeah exactly and they could say well this is what dad thinks about what's going on right now uh i i so i knew i knew that that rob reiner's character was called a meathead um i think as a kid that was like the only thing that really interested me why is his name they'd be watching it they would be watching it and then when archie bunker would call

[00:40:37] his son-in-law meathead i'd go well that's funny but that was it like for me it was like just a show where where the word meathead is going to come by every once in a while so yeah underrated insult by the way we should bring back meathead for sure did that meathead i mean it's it's pretty it's pretty rough i mean just reducing your head which which houses your brain into just meat maybe the original nipple baby maybe you know carl reimer was

[00:41:06] kind of like comedy royalty sure and here comes rob and then this is spinal tap and it was kind of like i mean i i think that there is something about someone who was known for being in a sitcom it takes them a while for you to take them seriously on on the big screen especially then like especially when there was a huge gap between television stardom and film stardom

[00:41:35] yeah the the thought was this is the minor leagues yeah and most people just go straight to the majors if they're going to be in the majors right so it was it was such a big deal like when somebody would leave like when shelly long leaves cheers it's like whoa this better work or even when like cluny leaves you know even even then it was sort of like well because because because that's off wasn't that off the heels of david caruso leaving nypd blue and then like just baiting into right right

[00:42:04] until he comes back to tv later right right so this was sort of before all that when tv was kind of something that you might do on the back end of your career right it's like like mickey rooney was tried to do a little television for a while uh didn't didn't really work was that roomies with uh

[00:42:27] with the carby that's right that's right now was this a spinal tap was that his first film uh i believe so i was just looking this up because it's not like a throwaway comedy it's sort of like no let's play with the form it's very avant-garde yeah that was his directorial debut it's a pretty impressive directorial debut because like i don't know how much i don't know

[00:42:55] how much this was sort of influenced by monty python or something like that but that's a pretty impressive debut and then immediately it's like oh geez i guess we should take meathead seriously right because it's yeah but then he then he directs the sure thing not familiar with the sure thing

[00:43:15] with john cusack oh i probably would enjoy this um and it's uh yeah i don't i don't know if it's uh yeah i never saw it i'd be curious because uh it is i don't know if it's like a coming of age type thing or or what but uh but yeah so so that's interesting like so the year after he comes up with this is spinal tap it's the sure thing next year stand by me next year stand by me and uh

[00:43:43] establishes a little connection with guest right christopher guest guest guest is in this is spinal tap guest is in princess bride small part guest is in few good men small part right um not stand by me he gets to work with keeper keefer's and stand by me for sure so kind of known for like

[00:44:09] great sets great to work with everyone likes to be on his in in his crew but in terms of themes he's he's all over the place he really is and it's hard to find um like i would almost like i might my initial thought was to sit there and say well thing with a few good men it's very enjoyable it's sing-songy it's all these wonderful things um and it just feels like but at the end of the day

[00:44:36] it does no harm and i feel like i feel like that's kind of a and i was like is that rob reiner is rob reiner they do no harm kind of like uh like just and this isn't to say that he's not good because uh this is spinal tap is is one of the one of the best comedies i've ever seen and still holds up i really still yeah right stand by me is infinitely watchable it's very much of a time capsule it's

[00:45:03] uh i don't know how well it ages uh but it's kind of fine you know princess bride is considered it's beloved right i mean this thing is beloved and but at the same time if you watch it like it does no harm when harry met sally does these are all feel-good movies that's that's but what about misery well misery misery is another uh i guess another collaboration with a stephen king

[00:45:31] right uh text there it was a very big deal when it came out well it's interesting to his career like right so spinal taps beloved a sure thing i mean it seemed like it i think it did they think it was received well i just don't i don't have any relationship to it stand by me of course feels classic princess bride classic when harry met sally is kind of an iconic romance film right misery a few good men and then he makes north and north is considered one of the worst movies ever made

[00:46:00] huh and then then he then he makes the american president which is i think pretty well received another sorkin collaboration the ghost of mississippi which pretty bad reviews like not great and then it just all seems to go down well there's a big there's a big element of this that you didn't mention right about the time of this film he establishes castle rock entertainment

[00:46:33] and which because of seinfeld makes billions of dollars right so he goes from sort of you know son of carl reiner to meathead to pretty well regarded director to billionaire and he's he's really on the money side of things after that maybe there's less of a drive to

[00:47:00] make an imprint on hollywood once you have the f you money right so all through the 2000s he's just printing money basically and i think that that's kind of when it drops off for him very very political act you know uh minded activist um so you yeah it does you do wonder if that does affect your your drive um but all those movies that i mentioned that are just sort of

[00:47:30] they all kind of fall into the do no harm category sure yeah um and aside from a light hobbling here and there it's due no harm right a light hobbling but you know this so a few good men does feel like kind of peak reiner right i mean like there's it's uh i don't want to say that he fools me

[00:47:56] but he helps lure you into a world that might feel better than it is oh and that's that and that is exactly a sorkin thing too it's like at the end of this movie justice is done in fact justice is done so well that these guys who didn't order the code red who were following orders get dishonorably discharged

[00:48:24] and because they are dishonorably discharged it makes you feel like no that's right they they they were not you know they were not completely innocent kevin pollack gets what he wants tom cruise gets what he wants them more gets what she wants the courtroom levels everything and even if you have political sway in the world um at the end at the end of the day it comes down to who is morally upright

[00:48:53] then justice is done and everyone can feel like the world is an ordered place again yeah justice justice being the operative word right like hey it it has a cynical it's a very cynical view on the military and uh military or militaristic hubris um but it's like fear not even though we may rely on these people um there's still the judicial system there is still justice to be served and i don't know about you do you

[00:49:22] feel watching it now that it feels like a crock of shit i think that that's maybe how we always should have felt and again this is one of those things where it's like um why do i go to the movies do i go to

[00:49:43] the movies because i want tarantino to do a realistic portrait of assassins in the world no no no i want him to entertain me i want to see a story you know this movie makes you think about like like a syrupy emotion between a son and his dead father that's sort of the heart of the movie in the same way the

[00:50:08] money ball is sort of like all the math is kind of secondary to can this guy stay in oakland to be with his daughter that right that that's the stuff of movies and so when i'm in this movie even even we look back we go we go is billy bean a dummy right so when i look at this movie baseball genius real life dummy when i'm in this movie i i don't i don't almost don't care that these guys are bad

[00:50:34] lawyers and i don't care that it's not realistic that a guy with that amount of political cachet is going to be arrested um this is a fantastic movie and it just it it's made in a way in a discernible form that's going to make me feel in a in a familiar way and at the end of the day i feel great at the end of this movie and reiner is the best at doing that

[00:51:03] creating judicial spider-man sure sure like why not that's exactly it no after this you know basically cruz decides to do a bunch of action films and so he's he kind of feels like uh a super you know he's a superhero and everything but name after this this is kind of yeah like you said this

[00:51:29] is a legal suit uh spider-man kind of character yeah reiner's the best at this and it's unfortunate that he became a billionaire because i would have liked to see another 10 movies just like this and i know that they're fantasy and that's fine so that's a good question though too like i haven't seen most of his later stuff that has kind of been been mostly panned and i wonder how much of it is

[00:51:56] that the movies are bad or they're poorly directed or their dialogue isn't good or we are more cynical oh like maybe there's not room in the world for when harry met sally anymore like all those movies in 89 or 91 would have been considered better like i'm just curious right because it's like there is something to be said for the growing cynicism and like the very fact that i'm looking at the end and

[00:52:26] i'm wondering like well what's that all about you know like what's your you know like like get over yourself and it's like i i've seen this movie you know probably half a dozen times if not more and i've never had a problem with the fact that it said the end before now and i've always been cynic but i'm not to the degree that i am now okay so yeah so i'm a little bit cynical too um more cynical than i

[00:52:50] used to be for sure um but i like to escape every now and again with a movie like this and it's not just movies like this like i will watch a movie that i like over and over and over because there are sort of familiar beats and i like and i know what's coming around the corner this is sort of like comfort food right um once upon a time in hollywood has become that for me like

[00:53:16] sometimes when i just want to sink myself into a world i'll just put that on and watch 20 minutes of it i won't you know i won't necessarily watch the entire thing um i don't necessarily feel that way about this movie but if this movie if i walked in halfway through this movie i'd probably sit down and watch the rest of the movie because you know you know it's ramping up to that jack speech

[00:53:43] and you know how you're gonna feel at the end of that jack speech right and because you think i mean it's like because there's this big speech and then it's like aha all that you just said became your undoing and and you and you get so caught up into that right i mean it's true you do get caught up into it um in a way that i think like probably people who would like the natural would get caught up in that

[00:54:08] scene where you know if if the natural wasn't such a god awful movie like i could see myself perhaps falling that that that movie is uh i can't revisit that movie this movie i'm happy to revisit no i think for sure yeah no this is fantasy it's it's sort of it pushes the right emotional buttons it makes us feel like you know the it's very a team-oriented movie but it's navy porn it yeah it's a

[00:54:37] little bit like that it's a little bit like it's in in a way it's almost like watching a um an nba all-star game i know there's not a lot of defense but man look at look at look at the athleticism you know like i'm watching you know because i feel like cruz does a really good job in this movie and i know we've talked about cruz a bit with the cocktail but um like with the dialogue he delivers it he he gives you

[00:55:05] he gives you exactly what you need in in this type of role and um again not do no it's no harm he's doing he's doing no harm um well at one point he calls to me more galactically stupid he told kendrick to order the code red he did that's great why didn't you say so and of course you have proof of that oh i'm sorry i keep forgetting

[00:55:31] you were sick the day they taught law at law school you put him on the stand and you get it from him oh we get it from him yes no problem we get it from colonel jessup isn't it true that you ordered the code red on santiago listen we're all a little i'm sorry your time's run out what do we have for the losers judge well for our defendants it's a lifetime at exotic fort leavenworth and for defense council kathy that's right it's a court-martial yes johnny after falsely accusing a highly decorated

[00:56:01] marine officer of conspiracy and perjury lieutenant kathy will have a long and prosperous career teaching typewriter maintenance at the rocco colombo school for women thank you for playing should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid that could hurt someone's feelings right well sure that sure can i guess that can harm their

[00:56:26] but like again like the idea that this is how they're talking is um it's funny because like you talk about how you don't like movies like moonrise kingdom because you don't like to see children um given like adult speech patterns and and uh an adult way of speaking and i'm like that's not that different than watching tom cruise deliver sort of material yeah i don't know why

[00:56:53] that like uh tarantino's a similar in that way like if you go to kill bill there's going to be a lot of monologues and they're going to be well rehearsed and or pull fixture you know these gangsters are talking like philosophers um everything is sort of like almost performed

[00:57:18] with perfection in the same way that the gun drill is performed to perfection totally that speech had no ums it had no stutters it had no false starts it was every word was was perfectly yes it was a virtuoso performance and that's not how people talk in real life um but in a movie

[00:57:45] you know if the music's just right and you know you've set up the the stakes just so you know it can feel like uh almost an action movie you know it could be like like that that speech could feel every bit as satisfying as some giant set piece in an action movie as the fight scene and they live

[00:58:11] i thought more about tom cruise uh after watching this i think i've i think i've nailed down my opinion about tom cruise i think i think at some point in his life he just got too weird to act so the same way that rob reiner got too rich to do yes yes tom cruise got got too got too weird yeah

[00:58:36] i think so i feel like early tom cruise was kind of hit or miss that's fine you know he's keep you always kind of gonna get a version of tom cruise but it's very watchable tom cruise is a movie star but he doesn't just become a movie star he becomes kind of like something that's not human like if you were to find out that the tom cruise we've been watching it for the last 20 years

[00:59:02] was like half machine would you be surprised no no no no i mean if you told me that tom cruise never existed i'd be like whoa in terms of like like his his inhuman physical regiment his sort of cultish devotion to scientology his you know all all these things that kind of make him kind of a weirdo

[00:59:30] they have to affect the the acting in some way right it almost seems like lack of self-awareness is his superpower sure sure yeah yeah so when i'm watching him on screen i just he's kind of this weird exotic bird i'm like wait no that's not something's off here i'd like to just watch him brush his teeth i feel like that you you think he brushes his teeth i just think he does something weird

[01:00:00] yeah no there's gotta be some weird method he just tears in the mirror his teeth until they wait so yeah no i i feel like um i've been hard on tom cruise but i feel like he's definitely got stages

[01:00:24] of his career and the later stages of cruise's career are just weird he's just a weird guy to watch he makes a lot of movies too which is kind of interesting like he's a guy that like sometimes the big usually like the bigger the actor the less they they they do because um you know they don't have to and and and maybe the the choices they make are like a bigger deals you know they're they

[01:00:52] they cost so much that they're hard to get and they and they're making really calculated choices but like it just seems like there's always a tom cruise movie okay i want to i want to put him in conversation with downey jr for a minute okay because i think that those two had a similar era came up around the same time both kind of like were fast talking snarky the cocky guy cocky guys right

[01:01:22] tom cruise goes super pure right he goes he he gets into this cult where doesn't drink caffeine doesn't eat sugar sort of this weird weird space religion basically right weird he he's a yeah he's a jedi okay yeah weird space religion

[01:01:48] downey jr gets addicted to heroin and so they both kind of go in these weird opposite directions they were very similar actors that went in very very different directions they both wind up as very very rich people by doing big set action movies in the end kind of kind of two guys that

[01:02:13] started in a similar place went diametrically opposite directions and then wound up basically in the same spot right and they they did have their period where like because like few good men comes out at the same time i think chaplain right yeah so you've got you've got them now dipping their toe into okay this is the transition i'm gonna make right i went from like kind of maybe maybe cute cocky

[01:02:39] not uh not taken too seriously now i'm gonna i'm gonna dip my toe into into into oscar level that's right yeah right and uh and i'm you know they still i mean obviously downey still does but i mean does tom cruise do any of that anymore i don't think he does it's even like downey jr will right i mean danic jr you know has has been nominated even in the midst of uh you know avengers and all that right

[01:03:09] but tom cruise i don't think he's even it doesn't seem like he's interested in that at all well i mean they're both they're both franchise players right they're supposed to sort of top of the call list franchise players the difference is tom cruise never did a superhero movie like never did a comic comic strip movie right which is interesting that he that he doesn't right i mean because he's got

[01:03:35] franchises like he has multiple franchises built around so i almost wonder if downey jr is like no i have because i don't want to just be known as iron man i need to do these other things to prove that i'm more than just a cgi star whereas tom cruise kind of went on this trajectory where it was like no i'm not really gonna do things like a few good men anymore i'm gonna there's i'm gonna do this

[01:04:02] amazing stunt where i jump off a a cliff face on a motorcycle so robert downey jr plays a superhero tom cruise became one right that's right that's right uh all right steve is there a trope a cliché or device that you liked in this movie

[01:04:28] uh i mean i have it's just give me give me almost anything in a courtroom to be honest i mean like the uh the uh the the when he's when he's sitting there at the end and uh you know handshaking yeah lips lips are sweaty everyone's shaking him off right i mean it's just like like i know he's not gonna just say okay i'm done

[01:04:57] i like the uh the very serious african-american judge who's gonna get a give you a little bit of stank eye i'm quite certain either just i like i like when somebody threatens to uh piss in another person's

[01:05:18] dance film i do believe i used that line when we were playing risk once uh that's how mad i was i started quoting this movie um just like jessica i love i love it when these lawyers like meet for drinks either before or after the big trial oh yeah oh those scenes i just give me those i love that

[01:05:46] kevin bacon's kind of like you know what's his nickname is smiling jack ross you know he's he this guy's figured it out you know he's not gonna get too invested he's gonna take his job seriously he's gonna wear a tank job that says uh georgetown supreme court but the owen court's gonna have a

[01:06:11] basketball and uh you know he's clearly clearly on the on the the jag course softball team i just think he's that's you know bacon is just living the life in this movie yeah he and i honestly i think i was actually really impressed uh by his performance in in this movie i mean i was right i was

[01:06:33] considered bacon very uh enjoyable and and usually a pretty good actor i thought he was really good in this like really good yeah fantastic fantastic bacon performance um all right is there a tweak you would have made to this movie um it's a good question because like it does so many things

[01:06:57] uh well um i i think the tweak that i would have i don't know that i wanted any level of romance between demi moore and tom i don't want tom cruise to ever i don't want to think about him sexually on any level that's fair uh because i just i feel like it undercuts the character a little bit because

[01:07:22] the whole to me her her role is important because of how um you know she's navigating this kind of male-dominated uh world and i feel like that there was an opportunity to and i and i thought they were doing more with her uh but then i think to sort of almost put her in this maybe a little love interest type thing and they're like i'm like that just undercuts her like she didn't feel like that that

[01:07:49] character was like she was passionate but it was almost well she's passionate because she's a lady right you know as opposed to you know she's really good at this and and now she has an opportunity to to to do that um in in the male-dominated you know i mean i just felt like i felt like her character was was uh necessary only in the sense that she was a plot device and i felt that that was a little love like there was opportunity there to make another can you imagine jodie foster in this role

[01:08:19] not really i think it would have been amazing i think i think jodie foster would have been amazing well i just don't think in the way that to me it's not you would have had to rewrite you'd have to rewrite it right so that that's that's i think and so maybe that's the tweak right you bring somebody in who you who forces the issue to rewrite it sure yeah yeah um much in the same way that tom cruise

[01:08:45] was originally supposed to be that the studio was pushing tom cruise on to tim burton for edward scissorhands and he didn't want him um and tom cruise was like yeah he was interested but he wanted it like rewrites he wanted it to be more upbeat and a happier ending he wanted to turn it into cocktail yeah he's like he's like he's like it's hard for me to flip all these uh spirit bottles with scissors maybe just give her the scissor hand maybe just call it edward edward regular hand

[01:09:13] we sind theresa und nemo und deshalb sind wir zu shopify gewechselt plattform die wir vor shopify verwendet haben hat regelmäßig updates gebraucht die teilweise dazu geführt haben dass der shop nicht funktioniert hat endlich macht unser nemo board shop dadurch auch auf dem mobilgerät eine gute figur und die illustrationen auf den boards kommen jetzt viel viel klarer rüber was uns auch

[01:09:37] wichtig ist und was unsere marke auch ausmacht starte dein testen heute für ein euro pro monat auf shopify.de slash radio i hated downy i hated downy everything about downy is this dc yeah how are we in washington dc house downy's pretty what do we did we did nothing wrong hell

[01:10:04] yeah yeah downy is they're both i don't really like either than to be perfectly honest i guess yeah no downy's geez i wish that that character would have uh been someone worth rooting for right yeah i guess i guess there's a big brother little brother relationship happening there that yeah it's important to the movie we only see we only see him as like i mean like i'm like is

[01:10:30] he simple he's simple you know it's hard to know that he just you just that's the whole thing that's the whole thing he's just simple so i guess originally in the um in the original play uh tom holz plays caffi interesting so famous for his performance in amadeus right and then

[01:10:55] joshua molina plays downy joshua molina is in this movie as the secretary to jessup when jessup says you know i need i need you to call the president we're gonna surrender our forward area in cuba right right and he just said yes sir he turns around that that was the original downy um throw him

[01:11:20] a bit of a bone i guess so steve is this movie better worse or on par with a ron howard movie this is the question because i think we'll go back to is rob reiner on par with a ron howard i think that a lot of people like if you were just gonna list the movies between those two guys and ask like is this a howard or a reiner it would it'd be tricky it'd be it'd be really hard i think so

[01:11:48] figure out which is which yeah because when i because i might my feeling is to say that this movie is properly howard and in its best possible way sure sort of properly howard in the apollo 13 howard yes yes yes that's kind of how i the common denominator of course is bacon so if you give reiner bacon he's going to be properly howard

[01:12:19] i'm gonna say this is a howard plus three okay um so you think you think reiner achieved something that howard so here's where i think it it soars i feel like the the way that this movie ends is so memorable i mean it could just i mean the the jack speech at the end may be one of the best monologues in movie history

[01:12:48] and and delivered in the best possible way so just the fact that it has that ending like can i find a ron howard film that has that kind of ending i'm not sure i think this is i think this might be a one of one right yeah i could see that because like that you you were saying suggesting that howard howard gives you uh an epilogue right yeah

[01:13:18] so you're gonna say properly howard i'm gonna say howard plus three and this concludes our season of a few good films did did we learn anything about ourselves in this journey steve well i think we did and i think uh this this uh final episode of the season uh kind of uh spoke to something that i think we talked about early on either either in

[01:13:48] the podcast or or or off air was uh we didn't choose a kevin bacon movie um and kind of regrettably and then here we are at the end going wow bacon was amazing it's weird because in the moment in the draft we were realizing wait we haven't chosen a bacon movie and then we didn't correct ourselves no and now we're here and i guess we just all we all we wanted

[01:14:18] to do was talk about bacon i think that maybe that's because we were going to do the um have a season of uh you know the degrees of bacon where um we would each draft a bacon movie i think we would flip a coin to figure out which one we would watch first and we would have to connect our way back to bacon by picking an actor yeah from one movie to the next and then try to see if we can work i'm not sure how the rules would work but i'm wondering if we should commit at this point to just making the

[01:14:48] bacon season happen yeah and i and so the question would be do we do we keep it a degree to bacon where again there's only two bacon movies but you got to go from one to the other through the actors and uh no bacon in between um because i thought or do we just like you know all bacon movies that seems like a lot all right how about this we do a bacon season with a indeterminate

[01:15:16] number of episodes to get our way back to bacon so it could be a six episode season because we get back to bacon on the sixth film or it could be a 20 episode season because that's how long it takes us to get back to bacon three episodes are just a draft i i like to see how weird we can get this i like the idea i might even do some mocks just to see what would happen like i said the trick is we

[01:15:46] each pick a bacon movie right that's where i think the key is we pick it and then and then we flip a coin to say which one goes first and last so we know where we're building so so like so if i say i'm going to take footloose and then you say well i'm going to take sleepers uh then we flip to see which one is first and if it's footloose first like okay we're going to build our way back to sleepers

[01:16:09] through actors so you kind of be thinking like you know who do i need and we can't use the same actor i mean there could be some overlap i mean you can't pick the the primary actor you can't you can't keep lift going okay it'd be pretty funny if our our kevin bacon season was all lift cow all

[01:16:33] with cow all right let's do it let's let's make it happen all right i don't know when we'll when we'll uh record all this but uh that will be our next our next item steve is there a uh half the battle wondergron moment in a few good men uh yeah don't put the bat in the closet i'm gonna say do

[01:17:01] do put the bat in the closet it forces the issue it forces you to see the coats hung up on the rack and it will absolutely change your legal strategy