Hey, rewatchables fans. You already knew we were coming to Boston for a sold-out show on March 27th, but what you did know is we're sticking around that weekend. We're gonna host our first ever rewatchables film festival while we're in Boston. We're screening some of our favorite movies, movies that we have done on this podcast, plus maybe a couple others at the historic Coolidge Corner Theater.
We're doing it all weekend for March 28th through March 30th. One of my favorite theaters in America. We might even make a few surprise appearances at a couple of these screenings. It's your chance to see some of our favorites as they were meant to be seen on the big screen.
Classic mob, heist, Boston movies we love, Goodfellas, The Town, The Departed. Oh yeah, we're doing heat. Again, it's gonna kick off Friday, March 28th at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brooklyn, visit theringer.com slash events for show times and ticket information. Hopefully we'll see you there.
The rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer podcast network where you can find what's it called, The Watch? Yeah, that's it, right? TV, TV podcast. Culture pod with you and Andy Greenwald.
You're on the big picture as well. Try not to be special sometimes. Really special sometimes. Not a lot of Sixers talk there lately.
Kyle Brandt. Yeah. We can find you, where can we find you? Tell us.
It's off season NFL. You can find me on the Good Morning Football program as always. I did it this morning for four hours. I'm ready to do more content with you for the NFL Media Group.
And I'm ready. Let's do it. Is it good to get you groggy after four hours of content? Or are we just getting like, I don't know.
It's like you played your second NFL game in the same day. No, but the good news is I had a 72 ounce mellow yellow. So I'm ready to rock. Let's go.
Change my tired days of thunder. I guess it's sports movie month. Let's go. The speed, I see me drive.
Heat. You wanna control something that's out of control. Absolutely. The thrill and lasts long after the ride.
Concruise days of thunder. Ready to be 13. It starts Wednesday, June 27th at theaters everywhere. All right, fellas.
I guess it's officially sports movie month. We did Rocky. We did Best in Show. We did Days of Thunder.
And we're more than halfway through March. This was a special Kyle Brandt request. Yeah. Why?
Well, listen, very personal to me. I've never spoken about this publicly, but I first seduced my wife with two packets of sweet and low. So it's a very personal story. No, listen, is this movie Team Ootop Gun?
Yeah, maybe. But Bill, and Chris, it's great to be here. I have not watched this movie in like four years after dozens of watches. And as I'm watching it on the rewatch, as the credits are coming up.
Each name that pops up, I find myself saying fuck. Yeah. Like over and over. Yeah.
And it became like the team America, Tom Cruise. Fuck yeah, Tony Scott. Fuck yeah, Hans Zimmer. Fuck yeah, Fred Thompson.
Fuck yeah. Is it a great movie? No, but it's really fun. And it was like running into an old friend.
And it hit that 1990 it comes out and it's just on cable for the next 15 years. Just straight. And you can jump in when you want. What's your relationship?
Yeah, like Kyle said, I also regard this as essentially like a clone top gun. But yeah, this clone looks good. And I have to say that as far as like movies that have aged well in terms of like if you get a good if you watch this on 4K or something like that, this movie has no business looking as good as it does. Like Tony Scott, despite the fact that it sounds like Don Simpson was doing eight balls and pushing him out of the way of a few finder.
Five seconds shoots the shit out of this. And you really can just jump in and watch like a few races and a few scenes of Talt Nicole Kidman kissing short Tom Cruise up against the wall. And you're good for the rest of the month, man. Yeah.
And it's also one of these movies that as the years have passed becomes just more interesting from all the side spots of when they made it. What happened with Cruise and Kidman. The half-ass internet research for this movie is almost too much. It was one of the rare times like, you know, if we're doing boogie nights or something like that, there's going to be a shitload of research and it's worth it.
This is like, how long do we go about Don Simpson? Do we go an hour? Do we go three hours? Should we do a separate thought about Don Simpson trying to cash himself in the movie?
Well, we might have to because Don Simpson and Jay Brookheimer, these legendary 80s and 90s producers, and they're starting this giant Paramount Field they did, which according to Premiere Magazine was five movies, $300 million, which is crazy. And there's been podcasts about these guys. There's been books written about them. The story has been told ad nauseam about just how crazy Don Simpson was.
This was the craziest he was during this entire run in 1990, where he's just like, budget? Fuck it. $35 million? Let's go $65 million.
Let's just argue on the racetrack about a scene for an entire day while we pay hundreds of extras and then not film the scene. This is like the kind of shit you would see in a movie about Hollywood that would seem like, wow, they really went for this movie. This is crazy. This actually all happened.
This budget ends up being like $65 million. It was $65 million. I'm six foot three. I think we have about $100 million.
I'm sure everybody has different takes about what's happening with the economy now, but I think we can all agree we want to get back to a place where a movie production can literally take over the city of Daytona. And put up neon signs outside of nightclubs and whatever that say days of thunder where the producers just lord over the city like kings and Tom Cruise has like a coterie of like handlers and all this like this must have been such a mind-blowing thing just to be fly on the wall for that actually is almost as good as the movie itself. Yeah, we're coming out of the cocaine era. We're coming out of the cocaine era.
That's right, Bill. I was trying to keep it alive. And it's that 80s excess era that still kind of go in an 89 90 these big budget movies, a lot of sequels at this point. I was trying to think like in 2025 what would be a more short thing idea than this was in 1990 where you have Simpson and Bruckheimer and a red red red red hot Tom Cruise basically redoing top gun with race cars.
There's no scenario where somebody could be like, all right, it's going to be let's say Chalamet. It's going to be Chalamet. Okay, who is a producer that was more reliable at this point that Simpson Bruckheimer I can't think of one. What's the sport that hasn't been dove into like this?
I can't like Kyle, I don't I just think this is like a one on one in a weird way, even though the movie is not great. No, if you if you heard today that Chalamet was teaming up with Chris Nolan to make some crazy thing, that's really cool. But it's not the nitro glycerin effect of Tom Cruise over the last five years he had with Jerry Bruckheimer and you're right. It sounds like a fake movie that would be being made in a movie like Chris Ramalta Santa making Cleaver.
It's like thunder even sounds like a fake name. It sounds like a fake name that would be in a movie. And I love that Simpson is going to get shined here today because Bruckheimer I think is so much more famous contemporary to the young people. But it feels like Simpson was really the wild one of the group and everything you hear.
Right. Well, Simpson. So they're talking they're talking in the premiere magazine and basically the premise of this is there hasn't been a cool race car movie since Lamont with with McQueen, which is a very cool movie. It's a little dated now the movie is like 51 years old, but it's so cool.
And I think it was really inspirational for people who care about cars. The Porsche that was in that movie. I forget what actor had it was like Kevin Costner somebody like that bought a mine car. Oh, not the actual Lamont car.
Seinfeld bought it for like a million dollars. Oh, of course. $2,001 and sold it for like $25 million in the last year. But it was in since that movie there was a couple other ones like Bobby Deerfield happened and people kind of dipped in this pool.
But I felt like yeah, I think they felt like this was sitting there. And the other thing that was in that premiere piece was how excited NASCAR was to welcome these guys into their world. They basically this is like if somebody made an NBA movie now and they were like, hey, we need the actors to play an exhibition game. We need to have all your uniforms.
We need like scenes of them in the fourth quarter playing with their players. They're like, cool. Take it. What about a regular season game?
Okay, great. Let's put them in that thing. We'll be 10 day contracts. That's how crazy this is.
You know what it's like? Okay. We have the penguins and the Blackhawks and the North of the stadium. Sure.
You're going to make a movie with NHL. Please, we love to have you. You want yogurt? Yeah.
We'll put them in the movie. We don't care. Take it. That's been asked our here.
So the premise of the bones of this movie CR. Yeah. Tom Cruise will go into the moment he's having his career. Bobby Duvall, big shot Bob.
Fresh off turning down Godfather three for five million. He's like, you know what I'm doing? He said days of thunder. Nicole Kidman, 23 years old.
Had only really done Dead Com. I saw Dead Com in the theater. We all marked it. We were like, this lady's great.
Really should see what happens whether or not expect to see her in days of thunder with Tom Cruise. Michael Rooker. Yeah. Kyle will say we'll put him on the side.
We're going to talk a lot of Rooker. I think this might be our third Rooker together. We do a lot of Rooker. We do a lot of Rooker.
You guys can do the Tom Hanks and the Daniel Day Lewis. We do Michael Rooker and see our stuff right here. Rooker has officially passed Daniel Day Lewis in the watchables. When we do the re-watchies, Rooker is going to get like a special achievement for some of his great moments.
So we got Rooker. We get John C. Riley. We get Carrie Owees.
We just keep popping up in movies in the 80s and 90s, but there's no Carrie Owees conversation. We get Fred Thompson, Randy Quaid. We get a produced by Simpson and Brooke Himer. Story by Robert Town and Tom Cruise.
This fell flimsy to me, C.R. Well, apparently the idea for the movie came from Tom Cruise and Paul Newman doing like a charity race and had been obsessed with racing since he was a kid. And then he got Robert Town, who's a big running sports like a fish and auto passionate fan. Let's just say they weren't at Starbucks banging out pop points on a yellow notepad.
I agree. Robert Town becomes like Tom Cruise's sensei for the next four or five movies. Right? So this is a written by Robert Town for the younger ones listening legendary screenwriter.
Chinese 80s. I think he too. Yeah, if you're just mentioning, hey, who are the great screenwriters? His name is going to come up in the first five six names you mentioned.
So he's in there music by Hans Zimmer and Jeff Beck. Go Kyle. I mean, just go. Just cook right now.
Zimmer, you can have your John Williams. Zimmer is my goat. We just saw him in the headlines for the Oscars, but he has handed this white trash redneck NASCAR script and said, just make it cook Hans. Right.
If there's a wheelchair race, I'm going to score it. And he is one of the stars of this movie, not to step on casting what ifs, but movies first offered to Harold Faltemire. Yeah. Really?
And Harold goes, you know, I'm not feeling it. Can I introduce you to my friend Hans Zimmer? And they're like, sounds great. And Hans is like, I'm thinking there's some like orchestra stuff, but like a heavy electric guitar.
Yes. And we just and that's my and they're like, oh, cook ons. Yeah. And I say in the middle of movie, we put the guns and roses usual in the one out of nowhere.
I mentioned I mentioned back in a dinner party. He's going to come in and do that electric guitar. And then directed by Tony Scott. CR.
Yes. Tony Scott now moving into first place in the all time director. As it should be. In the right way.
I was thinking about this with an unstoppable with top gun with days of thunder. Is there anybody better at shooting moving vehicles than Tony Scott? Yeah. No.
Like maybe the best director of like movement that we have we ever had. And Chris, Tom Cruise has talked about this many times on record. He still thinks there are things ripping off this movie and the way that they shot that and how good it is and how good it looks. And I remember when the three of us, I think the last three of us were last together on the roadhouse.
And after we made some like stupid comments at the beginning, CR jumped in and was like, this movie looks great. Yeah. It's got bones and this movie for all its idiocy and wheelchair races. And we'll talk about it.
It looks amazing. And I think Cruz was super proud of you. Still, he still talks about it. So there's I sent these guys a video that NASCAR has put up all like these old Daytona 500s the CBS broadcast of Daytona 500s on YouTube.
You can watch like there two and a half hours or whatever. And it's really awesome just to go back in the time machine and see how like TV broadcasts were in 1990. Right. But one of the cool things about it is you can watch Daytona from 1990 and see how a CBS camera shoots it.
And then you can see how Tony Scott and Ward Russell shoot it and all the color they find and all the shadow they find and all the texture they find. And it is literally what cinematography is. It is something that isn't necessarily there and embellishing things and lighting things in a way that brings out story. And it's so awesome to check it out.
Well, and then the other cool pieces. So in the 90s, we have the square TVs all the way through the 2000s. And now widescreen's really helped us HD. You can get this on 4K Blu right now.
And if I can look some amazing. You got your beak. Did you get this on Blu Ray? You know, I didn't because it wasn't going to show up in time, but I'm going to get this in Russia actually because as you know, I love Rush.
Yeah. And I think the first rewatchable standings cruise is now up to 16 rewatchable movies. He's a three movie lead over to Nair and Pacino. But more importantly, Tony Scott moves up to nine in a tie with Michael Mann.
And I don't know what we do now, CR. I feel like we almost have to get Michael Mann. We have a few left. I think we got to shoot one next.
We can't have him be tied for first with anybody. Yeah, but we're not going to hit Michael Mann movie next month. No, there's some good ones left anyway. Yeah.
I just wanted to flag that because I know Michael's a huge fan of the pod. He takes it really seriously. And I don't think he wants to share first place. Well, we've been teasing the revised for a while.
Yeah. So Richard Petty said of this movie, the only thing they got right was the numbers on the side of the cars. I don't think this was very well-liked. You're shaking.
It's settled average, your petty. Tom Cruise's first prime, 1986 to 93. I think it's similar to LeBron Brady, some of the great athletes where it's like, oh, this first specific prime of top gun, color money, cocktail, rain man, born in the Fourth of July, days have thunder far and away if you could mend the firm. It's like this confined eight-year run.
And then we get a little weird with the interview of the vampire and all of a sudden we're at Jerry McWhire and to Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, which is kind of like the first mission impossible. That's kind of the second cruise prime. Then we end up with that long stretch following Oprah Sofa, where we get reach here. We get some good ones, some bad ones.
It's a little like when Brady didn't win a Super Bowl for a while. And then top gun Maverick and then some mission impossible. Now Cruise is like in his fourth prime. I was like, yeah, I had to moral in that front.
Yeah. In that front. Yeah, yeah. So fourth prime.
But Kyle, this was the first cruise prime. And he's basically playing variations of Pete Maverick Mitchell in as many movies as possible. Weird as cold, trickle, ranked for you in the cruise rankings. Because I was kind of maybe one of my least favorite cruise characters of this run.
Yeah, it's Kirkland Brand Maverick. It's not the best character. It's not. It's a funny name, but we never get we never get the scene like in Maverick.
He has the scene in his tidy wideies where he breaks down over Goose's death. And that's a really powerful scene. He does really good acting. Yeah.
When you're talking about this air of his prime and I had this in what stage the best is cruise with the greats of the old guard actors in the ring delivering. He goes from 86 to 93 Newman, Hoffman, Duval, Hackman, Nicholson, every single movie it's him and a first ballot Hall of Famer doing high drama. And I like that he jumps off giant buildings right now and it's fun. But he used to go at it with the giant actors.
And this kind of brought me back to that. Yeah. And then Leo kind of followed that blueprint a little bit too. Yeah.
How can I work with great directors and great stars? But yeah, this is a great run. So then he's in Fugidman and the firm. You know, Fugidman is like the super cocky sarcastic cruise.
Rain Man is the full of confidence charisma of cruise. Cocktail is to me, Pete Cruz. That's like my favorite cruise. I just love Cocktail cruise.
And then this is kind of in the Top Gun camp, right? I can call her money as a big charisma like street tough cruise. But I think that the thing you're locating is probably a result of the fact that they didn't really have a script when they started shooting this thing. So there is like...
Or when they finished shooting this thing. She has to be towards like Cole's father being a financial criminal and ruining the first part of his career. Then there's like, this is a guy who wears button up white shirts all the way to the top and yet is in NASCAR. Like where's he coming from?
What's he doing? He's from Eagle Rock. I think ultimately at the end of the film, I walk away with it being more of a movie about the Duval character than it is about Cole. And it's about the Duval character learning to trust a driver again after what happens with John C.
Riley's dad and everything. But yeah, for me, this is way more about racing than it is about people. And it's way more about watching Shiko fast than it is about guys doing great scene work. Kyle, do you think Cruz was trying to make this guy like enigmatic trying to figure him out?
Was that like the Cruz angle? Because it's a pretty muted Cruz performance. Like you could argue this easily just could have been Kevin Costner. Like this isn't like a Cruz dependent role.
Whereas the other Cruz movies, like you can't have Cocktail without Cruz. You can't have a few good men without Cruz. This I feel like you could have other actors. Those guys of his ilk are always begging for demons.
There's legendary stories about Leo DiCaprio with follow James Cameron on Titanic. You got to give this guy some back story. This guy is a huge pussy, Jack Dawson. He's just totally nice.
And there's a little bit of that going on with Cruz. Like when he's Maverick, he's referred to as like, it's got to be hard when you're Pete Mitchell's kid. Like that is a heavy burden. This is like kind of just an idiot who shows up in a motorcycle and his character twist is that he doesn't know anything about cars.
And like a completely, completely half-baked father storyline that C.R. just talked about. Right? Probably because they're like, you know, guys shouldn't we figure out that dad thing for Cole and the third act?
And they were like, ah, no. Just more fucking racing. Yeah. And Cruz basically, it is like watching like LeBron on like the 2018 Cavs just being like, I'll turn it on this game and put up a 32, 11, and 12.
He has like four scenes where he's like, I'm going to cruise it up this scene. So it's enough that he still gets the win for being Cruz. It's interesting too because like there's probably more Vince from Color of Money than there is Pete from Top Gun. And this is kind of where Vince in Color of Money, it's like he's being manipulated.
Like what does Paul Newman call him? Like you're a great flake, you know, like you're kind of an idiot, but I can use that. I can use your arrogance and your idiocy against other players. Cole's confidence and his sort of like, I don't really know anything about cars.
I just know how to drive. Like that is a kind of electric idea, but they do away with it once a brain surgeon falls in love with him. Yeah. You can see somewhere in the middle, they were like, no, Cole's actually an emotionally, you know, and he's like very like unpacked so that we can have Nicole Kidman be in love with him.
Yeah. I think if you're redoing this movie and you could cast anybody from any era, this is like a Brad Pitt mid 2000s. Well, they're doing it now, right? I mean, kind of, but F1.
Yeah. This is like, you want the guy to be handsome, a little enigmatic. I can't read them. But Cruz Cruz has too much charisma to do that.
And I think he wanted to be that, but you know, eventually you can't, you can't contain your inner-time Cruz. I think so. I think he has going for me this movie. It's great Cruz hair, like really, really cool hair.
Maybe the best hair he's ever had. Really? Like a full perc loss commercial, a lot of body. And then listen, the top gun comparison, he's really good at a tight shot of his face wearing a helmet with his name stenciled across it, saying one line at a time when he says, Harry, this guy's going down.
It's like an awesome. It's like Maverick is back. It's cool. You left out one piece of the Cruz pie, the, the blank face of fear.
I don't know how this is going to turn out. Maybe, maybe I shouldn't do this, which they, they use leverage perfectly with the smokes. Yeah. They're driving through the wreck being blank.
The blank Cruz. I'm not sure this is a good idea face. When it's his reengaged Maverick. He's going through the wreck.
Yeah. He's sitting there saying, talk to me, Rowdy. Talk to me. He's looking at Rowdy's dog tags.
Yeah. It's like, trickles reengaging. Yes. It's to the note, the same motion and scene.
Do you think they thought about Colin Rowdy Goose or no? Goose burns. Nicole Kidman, her first mainstream movie because dead crown was an indie. She's 23 years old in real life, playing a brain surgeon.
Just want to point that out. She had a little doogie. How's her action going there? She could have just been sitting in grades.
Right. She's the SCTs in Australia, whatever their version of their. Probably cool. Yeah.
She looks fantastic. Yeah. That's great. And when you think she's been in our lives since deadcon but really since this movie and it's a 35 year run and just thinking about what was that movie called?
Baby girl. Baby girl. Fucking insane movie and she's still cranking it along and making weird sex movies and still going. This person here, it's almost like watching like her, the Nicole Kidman now, like her redheaded daughter is in this movie.
Yes. Like she just seems so young and now you watch this movie with this whole backstory of, oh, Cruz and Kidman fell in love on this movie. CR, is this the prequel to Eyes Wide Shut for you? Yeah, I have some Eyes Wide Shut notes actually later for the different category.
Okay. Cool trickle loosely based on the careers of Tim Richmond and Jet Bodine. Tim Richmond, we did 30 30 and season one about was a pretty crazy NASCAR driver ended up getting HIV passed away, pretty tragic story. But he even came out right?
Yeah. But Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he thought the movie was based on a rivalry between his dad and Bodine and then they stole a bunch of NASCAR stuff like the Cole and Rowdy would drive through the dinner thing together that came from an actual meeting when they're trying to get Earnhardt Sr. and Bodine to kind of get along better.
Cole deliberately blowing his engine by over revving. That was a famous Tim Richmond story. He did it. Trickle Camp Pit because the crew was too busy eating ice cream.
Apparently that happened in 1987, Southern 500 with Ben Parsons and then Cole and Rowdy destroying rental cars. Apparently in the 1950s, these two NASCAR superstars, I know you're very fond of them Kyle. Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner. Those are my guys.
Supposedly, we would just rent cars and then just fuck them up and raise them. Ever since I got Enterprise Presidents Club, I do that. We do. Yeah.
You and Fennacy on your way to shoot. We like to drag race civics. You guys. 1990.
What's your relationship to NASCAR? For me, this kind of slots into one of those movies. To some extent, Rounders, Color of Money, this movie that goes really in depth into a world that I'm like, that's cool. I'm not going to now become a NASCAR fan or a billiards fan or a Holden poker fan, but I'm very interested in this movie's version of this world.
The complaints about this not being accurate to me don't really bother. Yeah, I don't care. Okay. If they did this about football and probably took the liberties they took with this movie, the three of us would be going nuts.
10 guys on the field for the final sequence. What are they doing? I'm sure NASCAR Reddit is up in arms about how it's treated, but this is a NASCAR movie point break as a surfing movie. Roadhouses are a movie about owning a bar and what it's ridiculous.
I get it, but I just, I mean, when I was in 1990, I was in fifth grade and what I knew about NASCAR was this movie. If you went to Hardee's restaurant, they had a little matchbox cars you could buy and I had a couple of them. That's it. I'd never seen a race.
It was this movie. I saw this movie when the summer, I think it was after a sophomore year in college. I just saw it for crews. It didn't make me want to care about NASCAR at all.
It did make me wonder why there weren't NASCAR movies. Then everyone said, wow, who was that? Bert Reynolds movie with Slice Alone, Bert Reynolds driven. 2000 range with Kip Hardee from Remember the Titans.
For sure. That was like, every decade somebody goes for it. But I mean, I'm sure when producer Craig pops in, he's just got it. He hadn't seen this movie until last night.
This is basically Talladega Nights is a parody of this movie. So that's, I think people's relationship under 40 with this whole world is Talladega Nights. I thought NASCAR back then, because NASCAR obviously made that big push where it's like, actually secretly this is the biggest sport in the country. But that was like, they're trying to do that a couple of times.
10 years ago, but this, it was still like very much like a regional phenomenon, I think. Like, I was aware, I think my dad would watch like the Daytona 500 every year. I'd be like, so this is like their Super Bowl and he's like, yes, but it's also the first race. And it's like, it would always, that was basically, it was like, Indy 500, Daytona 500 with the extended car races that I would watch.
I think, I think NASCAR is Apex Mountain for sports that you have to be there in person to really enjoy. And that's what everybody says. And like, I've gone, I went to a race once. I went to a race once I raised 15 years ago and it was outside Chicago and you cannot fucking believe how fast the cars are going.
And you watch it on TV and it looks like they're crawling. And I remember I got to like, I got to go in the pits and like super randomly, this was the time of the Chicago area that Rex Grossman was there. And I was like, what's up, Rex Grossman? And he was enjoying it too.
But when you go, it fucking blows your mind. It really does. Rex is like, I'm thinking of taking us to the Super Bowl and then completely falling apart. Kyle said, that sounds great.
Yeah, but first have the opening kickoff be returned for a touchdown and your dumb ass still blows it. Yes, that's what he was talking about. My relationship as a kid of the 70s and 80s with this whole world was everyone's in a lot of sports, I was straight to a writer about it. Like, I just looked it up because I remember it was Cole Yarbrough.
I didn't remember who the other person was. But there was a big fight in 1979 between Cole Yarbrough and Bobby Allison. I think Bobby Allison. Yeah.
And Sports Illustrated wrote a story about it and I was like, whoa, these guys fought in the track. Like, that's kind of cool. And they never watched it. And then the other thing would be if it was on a network that had football, they would promote it.
Yeah. Coming up next, Daytona, but it just never, never took. I always felt like it was just kind of in the south, just kind of happening over here. You know what, when I used to, when I used to work with Jim Rome, we would book NASCAR drivers as guests.
And the reason we would do it is because they would talk shit and they were open and loose. And it wasn't basketball football players. They don't care. It was a crazy, bombastic thing about another driver that no player on the Knicks would ever say.
So they were really good talk show guests and they were always, the nesters always providing them. Anybody you want, they're trying really hard. And that was part of the draw the personalities. Like the first two months I had my podcast for ESPN in 2007.
Tony Stewart was one of my first guests. Tony Stewart calling on the subway fresh day. I don't even think it was subway fresh take yet. And I did the research and I saw that he had a car at number 33.
So I was like, oh, this would be a good icebreaker. My favorite number, Larry Bird. And we started off, I'm on the phone with them. So I can't see them.
And I'm like, yeah, you know, you know, I, you're one of my favorites because you raised number 33 and he's like, I'm actually number 20. I only ran 33 that a couple races. So it was just couldn't have been off to a worst start. And then he withdrew.
And it was like one of the worst that I've ever did for the party. To Kyle's point though, like how loose those guys were I was just talking before we started recording about, I think it's the 88 day tone of 500 I was watching last night. I kind of went down the rabbit hole. See our right now.
Just doing the work. There's a Richard Petty crash in the 88 500. Really bad. It looks really bad.
But they like, you know, pull them out of the car. They're like, tone the car off. They're like, oh, this is so bad. This is so bad.
You know, the infield and they have like the sideline reporter guy is outside of the medical tent and AJ Hoy walks out of the medical tent. He had been in there too. And they're like, AJ, how's Richard looking? And it's like, what if he's like Richard's dead?
Like, like, what are you guys doing? There's no, this would be like basically like going up to AJ Brown and being like, say Kwan's in the tent. How's he doing in there? AJ Brown.
Like, I was knee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You remember when a Roger story is Achilles, they went to Tyrod Taylor and said, how's Roger's look? And he's like, oh, he's fucked. I'm going in. We're gonna take a break.
We fucked up. This movie was filmed in and around Charlotte and Daytona Beach and went 25 to 30 million over budget. They say, which is probably really 50 because we had Simpson and Bruckheimer. We had Tony Scott, legend of rewatchables Hall of Famer.
I'm not positive he was that easy to work with from time to time. So you have him and then you have Robert town who's on the set with like crazy power and then you have Cruz and it's the four guys and then sometimes Cruz just arguing about everything because they keep changing the script. The crew members apparently made so much overtime that they didn't have to work for like six months after. They never read the day of the filming.
This almost seems too crazy to be true, but apparently Cruz would have cue cards on the windshield because the scenes are being rewritten so fast. He would know his lines and town sometimes would be on the radio telling him what to say. Yeah. Well, Cruz, that's almost crashing because the cue cards.
So they decide that's a bad idea. They have to put the earplugs like he's a quarterback in football with towns is the OC calling in place where you say, Tom, Tom right now on this turn say I'm dropping the hammer. Say it. Say it.
I'm dropping the hammer really quick filming finished three months late and it's crazy shit. Like towns really wanted. I guess two balls character to have an awesome barn. So they built the barn and counts like, and I'm like, let's see it again.
Knock it down. They built it again. It's like, and now still didn't get it right. They knock it down.
They built it a third time. It's like, now let's use the one we scouted before. So they built three barns and use any of the barns for like four weeks of filming. Now, I just want to say, yeah, I will die on the hill of Robert town should get to do this.
And this is what I'm before. Yeah. When you hear stories like this, you kind of understand why they shoot everything on the volume now and everything's like the X. It's like, we're never getting back to the place where one cooked up screenwriter could be like, build me another bar.
Well, Chris, that video that you sent of the real race where they shot this movie, one thing that jumped out to me is in the CBS coverage, there is a shot of cold trickle on a spineboard being lifted up from a helicopter that is not in the movie. So they paid for a fucking helicopter to lift the calm crew. They show up. They show them.
They don't show. Yeah, they don't show the wide shot in the movie, right? It's not in the movie. Like you got to use that if you pay for it.
I think it's because I wonder whether it's supposed to have happened. No, it is happening. No, it's happened to win. They just probably decided that's like the other thing is they did all these reshoots.
They went all this money over budget and then realized after they finished the movie that they didn't have cold trickle crossing the biggest. It was like the secret detail of the whole thing. It had to go back and redo that part after it was already done. It was probably the only thing that really truly mattered to get on camera.
They didn't get it. Simpson and Bruckheimer, they spent $400,000. This is 1990 money. So what's that?
Like $2 million now? A lot. To have part of their hotel that they were staying in converted into a private gym that also had a large neon sign on it that said days of thunder. So that happened.
Simpson had a whole closet of Donne Caron dresses and he would offer women that he met, either the dresses or come be my assistant, stuff like that. They were throwing parties every night. Disgusting at amazing detail. Yeah.
They had parties with people like Tone Lok, rapping. They post-production was five weeks instead of five months because they took so long to film this thing that they were like this movie's going out June 27, 1990. This is coming out in this day. They don't finish until mid-May.
They now have five weeks to edit and finish and complete and get prints out for the movie. Paramount was so upset afterwards that they asked for a $9 million refund on the profit participation from Don and Jerry. We're told though and then ended the relationship that it just started. So basically like Buffalo gives Josh Allen that $330 million deal.
He has one bad season. They're like, we're out. We're just going to pay you off $120 million. Done.
My mind is wandering to that gym you mentioned. I'm just wondering like $400 million gym. What happened to it? What were the top five exercises those assholes were doing in that gym?
I think it's a lot of like curls for the girls. Bicep, tricep, decline bench press, calf raises, like all the aesthetics stuff. I was saying calf and calf and calf. So it's such a sweetheart for thinking that there was any exercise in going on in that gym.
Maybe they really used it once. Can you imagine if there was one guy who's like, guys, I just want to get a pump in. There's nothing going on here. I think the best time to get a pump in was probably between seven and nine AM in the morning because that's almost probably still ours.
Yeah. Like pull down Jerry Jesus Christ. I don't know if there was a lot of games being made in that gym. There was one of the stories about it.
They're talking about the gym. Yeah. And they make a point of saying how crews didn't work out in the gym because he was renting a house and built his own gym in the house. They're just like, they're shooting $100 bills all around the Carolina area.
Has there ever been a scene stealing location to work for something that's not even in the movie? Yeah. I want to hang in that gym. They did a lot of press too about this paramount deal they did.
They took the newspaper ads for themselves, congratulated themselves. They did all that. So Hollywood was lined up at this point. Hollywood was in full fuck these guys mode.
CR sent us a spy magazine, one pager where some of the stuff that we're talking about was in there. It's like 450 words. And it's everything you need to know about Hollywood access. It's somehow, it's basically written like a very, very erudite party report.
Yeah. And this person is obviously talking to people on the set, but it's just such a great portrait of these guys just going full Babylon. Well, and it fucked up. So their next movie is supposed to be Beverly Hills Cop III.
Yeah. And still catching Eddie at the tail end of before I think he moved into a different phase of comedy. And that gets delayed for three years. By the time they make it, it ends up being one of the worst sequels in a while.
But then Simpson just is a fucking mess for most of the 90s and then has the one last comeback with Bad Boys and Crimson Tide ends up breaking up with Brooke Himer and then dies overdoses. Here's an unanswerable question. And you mentioned this, like, is Cruz part of the decadence? If it's blow and women and party and all this?
He's in Scientology by this point. Yes. Yeah. Because there was a little tidbit about how the brain surgeon who's Nicole Kibben's boss is named after his like one of his Scientology associates.
There's some slightly weird crew stuff with that. I like Cruz, but you know, he gets divorced from Mimi Rogers near the end of the 80s. There's stuff in here about how he selected Nicole Kidnin to be his co-star in this. They started dating and it does feel a little recipe-ish.
And we'll leave it at that. $60 million budget, allegedly. I'm going to say it was really about what? 85CR?
Yeah, 8590. The $400,000 maybe not in that budget. It did make $157.9 million. Are you ever have a done Simpson phase for me, Bill?
Like are we ever going to really ball out? I've had it. It's like Watergate. I can just go back and do it again.
I've already done it. I'm happy to redo it if you want. Cruz made that. No, I actually mean like when we go to Boston for a whole show.
Oh, and we have a gun. You're so good. Yeah. I wanted to be a cocaine.
Out late at night in the combat zone, you know, put up a days of thunder. I'm too afraid. The Lembias put the fair got to me. Okay.
That's it. I just- You're also fascinated by it. But I'm probably like Cruz. I like being peripherally near where the debauchery is happening.
And I like hearing the stories after, but keep me out of the rooms. But do you ever think about the fact that Don Simpson was probably your age when he was making days thunder? Oh, he was younger. Yeah, was he?
Oh, yeah. Okay. Right. He was like 45.
He was like 42. They looked 55. Yeah. Don Simpson was 37.
Holy shit. Wait, wait, 47 sorry. 47. So this is my age making days of thunder.
Yeah. So you just add another 10 years. Cruz made $9 million plus points for this movie. It got nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound.
Roger Ebert, three stars, days of thunder is an entertaining example of what we might as well call the Tom Cruz picture and then goes through all the beats of Tom Cruz movies, which I don't need to read. Parts of the potter begin to wear out. They're welcome. But the key ingredients are still effective.
says about Nicole Kidman. Kidman has little to do with love interest and doesn't make much of an impression. I disagree. I think she lines it up.
Yeah, I do. I thought she looked awesome. Our guy, Quik Tarantino loves it. loves it.
Yeah, I saw this. This is awesome. I'm a big fan. To me, Days of Thunder is the movie Grand Prix and Lamont should have been shared at a big budget, big stars and a big director in Tony Scott, but I had the fun of those early AIP movies.
I just don't think it works if you take the whole thing too seriously. He has a love Tony Scott, we should mention. Taking this thing too seriously, I just want to throw out a Robert Town quote about this film. Days of Thunder becomes the struggle of a driver to replace his belief in his own infallibility with the true courage of a man who recognizes that even if some things are beyond his control, he must go on to face them if he is to race, to win, and to live his life.
I come on. That's what he said. That was not my takeaway. He's driving and he goes, Son of a bitch.
He's like, that's basically it. Yeah, that was not my takeaway. That should be a new category. Okay, Bob Town.
Got it. Yeah, I mean, Bob Town probably was thinking about this, like the way, like to me without limits, the other the preponté movie Billy Crudup, that's the version of Days of Thunder Bob Town probably hadn't said, but that's not what Tony and Don were thinking. That's not what they're thinking. All right, categories.
I'm swerving with you guys. I have two categories at the top before most rewatchable. So yeah, we got a move some stuff up because I think it's too important. The chest Rockwell and Brock Landers award for best character name.
Yeah, come on. Our nominees are Cole Trickel, Rowdy Burns, Harry Hog, spelled H-O-G-E, or Buddy Bretherton. I think it's Rowdy Burns. What do you think, Kyle?
I think this category could be renamed the Cole Trickel and Rowdy Burns Best Name Awards. It's Rowdy. Listen, Rowdy says it all. And again, a guy named Rowdy directed a roadhouse.