Nathan Hubbard, spring has sprung, the birds are chirping, and the pop girls are pop-girling. Oh, and you know what that means, Nora Prinziati. Every single album is back. This spring is packed with new releases from some of the biggest pop stars in the world, including our girl Taylor Swift, and we'll be covering it all.
We'll of course break down every angle on the torture poets department, and we'll also cover new music from Beyonce, Dua Lipa, Maggie Rogers, Casey Musgraves, and Ariana Grande. It's pop girl spring on every single album. New episodes starting March 28th. On Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm King Kong. I'm Godzilla. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about Steve Martin. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Morgan Neville, the director of Steve, a documentary about the life of a legendary stand-up comedian, movie star, author, playwright, banjo player, Steve Martin.
You know Morgan's work from the Oscar-winning 20-feet from stardom. His portraits of Orson Welles, Anthony Bourdain, Mr. Rogers, among many other hallowed, unusual pop-cultural figures. Morgan, one of the most insightful and kindest only comes around.
I hope you'll stick around for our conversation. We'll talk about Steve. We'll build Steve Martin's Hall of Fame on this episode later in the hour. But, Amanda, I've been out.
I've been sick. A lot's been happening in the world of movies. Do you want to do like the 10-second recap of how you're doing now? People are concerned.
I'm very excited. What we've learned recently from the United Kingdom is that you want to give some information. So that speculation doesn't go awry. I mean, you and I have toddlers, so we do get sick from time to time.
Much more so than when I was an adult without a child. My daughter was wildly sick. Running up to a trip to New York. She got me sick, as happens.
I got on the plane. When I got on the plane, my body was like, you fucking fool. And I picked up, I don't know, a whole host of contagions, infections. But I had no speaking voice for four full days.
As you may hear on the show. Not totally back yet. I'm getting there. And I appreciate all the kind words.
The people who had not kind words, that's just weird. I honestly don't know what the vibe is there. But anybody who had a nice thing to say, I appreciate it. Happy to be back doing the show.
Very happy to be back in the time of Godzilla Kong. Same. This is the movie sensation of the year. Maybe more so than Dude Part 2.
I had this movie made like $200 million over the weekend. I did not see that coming. I saw it a few weeks ago to screening. I'm excited to talk to you about it.
Because you and I talked about Godzilla vs. Kong in 2021 in the hallowed pandemic days. That was actually one of the surprise hits of that time. Even though it was a day and date movie.
I remember I saw that movie at a drive-in. And I was like, it was pretty fun. I think I watched it at home. And still had a great time.
You did. I remember. You did all punching. This is the second movie in the MonsterVerse series directed by Adam Wingard.
Director who I've always had a lot of time for. Chris Bryant and I. Huge fans of his. He directed your next.
He directed the guest. He was a really big of the genre. Killer. And he's now thrown himself headlong into the MonsterVerse.
A lot of notable things about this movie. Is this a great film? Will this go up there with Oppenheimer, Anatomy of a Fall, Harvey? I don't think so.
Yeah, I don't think so either. And I would say in particular the third act is, to quote you, quite poor. Quite poor, yeah. But five minutes into this movie I was like, oh sick, I love these movies.
I don't care. I just don't care. It was so dumb. And I have no time for the Magic Moth or whatever.
Mothra? Mothra is a character, yes. This is a canonical Godzilla character, yes. Okay, say more.
Well, these movies are doing an interesting thing. Maybe this is a chance to talk about. So these are American productions. Legendary, the big production company, has the rights to these characters.
They've been making these movies since 2014, since the Gareth Edwards Godzilla movie. And so they're using the kind of Toho Japanese brand of Godzilla movies, which started in 1950, but really had this kind of boom time in like the 60s and 70s, where they're making these like schlocky, but amazingly fun, like man gets in monster costume and flies around and punches each other kind of movies. I love those movies. There's an amazing criteria in the box set of all of those movies.
They're super fun. But there's been something interesting about Americans trying to make these movies where they want to have this kind of fealty to these characters like Mothra, which is a very kind female character, a kind of non-violent monster character in the Monsterverse, but just kind of wedged into this movie because people are like, I fucking love Mothra. Is it because you don't like bugs? What's the issue here?
Well, I do also think they're fealty to whatever, I'm assuming some of the mythology of Hollow Earth and the, you know, the tribe that protects. The Iwi. The Iwi, right. I don't think any of that stuff is canonical.
I can't recall. Yeah, that just all felt a little bit like we got to make a sequel and we got to jam some more monsters in here and also fill out this absolutely pointless story, which up until then was basically just Rebecca Hall doing Amanda's Science Corner, which was like incredible. The first 20 minutes is monsters running around and then Rebecca Hall in like fake Fox News being like, we discovered a second dimension of the Earth called Hollow Earth where King Kong can live happily and Godzilla will live on the surface. And as long as the portal does not open up, we have nothing to worry about.
And that, I mean, but like maybe you should play Amanda's Science Corner because that is literally, and it's so dumb. Welcome to Amanda's Office's Science Corner. And I love it so much. And then they just fight for a while in their respective homes.
There's an interesting thing in all the Monsters movies, which is they get these incredible actors in these movies. John Goodman, Brie Larson, we're in the Kong movie. You have Bryan Cranston and Julia Binoche in the original Godzilla movie in addition to Elizabeth Olsen and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. In these more recent movies, you have Alexander Skarsgård, you have Millie Bobby Brown, you have Aiza Gonzalez, Lance Reddick, the late Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Timmy Bashir.
Back for this movie, you've got Rebecca Hall, one of the most celebrated actors of her generation. Brian Tyree Henry, one of the best actors of her generation. You've got Dan Stevens having a shitload of fun. Really top shelf, great movie presences.
And they get very little to do and they get killed very quickly or they're just exposition machines. Yes. But because the show is a monster, right? So like it's one of the most transparent paycheck situations in modern movies right now.
Like if you take a job in a movie like this, it is only for the money. Yeah. And frankly, that's fine. That's fine.
I can't help you for that. But it's really funny when you have to read like this quite serious scientific expositional dialogue. Which also just makes no sense because then she spends a lot of time talking about what Kong is actually a social creature. And so he's really lonely in Hollow Earth.
And you know what Godzilla hates everyone, but it's like trapped on surface Earth because he has to like eat all the nuclear radiation to protect us, which we appreciate. We do. We like to say thank you to Godzilla. But it is, yeah, underappreciated, which we'll come back to.
But it is sort of like a, what if you guys had just put a solitary creature in Hollow Earth and let King Kong have some fun with his friends on surface Earth. Love it. And then also, put Godzilla in Hollow Earth. Let the monkeys roam on Earth.
But then you don't have to wreck the fucking pyramids in order to get Godzilla down to Hollow Earth to solve the problem, which is ultimately what happens because it's really only Godzilla that can save the day. Sorry. Let's just go right into this. Yeah.
We had a text exchange on Friday. You saw the film. No, no, no, no, no. And I'll be really honest.
And people might get mad, but I also think that people misunderstand the experience of cinema in 2024. You and I had a text message during my 3 p.m. Thursday showing of Godzilla vs Kong. I was sitting in the very back.
There were two other people in the theater sitting in front of me. My brightness was turned down, and I had some thoughts that I wanted to share with you from the very, very first premiere showing of Godzilla vs Kong. And just in case anyone's wondering, the X is silent. The X is silent.
It's Godzilla vs Kong vs The New Empire. Why don't we just do a dramatic re-enactment of our text exchange? I think these were some salient thoughts that were shared here. Okay, let me pull it up.
Anyone being like Yerba's merging the sanctity of cinema, it's like, you don't understand the world right now, and also you definitely don't understand these movies, because I had the best time. It was a lot of fun. The second act in particular was a lot of fun. Right.
Okay, so this is Thursday, 3.36 p.m. I went to Landmark, my favorite theater in Pasadena. Everyone's so nice there. Still never been.
Love it. It's wonderful. I'm a Landmark member now, so I can take you. But they only have 10 minutes of previews also.
So this is about 26 minutes into the movie. Okay. And I think it's when Godzilla's very lonely in Hollow Earth. Kong.
Oh, I'm sorry. Kong is very lonely in Hollow Earth. And Godzilla has just saved Rome from a giant spider thing. Yes.
But everyone's worried about Godzilla. No one knows what Godzilla's up to. And so I just texted you, why can't Godzilla and Kong be friends? And I said, I was hoping we could explore how their relationship resembles ours.
Always there for you if you need me, but we have some disagreements. Also, like me, Godzilla loves a European vacation while you live alone beneath the Earth. That is accurate. Kong is the king, though.
Godzilla won an Oscar and slept at the Coliseum. But Kong had a cavity because he gets to eat what he wants. Okay. And we're entering a spoilatory point now, even though I texted you this before it actually happened, but it was pretty clear what was going to happen.
Yeah. But it was very obvious. And listen, as Godzilla, I knew what was coming, right? I hate when I have to cut my trip short to help you defeat the Skar King.
Yeah, but you got to meet my little buddy Kong. And then I said, miss me with this dragonfly, though. And I just wrote, asterisk, Mothra. It really looks.
It looks more like a dragonfly. I understand. Please respect Mothra. Yeah, I mean, you're Godzilla and I'm King Kong.
There's just no... I've never seen us more deeply in two characters than in those two characters. It's really, really true. Godzilla is just going only in Europe, right?
Because first, he's in Rome. Or she's in Rome, I should say. I don't know why I'm gendering it. Interesting.
And there is some sort of just... The powerful woman has to come in and save the day. Yeah. Never understood, never appreciated.
Sort of the Hillary Clinton of the monster. Yeah, totally. So then she takes a nap in the Coliseum, like you do. Only the finest accommodations.
Then she goes to France for a while because there's some nuclear activities that she's got to calm down. You know, just always putting out other people's fires. This is truly how you see yourself. Then, I mean, I'm just like alone, you know?
It's like, you guys didn't fucking think ahead. So now I have to eat all the radiation. And then Greenland, Iceland, which I don't know about their European status, like EU status right now, but you know, it's still the same hemisphere. Okay.
And there's like a shark. What was that creature? It's like the Tifia. It's an underwater creature.
Yeah, I prefer warmer water. So I wasn't totally paying attention during that. And then King Kong lures her to Cairo. And I have always wanted to see the pyramids.
So I was actually very, very upset when they just crushed them all. Yeah. Godzilla is a messy bitch. Like, let's be honest about this.
Yeah. Like, Godzilla is like, no problem. I'll just destroy the pyramids. Right.
Well, she's powerful. She is powerful. The single best thing in this movie, I'm pretty certain this takes place at the pyramids. The single best thing that happens in this movie is Kong and Godzilla are getting into it, right?
They're having a little slack. Which is the only thing that we want from this movie. And we love to watch them punch each other in the face. It's wonderful.
And Godzilla gets into the power position, and Godzilla straight up suplexes King Kong. And it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. It is a perfect, perpendicular suplex. You get Kong's feet straight up in the air, right down on his back.
It was like a red heart. It was beautiful. Ape community. Yes.
Right? Down below in Hollow Earth. Hollow Earth. Yeah.
Which Kong has discovered in his journeys, and he's had some differences with. He's had some battles with. Right. He makes a kind of little Diddy Kong friend, but that Kong friend originally is an enemy, and he uses him as a weapon.
Funniest scene in the movie. Yeah. And then he encounters this culture led by Skarking. Right.
Who is a very powerful giant ape who has a whip with a crystal of power at the end of it. Never seen anything quite like this. And then also has been keeping another Godzilla, Ice Godzilla. An ice dragon, yes.
Under lock and key for centuries. And this is when... This is a complicated film. Well, so this is when it got a little bit away from, you know, Oscar tier actors saying nonsense so that monsters could punch each other.
So to me, this was the innovation of the movie. Now, I think some people might think that this is just like brain dead moron IP stuff. And in some ways it is. But in another way, it was just a silent film for like 30 minutes.
We were just with the monsters having their battle, who were nonverbal, for a huge... The longest time I can remember in a movie like this. That was like kind of a bold creative stroke. Now, obviously, it's a silly movie.
But halfway through, I was like, this was a mistake. And at the end, I was like, that was fucking cool. So a crucial thing, though, because halfway through for the first part, once they get Godzilla down there, and Kong's down there, and you got all your Skarking followers, and you got the Ice Dragon, and then you have the Eevee, who have like a crystal pyramid, and they're using gravity. And I didn't understand why, but Brian Tyree had me just kind of feeling gravity, also part of the Science Corner, Extended Universe.
But they fight for a while in Hollow Earth, which is video game land. And then eventually, they get up to regular Earth again. And at some point, it's... And they also kind of remove the extraneous characters.
So once again, it's just two big monsters. And I couldn't even tell you... Who was it? Was it Ice Godzilla and King Kong?
Fighting each other? Yeah, up top at the end. Yeah, so then regular Godzilla is up there with Starkings as well. It's a four-way battle.
Right. I'm a little bit confusing, because once Ice Godzilla is defrosted, then you're like, is that good Godzilla or bad Godzilla? Well, he turned, because he was held under the sway of Skarking with his crystal of power. Yeah, but like, no.
It was two monkeys versus two dragons, basically. That was what we had. Right, but then, I mean, you know how it's going to work out. Anyway, once they were out of video game land, and in the real world, and just the monsters fighting each other...
You just went to Plotzenops' town. This is amazing. Well... I can't remember a single time when you've done this on the podcast, but for this film, you were like, let's detail each step of each act of this movie.
Well, I still don't really... I don't understand part of the... That's the thing. It was very muddy and overcomplicated, and lots of competing mythologies, and yelling about gravity, but not explaining gravity.
And I was like, what I want is monsters punching each other. We need to go back to that. And at the end of that silent film act, they are just back to the four monsters punching each other. And that was a lot better, in my opinion.
So the bet kind of pays off, but... And I liked the little Kong. He had big nuts energy, in my opinion. He did.
Didn't he? He did. Wow. I mean, that's troubling, though, because I'm Kong.
What does that mean? I'm not sure. That's confusing. Nevertheless, a couple of other things I liked about this movie.
Kong does, in fact, get a cabbie, and Dan Stevens removes his tooth, and then implants a kind of metal tooth, a filler. And the filling becomes an object of derision from Skarking. When it becomes clear that he's interacted with the human world, and he's had tooth replaced, somehow he becomes more of an outsider, like that storyline. Rebecca Hall selling Volkswagen's?
That was an incredible product shot. I'm so glad you remembered that, because I was just like, I didn't know Volkswagen had gotten into this game. It happens in the immediate aftermath of a very emotional conversation between Rebecca Hall and her adopted daughter, who is an ewee woman who is very connected to the hollow world, and everything that's happening in the hollow. And very connected to King Kong.
And it's sort of ultimately the princess who was promised. She is, and she's deaf, and they communicate by sign language, and they have this powerful conversation about, you know, when I'm with you, we're together, and that's everything to me. And then it's a hard cut to a glamour shot of a Volkswagen, like a Volkswagen Golf. I don't even know what it is.
And it looks like a car commercial. Like, it doesn't look like a shot in a movie. It has, like, it has serious Barbie car chase energy to it. And I just gotta say, to any car company people who are listening, you guys gotta trust the real cinematographers.
You know, this is not... They want their cars to look a certain way. I understand, but it just doesn't look right. I thought the car looked good.
I would drive it. I know, but it didn't look good in the... It stood out. Are you the type of person who goes to see Godzilla Kong, New Empire, and that's like, hmm, I should also get a Volkswagen?
These are subtextual choices that filmmakers are making. I mean, they're trying to incept upon you. Oh, yeah, I have seen this Volkswagen before. Yeah, but they're not incepting it.
That's what I'm saying. It's like, I'm not doing car commercials. So, you know, the car companies gotta let go if they want to get the inception. What would you give this movie in a 1 out of 10 scale?
In terms of, like, going to the movies? Yeah. 5? It's like a 6 and 6.2.
Yeah, 5, 6. Yeah, I thought it fine. Get a lot of candy. Get a big soda.
I got the giant, like, the popcorn. soda combo, you know, that immediately upgrades you to a large, and then I actually had to ask them to, like, not fill the bucket all the way up. I was just like, that would be wasteful. Too bloodness.
No, not even too bloodness. I was just like, I can't actually eat that full bucket of popcorn, and I don't want to have to throw it out, so can you just give me... You want a landmark payroll? I would love to be.
Should I speak to the landmark people and go to CinemaCon next week? Yes. Okay, see what they're up to? They're doing great.
The Pasadena Theater is so lovely. I'm a student. I'm a student. I'm a student.
I'm a student. I'm a student. I'm a student. But cheesecake doesn't smell.
There's just something about dairy in the movies. That's you projecting your anti-dairy, you know, crusade. Do they make a cheesecake with, like, tofu? Yes, they do.
I don't want tofu, no. I want, like, almond milk. I'm sure they do. I think sometimes they use, like, a lot of coconut milk.
Okay, I'm a little more dubious of that. Okay. You want to talk about Ghostbusters Frozen Empire? Yeah, I mean, it's a good contrast to...
Which I also saw at the landmark Pasadena. I was the only person in the theater. I was at a very crowded screening of Ghostbusters Frozen Empire before I got sick. You know, these two movies are funny to talk about together.
One, they both have empire in their title for some godforsaken reason. That's just really weird that they both chose the word empire in their subtitle. They were both semi-surprising successes of legacy IP brand extensions from 2021. Yeah.
The Ghostbusters movie is a sequel to the Jason Reitman reboot of the Paul Fieger reboot of the original Ghostbusters duo of films from the 80s. This movie did not do quite as well at the box office in its opening weekend or in the second weekend as Godzilla Kong. It's directed by Gil Keenan. Reitman wrote the screenplay of this one.
And this movie also has an insane cast and roughly 300 characters. Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, McKenna Grace, Celeste O'Connor, and Logan Kim, all from Afterlife. And then Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and William Atherton from the original films. Plus, they added Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Emily Allen Lind, and James A.
Castor. This movie's at two years after the events of Afterlife. You saw Afterlife, right? We talked about briefly on the show.
We went together. Did we? Yeah. I don't remember that.
Yeah, because remember, I think the green guy's really funny. Oh, Slimer. Yeah, you love Slimer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Slimer gets a look in this one, too. But honestly, not enough of it, which is one of my complaints. In this movie, the veteran Ghostbusters must join forces with their new recruits to save the world in New York City from a death-chilling god who seeks to build a spectral army. That's the story.
Yeah. That's very similar to the story of the 80s Ghostbusters movies. This is a wildly shameless, like, sequel, reboot, extension. I did not think it was very good.
No. I don't think it's, like, atrocious. It's got, like, a ton of very, very talented people in it. So you're just like, all right, I'm just, like, with Kumail.
This is fine. Yeah. I like Kumail. I like Kumail.
And Bill Murray and Kumail have one scene together, which is just, like, two comedians being absurd about Ghostbusters stuff. Yeah. And I was like, this is the most disconnected scene from the movie, and also my favorite, because that's kind of what I want from Ghostbusters. It is, like, for Ghostbusters.
Yeah. Like, in some ways, the team ghost romance subplot is the most successful part of the movie. And also, respectfully, I just, like, don't really want teenagers in my Ghostbusters. This was a problem in the first one, which is McKenna Grace and Logan Kim were kind of the key figures in that first one.
And it's all about McKenna Grace and Finn Will Hart, who play brother and sister. They're descendants of the Spangler family. They like Egon Spangler. They inherit this farm.
And then ghosts start showing up. And, like, I understand that, like, Jason Reitman's, like, eternal project is to uphold the nuclear family forever. But, and listen, I also enjoy my nuclear family. But, like, I don't know.
I kind of just want funny people being stupid. Yeah. And it has somehow devolved into this kind of gloopy story that has a lot of ghostbusting. I thought the ghostbusting was kind of subpar, if I'm being honest.
They silenced Slimer. He used to live in the attic and eat, uh... They silenced Slimer. And he ate, like, a haunted pizza.
Yep. Which, you know. That was a good effect. That was good.
But, like, otherwise he doesn't get to do anything. I thought Paul Rudd and Carrie Coon were very funny. They're wonderful. I like being around them.
They're interesting. They're in front of the trailer when they're just, like, doing the Ghostbusters song. Very funny. Also, I did think to myself several times during my viewing experience that, you know, this is upholding the history of cinema in its own way.
Because this is money that is going to Carrie Coon that is covering, hopefully, living expenses that would not be covered by the money going to the greatest individual film library that we know of. Yes. So, in Tracy Letts' extensive physical DVD collection. And Carrie Coon has been talking about how, you know, these people are saving cinema.
So, while I still don't get physical media, I, you know, I'm happy that that family is making money and putting it to good use. Let's just say I'm happy as well. Yeah. Did you read the piece in The Guardian about physical media?
You know, I know you were quoted in it. You skipped it. Stuff. Stuff.
With all respect. To whom? To everyone else in that piece. Like, I get enough of it.
Oh, that's great. I thought Tim and the Farmers weren't good the other day. I loved him. Nice kids, too.
It just, I do feel, like, personally, I am on the ground, you know, by sitting here across from you regularly and hearing about what you're doing. You're acknowledging a movement. Yeah. Okay.
Are you respecting a movement? No. But I'm, like, deeply psychoanalyzing it. And, you know, I think preserving cinema is great.
Men would rather gather thousands of pieces of plastic and go to therapy? Is that what you're saying? Sort of. Yes.
But that's cool. I got it all mapped out. It's all part of the plan. Great.
Yeah, Ghostbusters number five is, well, it's fine. It's okay. I didn't really like it. Also, it seems like...
There's a huge number of movies like this coming out this year. We've got so many legacy extension brand sequels coming out this year. Right. It's a little, like, already we've swallowed three already, and how many more do we need?
It's not a question of need. You're right. It's a question of have to deal with on a weekly basis on the show. It also just didn't have, like, they didn't even play the music with Gus at the end.
They played it, but it wasn't exciting. Do you think when Ray Parker Jr. wrote Bustin' Makes Me Feel Good, like, was it a double entendre? Or did he know what he was doing?
Like, did he know I'm a poet? Or was he just like, this is a jam? And Ghostbusting, in fact, makes Peter Venkman feel good. I like to think that he...
Someone, if not Ray Parker Jr. himself, was, like, aware of the joke. You know? Because that is, like, sort of an essential quality of the original Ghostbusters, is that people are aware of the jokes.
In this movie, I don't really think... They're not aware of all the jokes. They're aware of finding feelings through artifacts. Okay.
But... I miss Freaky Sigourney Weaver in this movie. That would have been a nice thing to have had. I mean, Sigourney Weaver is always a nice addition to a movie.
I gotta put something out. You know who I thought brought it to you is Dan Aykroyd, who's clearly just an absolute weirdo, and Ghostbusters originates with him and a lot of his ideas. And his original take on Ghostbusters was that it should be, like, a serious trauma about paranormal activity and not a movie about goofy guys. Right.
Overgrown them, yeah. But, man, he always comes to play. There's that scene early in the movie where Kumail's trying to sell him like a bag of junk from his grandmother's house, and Aykroyd is locked in. And I just appreciate his efforts.
That's true. Oh, we didn't talk about Podcast, the character. Yeah, Logan, the character. Who is that?
And basically, he's relegated to a basement where all the tiny marshmallow men are replicating at a rapid pace. That was my least favorite part of Afterlife, so great that they brought that back. Oh, Podcast? No, all the little marshmallow men.
Oh, I don't mind them. It's just the most, like, hey, remember this thing from the old thing? Here's a new thing. It's like the new thing.
Let's see, like, the old thing. But at least they're cute. Are they? They're funny.
I don't know. Like, them smashing against stuff, to me, is a lot funnier than 60% of. But, you know, I'm... It's just, like, cut-rate gremlin stuff to me.
I'm like, I saw this four years ago. We're good. All right. Sorry.
I'm just putting that out there. Okay. Steve Martin? Big fan.
Do you watch Steve, the documentary? Yeah, I watch both parts. So, there's a four-hour documentary about Steve Martin on Apple TV+. Not a lot of people have Apple TV+.
I don't know how I've seen this has been. If you even like Steve Martin, I would highly encourage you to watch this. It is a very expansive telling of his mythology. I thought we could both share our histories with Steve Martin.
I have a very elaborate relationship to him. Okay. Why don't you go first? Okay.
Thank you. Thank you. That's generous. I'm joking.
I think on the Babylon Pop, they keep making documentaries about all my guys. Yeah. Like, they keep making these huge... I think what you said was, he is one of the most instrumental forces on my personality.
Helps shape my personality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
He did. Which actually does track, but continue. When we were kids, Three Amigos, Parenthood, Father of the Bride, there were a handful of movies that came out that were big, mainstream hits that we love. Sorry, Rotten Scoundrels.
Like, you know, when we're 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, figuring out movies. Those movies, planes, trains, automobiles, he's got to run in the 80s to the early 90s of just all-time, basically like family classics. They're perfect movies to watch with your parents. And so, that's an entry point for us, which is very different, I think, for a lot of people.
If you're in your 60s or 70s, you came upon him differently than if you came upon him. If you're 25 now, maybe he's a Superby the Dozen or the King Panther or something like that. So, he's got this massive career arc. But when I was a kid, and I recognize that this makes me sound like a serial killer Joker stand-in, but I was super into magic and I was super into stand-up comedy.
I thought they were both really fascinating when I was like 10, 11, 12. And I already knew who Steve Martin was, and I discovered as I was researching the history of comedy and getting interested in watching HBO comedy half hours and hours, that Steve Martin at a time was the most successful stand-up comic in America, maybe the most successful stand-up comic in the world to that point, which seemed strange relative to what his on-screen persona was, which was very dad-like, sort of avuncular, a little goofy, but not the guy from the 1970s. So, at my library, I would always rent movies and have to take out books. And I was a voracious reader and a voracious friend of movies.
And they also had CDs there. You could rent CDs. And they had his three key comedy albums there to rent. So, I would rent Let's Get Small or Wild and Crazy Guy or all these albums.
And, you know, when I was 10, 11, 12, my parents split up, so I'd always go to my dad's every two weeks. And I fucking hated it. It was so boring. Right.
And the house, the new house is never set up properly. It's really good for kids. It's like, you know, a set of four bowls. Yes.
I've got two siblings. My stepmom's sister was the same age as us, so she was always there playing with my sister. My brother was younger than me. I was like, you know, a moody teenager, wanted to be alone.
And I was listening to these records over and over and over again, which is what a lot of people did in the 70s when they were coming out when he was this massive star. And I was, like, addicted to these characters. Like, did you have them memorized? Start to finish.
In fact, I'm almost sure that one night when I was, like, 12, I performed the entire record for my dad and my stepmom and my siblings. And for the first 10 minutes, they were, like, this kid's second. He's going to have an institution. And I didn't know.
That was impressive. Which is a story that you hear about a lot of comedians when they're growing up. Did you like make tickets? No.
I had a phase. I mean, not for stand-up comedy. It was more, you know, musical theater. Or maybe just.
What was your show of choice? No, no, no. It was original compositions. Oh, wow.
Or maybe there were plays with, like, a dance element, you know. But. I mean, I mean, I've just heard you recap Godzilla vs. Kong.
Yeah, that makes sense. There were tickets. You know, it would be, like, bungee cords with a blanket, like, draped over it for the curtain. That sort of situation.
Like, and often just me, you know, because I'm an only child, which is pretty sad. No, I look back on it now and I'm like, sure, that's easy to make fun of what a clown we must have been. Yeah. But this is why we are where we are.
Like, we were obsessed with this stuff and we got interested in and we stuck to it. Anyhow, if you listen to stuff like this over and over again, like, it seeps in your bloodstream, you start to, like, figure out a tonality that feels, like, you feel close to it, that you get, that you really understand. Steve Martin's stand-up comedy, I think it would probably sound weird to people now if they listen to it, given we've had 50 plus years of comedy since then. But he had a kind of anti-irony, blowhard showbiz persona.
A kind of absurdity, ridiculousness, kind of non-punchline, punchline form of comedy that just spoke deeply to me. That I just thought was, like, the coolest thing I'd ever. I barely knew what he looked like except for the pictures and the CDs. I wasn't watching video.
There was no YouTube. There was no way to access this except for the CD that I would take out. Which is so funny because so much of his comedy, and even a lot of his stand-up stuff, it's very physical. Very visual.
He was a prop comic in a lot of ways. He was a magician. The bass. Yeah, the goofy bass and playing the banjo.
All the stuff that he would do on stage. So for the records to be so big is unusual. Nevertheless, I loved it. That ultimately led me going down to deep dive in his entire career.
I've always loved him. It's been kind of sad for me to watch the last 20 years of his movie career because he kind of, like, gave up. Like, he stopped caring about it. He got much more interested in writing his novels and writing his plays.
And he's a world-famous art collector. And he's just been moved out of the thing that I care about most, even though he was instrumental in getting me interested in it in the first place. So I love him. Has he come up more than two or three times on this podcast in seven years?
Probably not, though he really was so influential and such an influential part of movies for both of us, which is, but you're right that it is kind of siloed off. And so, you know, I probably start with Three Amigos from it. I've seen the earlier stuff, but that classic, you know, America's, like, goofy dad vibe that he did from, what, like, 89 through 2013 is, like, seared into my brain. But I really, I, because I'm not a comedy nerd, I had some knowledge of it.
I mean, listen, like, excuse me is something that we all said to each other in elementary school without knowing, oh, my God. I was like, why are you unbuttoning your shirt? But you're wearing your excuse me t-shirt. I'm wearing my Steve Martin excuse me shirt.
That was, like, really, really upsetting for, like, half a second until I saw that you were showing me a little shirt. Don't worry. But, like, I had this reaction to what's happening. You know, and wild and crazy guys.
Like, you know, my history. Yeah, and I have realized that Steve Martin was probably, like, very big with my dad because my dad does the Mac of the Night fit. Oh. And I had not realized that that was, like, a Steve Martin thing until I watched the first part of his documentary, which is, it's called The Then, is that right?
And it's entirely about his 70s stand-up, like, comedian rise to fame. And it's, like, a whole other life that I did not really know about and, like, was not around for. So you have not read Born Standing Up? No.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in, I want to say 10 years ago, maybe a little more than that, he wrote a memoir, a very interesting memoir that chronicled only his childhood and specifically his rise to fame as a stand-up star. It basically ends when he abruptly quits comedy because he feels he's accomplished what he wants to accomplish. It's widely considered one of the best entertainer memoirs ever written.
And he also is a very, very gifted writer unto himself. But he's got, you could see in that book, a kind of sensitivity, a thoughtfulness, a vulnerability that you hear about in comedians all the time. You know, comedians are always, like, the sad clown and people who are kind of have these unresolved feelings. But he had a kind of maturity to the way that he expressed himself.
And so the first half of this Morgan Neville documentary is chronically very closely within that book. And when I talked to Morgan, he was, like, you know, it was kind of a Bible, but also getting to talk to Steve now many years after having written the book, too, is really revelatory. The movie does a really good job, though, of showing us all that stuff that I was listening to. Yeah, exactly.
And so I think, you know, I was aware of the stand-up stuff. And obviously, like, some of the bits, you know, have traveled down pop culture. But just to actually see for an hour and a half, just see the bits, it is, you hear C. Martin's voice from, like, in present day reflecting on it.
But you never see him. It's all archival and or comics that he's written explaining the experience, which. There's one thing I really recommend to people if they love C. Martin and don't know.
There's, like, a DVD set called C. Martin, the TV stuff, I think the name of it. And it's a collection of a couple of his stand-up specials, a bunch of his appearances on talk shows. You know, on network television back then, you had, like, one-off variety hour specials.
He appeared on those all the time. The movie puts some of that stuff in, but not even, it barely scratches the surface. But it shows you the energy that you're talking about. Right.
And also, you know, it does use his journals and, I suppose, a lot from his memoir to kind of paint a psychological portrait of him at that time and his comedy that also sets up part two, I think, very beautifully. So I guess you could watch them independently if you wanted to, but I watched it with Zach and we were both huge Steve Martin people who really just hadn't seen a lot of this comedy stuff because we weren't checking things out from the library. God bless 12-year-old you and also we weren't invited to your one-man show. That would be incredible.
How much money do you think you could raise if you... Just to hit that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously some copyright issues, but maybe he wouldn't care.
I would need his sign-off. I think it's even less to get small and entirely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But just like, I would pay a lot of money.
Yeah, I probably could recite The Cruel Shoes if you start to finish right now. I wouldn't do it, but if you want to listen to this stuff, it's worth exploring just as an artifact. The second half of the movie, though, is this unusual thing where it is simultaneously a snapshot of this amazing movie career. The movie's not the center of the storytelling, but what it really is is a kind of contemporary examination of a pretty sad guy working through and getting to the other side of his depression.
Yeah, but also a very, very lovely movie about a guy who figured it out. He figured it out. And also why it's very sweet that it mirrors you because he got married, he has a daughter, and he's just obsessed with that. I mean, I thought about it.
And so much of his humor and the first part of the documentary is emotionally closed off. And that is a part of what's funny about it. And then his movies start exploring this more sentimental side. But part of the magic of them is that the movies themselves are very sentimental and he even has moments of sentimentality in them, but there is this kind of distance from it.
He says this fascinating thing, which is that he almost realizes that he knows how to be and wants to be a father by constantly playing fathers in movies. And his movie career is more or less split between these zany comedies that start with a jerk and then go through roughly in the 80s. And then he takes on that fatherly persona that you're talking about. It's almost like a person in complete arrest of development for a long period of time.
He's looking for love. He's got this massive complex of approval from his father. The way he was raised in his relationship to his dad is super complicated. A very common story about baby boomer men who never really find a way to connect their dad to get the approval of their parents.
And it hangs with him for a long time. I've got a little bit of self-association watching him get married, find the right person, have a daughter. And he's like, oh my God, this is actually, now he's like wildly rich, successful, accomplishable love. I mean, he's like in the rare 100% approval.
Who doesn't like Steve Martin? I mean, I don't know. But there is also, you know, another like sweet minor subplot is his relationship with Martin Short. Yes.
Who he tours it now and he does only Murders in the Building with, which I watched half of that. It's very popular. It's very, very popular. I think honestly, Hulu started showing commercials in a 25-minute show and I was like, I'm out.