Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
99:13 – 104:05… of Malcolm X. into your designer for the nation of The Last of Us. What's the last time we read Way of Superior Man? Pretty big. Best of the black man. Apex Mountain. Will Smith. He's taking an L though. He's coming off Wild Wild West, so he is like, he's wobbling a little. So if not this, what's his apex then? I think it's the Independence Day Man of the State. We litigated this when we did Enemy of the State, I think. It's in the late 90s. After this, he does a series of sequels and stuff. I can make an argument. He goes, Fresh Prince, Independence Day, Men in Black. It's tough to beat. I make an …
The whole segment, as transcribed
I had some notes on his living room. Thought we could've needed more furniture. Oh yeah, William. Yeah. William X, you can say that to the honorable of Malcolm X. into your designer for the nation of The Last of Us. What's the last time we read Way of Superior Man? Pretty big. Best of the black man. Apex Mountain. Will Smith. He's taking an L though. He's coming off Wild Wild West, so he is like, he's wobbling a little. So if not this, what's his apex then? I think it's the Independence Day Man of the State. We litigated this when we did Enemy of the State, I think. It's in the late 90s. After this, he does a series of sequels and stuff. I can make an argument. He goes, Fresh Prince, Independence Day, Men in Black. It's tough to beat. I make an argument that Will Smith at the absolute peak of his powers is Hitch. Oh, five. Absolute peak of his powers. Hitch is a movie that legitimately, everything else that we're talking about, all of that stuff, those movies have conceits, big aliens, all of that type of shit. Fresh Prince is very close to what I'm talking about. Hitch is Will Smith directly demonstrating what a devastating movie star he is. He charms us through the entire movie and makes it into a really good film. It's on the rewatchable list. Fox, no. Ali movies, yes. The Jada Will relationship, probably. James Toney, still fighting. And he's in Ali. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I think it's 90s for James Toney. He was like the undisputed super middleweight champion. Don King impersonations in a movie? Yes. Cosell impersonations? Yes. Fox in movies, no. Apex Mountain for Cosell impersonations. Hold on. Don King, Ving Rhames? Do you remember that one? What was he? Ving Rhames did the Don King movie. Oh, that's on Showtime, right? From like HBO. Yeah, yeah, I saw it. Or HBO, one of those. HBO, so that was a lot more. The Devil is a Motherfucker. Michael Mann. No. It's The Insider. I think that this is, like I said, this is the end. You call it, we can call it Apex Mountain, you can call it the Imperial Phase, which is like a pop music term, but they're both like at the peak of their powers, per se. But I don't think this is Apex Mountain. I think it's Insider. Insider was kind of a box office disappointment, though. No, but it got Oscars, and it leads to like, I'm going to spend 110 million on my Ali movie, and they're like, go ahead, Michael Mann. Right. Yeah, I think that run is the Apex, and it might be anybody's Apex. Maybe like Spielberg, Denis. It's not too many guys that have them back-to-back like that. Best name for a racehorse? Ali Bumae. Bumae. That's pretty good. Or just Bumae. Bundini. Bundini's good. Cruiser Hanks. Who would you want to see play Ali, CR? Is it in blackface, or is it like just... No, it's just makeup. William X, get your guy. I had Hanks as Cosell. Okay. I mean, you'd have to. Is that the only way... So that... Cruises have any play for this. Cruises Angelo Denny. Come on, Danny! Come on, Danny! Can I run with you? What do you have, Craig? Stuff hard. Hanks as Cosell. What options do we have? Not a lot. Bob Aaron. Scorsese or Spielberg? Bringing it back for this one. Scorsese. Scorsese. Okay. Picking nets. We mentioned a few. A big one for me, they show the L.S. Quarry fight. And then Ali goes and meets Joe Morton in the diner. And then three weeks later, MLK gets killed. The Quarry fight, L.S. Quarry happens three weeks after MLK got killed. They fucked up the scenes. I was also wondering, do you think that Ali found out he won the Supreme Court case from Howard Cosell? Is that true? And sitting at just a table? I don't think that was true. I think they probably took some liberties. When Joe Frazier asked Ali if he needed any money, Ali took the money in real life. That scene was true. Really? Yeah. Ali was broke. Yeah, he ran out of money. And Joe would bring that up, which is you shouldn't do, by the way. We mentioned the dates that this movie desperately needed dates. And then, it's a hardcore Ali nitpick, but he's speaking differently by the time we're in Zaire. Oh. He's a little slower. Yeah, he's not, it's not as bad as after Manila, but it's definitely, like, the guy in the 60s is fucking flying it out. You start to watch it happen, yeah.
Open the full episode on Spotify — it cannot start at the timestamp, so the segment above is the mp3.
A grade for each call is not built yet. The board's answer is shown; whether the pod landed on it is a separate judgement, and it is not made here.