Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
3:04 – 10:05… was born. Or you were a little kid. Right around as you were born as a movie fan right around now. Yeah. Is this the apex for Philly for you? Let's just do Apex Mountain now. Yeah. Trading Places, Rocky 3, and... Sixers win the NBA championship. Philly's go-to-the-world series. You know? Everything's thriving as you can see from this film. The city's never looked better. It's a full... Four-minute credits at the beginning? It's awesome. Landis doesn't care. He's just like, let's just roll it. Liberty Bell? Italian Market? Let's go. What's your relationship with this movie, Van? So this was the first time I …
The whole segment, as transcribed
I think it's next month is the official anniversary. Chris Ryan. Early 80s Philly. Yeah. Right around when you were born, right? 77 I was born, so I was six when this kid was born. Or you were a little kid. Right around as you were born as a movie fan right around now. Yeah. Is this the apex for Philly for you? Let's just do Apex Mountain now. Yeah. Trading Places, Rocky 3, and... Sixers win the NBA championship. Philly's go-to-the-world series. You know? Everything's thriving as you can see from this film. The city's never looked better. It's a full... Four-minute credits at the beginning? It's awesome. Landis doesn't care. He's just like, let's just roll it. Liberty Bell? Italian Market? Let's go. What's your relationship with this movie, Van? So this was the first time I remember seeing Philly on screen and knowing that it was supposed to be Philly. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think that I cared about Rocky in terms of Philly, because I just wanted to see Rocky knock somebody out. But this was one of those childhood classics. Eddie Murphy was a staple, a holy person in our house, like on the level of like Michael Jackson. I guess he was kind of the movie star Michael Jackson at that point. He was the guy, right? Eddie Murphy prints Michael Jackson. And so we would watch like Eddie Murphy, Saturday Night Live, that video of all of his sketches together. Yeah. And then we would watch this movie. And we'd watch it all the time. Me, my grandmother, my mother, and my sister. So it's like one of the early ones. 80 to 84. Just one of the great four-year runs of American pop culture for him. Eddie's my guy. We've done 48 Hours. We did Cop 1 and 2. We did Coming to America. We did Boomerang. I think this is the last like giant Eddie movie we haven't done. It's the last big piece. Yeah, it's the last Rushmore one. This comes out in 83. 48 Hours had already come out. I'd already seen that twice in the theater. SNL. Eddie was my guy. And this with Dan Aykroyd. He had the Blues Brothers connection with Belushi. He used to be on SNL. The Animal House director's doing it. There were big stakes. And then it exceeded the stakes. It was immediately a fantastic movie. Eddie was just amazing in it. And this was it. This launches Eddie to the fucking stratosphere. He is not only one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He's probably the biggest black movie TV person coming out of this movie, right? Yeah. Well, I... Trying to think who else is in that conversation in 1983. Pryor, right? I mean, Pryor... But Pryor's... This is like sunsetting for Pryor, right? Yeah, Pryor is like... It's kind of ending for Pryor. And Murphy's just kind of grabbing the torch and taking it. At that... Right around that time, you're going to... I mean, Bill Cosby is going to be like a... But Cosby shows not until next year. It's not until next year. It's 84. Yeah. Yeah. And Eddie was like... SNL, even though it was like, oh, SNL's not doing as well, it was still like 10 million a night. And Eddie was still like one of the few, you know, signature black characters on TV in the early 80s. There's also something to be said for the fact that when you go back and look at the box office performance for Trading Places and just a lot of movies, this was an incredible movie summer, much less year. It was a definitive movie summer because I think it was like one where they almost had too much good stuff coming out. Yeah. It was like shocking for the weekends. But the way that movies would last for months, which probably doesn't really happen even with hits these days, like even Guardians of the Galaxy 3, it's like that'll be like kind of in the rear view mirror in two more weeks or three more weeks. It just moves too fast. Yeah. It moves too fast. Trading Places like locked everything up for months. Did you say it was top 10 for 17 straight weeks? Get that through your head. That's crazy. That's like a freaking WNBA season. Yeah. That's people going to see it two, three times in the theater because you don't know when you're going to get to see it again. And it's making it a part of your life. And I think because of that relationship with the stuff, people had a different kind of relationship with stars, you know, and stars had more, more of a time, like, like they sucked up more time, you know, like Eddie Murphy could be the person of the year in a real way that I don't think anybody can do now. Yeah. So the energy has changed, right? Because of the IP domination, we care more about the character than the actor. Yeah. The star. Yeah. So you could ask the question, like, is Chris Evans a movie star? You could ask that question, right? He's certainly a movie star, right? Because he's the star of Captain America. Right. But is he a movie star in the way that movie stars used to be? Probably, probably not. You know what I mean? And so at this point you have like in Trading Places, Eddie Murphy, who is this crazy ascending star. And then Dan Aykroyd, who was a familiar, lovable face for a long time. And it seems like they're peaking. I mean, we talked about Apex Mountain and how what a difficult thing it is to choose the Apex Mountain. For Aykroyd. For Aykroyd. But it seems like at this point they're young, they're hungry, they're in their sort of creative sort of sweet spot. And the movie gets better like every single time you watch it. Like for me, and I've seen this movie dozens of times. Well, hold that because I want to talk about how brilliant this movie is constructed. The Eddie piece of this. Maybe I'm acutely aware of this because I'm a teenager, right? And I'm an only child in pop culture and sports. Like, man, way too much to me. But it did feel like there was an era shifting right around 82, 83, but really 83. Letterman's coming in now as like a real, as a real force. Eddie's taking over Saturday Night Live. You have movies that year, Tom Cruise. That's when Risky Business hits. You have Michael Keaton's coming off of Night Shift and he's becoming a big star. That's Matthew Broderick that year with War Games. It just, like Seinfeld, you start becoming aware of him. Letterman's having all these comics on and it just felt like the start of a different era, right? Whereas like the 70s is like Carson. It's like the tail end of the Rat Pack. It's like all the Godfather guys and it's De Niro and Scorsese and all the movie directors. And it just, all that felt very 70s. It felt like in 83 range, we're moving toward this different kind of new generation of stuff. Howard Stern's involved in there too. He's in New York at that point. The John Hughes stuff is about to start. The John Hughes stuff's happening. MTV's hitting. And there's all this stuff for like teenagers that is in 70s. And Eddie's like at the forefront of it. He's the number one guy. Yeah. And I also love the fact that a lot of the movies that came out this year that were really popular. I mean, even just a couple you just mentioned are kind of edgy, you know, like they're not safe. And even when you watch Trading Places, you're like, yeah, there's some stuff that's aged very poorly. There's also just some stuff that's like very confrontational that you wouldn't. I mean, when's the last time a movie has been made about a homeless person? You know what I mean? Like, like, it's just like there's they just this film looks like a 70s film, but it's about 80s stuff and 80s greed and 80s capitalism. And Eddie is like right in the fulcrum of that where he is like really, really likable and charismatic, but is like very confrontational and very provocative. And that's what this movie is. So the movie is interesting in that, like, I feel like one thing that's happened with the simplification of story is they want to give you mascots for bad.
77:42 – 83:32… This movie gets shown every year in Italy on Christmas Eve, and it's the most watched show on primetime every year. It's the Italians love trading places. Apex Mountain. Tough. Did we, Eddie, we said Beverly, Beverly's Cop, right? Yeah, and that culminates, that's the sort of peak of this run that he goes on. I'd argue that coming to America could be Eddie's Apex Mountain, too. But it's Cop. He's the biggest star in the world after Cop. Coming to America. I get it. Fucking gigantic. That's like Curry's fourth title and not his. Damn, Craig. Sorry, Craig. Remember when Curry won titles? Yeah. Okay, cool. …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Oh, that's awesome. This movie gets shown every year in Italy on Christmas Eve, and it's the most watched show on primetime every year. It's the Italians love trading places. Apex Mountain. Tough. Did we, Eddie, we said Beverly, Beverly's Cop, right? Yeah, and that culminates, that's the sort of peak of this run that he goes on. I'd argue that coming to America could be Eddie's Apex Mountain, too. But it's Cop. He's the biggest star in the world after Cop. Coming to America. I get it. Fucking gigantic. That's like Curry's fourth title and not his. Damn, Craig. Sorry, Craig. Remember when Curry won titles? Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, but it's definitely not this one. John Landis? He's feeling so cocky because he's in the Eastern Conference Finals. I probably should dial it back. He's just throwing shots left. John Landis? You know what? That's a good shot. I think that's probably right. I mean, he was kind of going through a trial at this point. Maybe when he was filming this movie, this might have been his Apex Mountain. Dan Aykroyd, we all think Ghostbusters, right? I think it's Ghostbusters, yeah. How about Hoagie City, Chris? Definitely. There's so many Philadelphia spots. I mean, I think we should stick to the Philly 83 is Philadelphia's Apex Mountain other than the signing period. Have you been to Hoagie City? I have not. Would any city have a place called Hoagie City other than Philadelphia? Probably not. I've never had a Hoagie. Like, what would really be considered? But like, it's got to be some kind of difference if it's a Hoagie, right? It's the bread, but it's South Philadelphia bread. South Philadelphia bread makes it a Hoagie? I don't want it. The Philly... You know what's happened with the Philly food stuff, right? Uh, no. It's just, you know, they're like, cheesesteaks. It's like fucking... What are you talking about? It's a sub roll of cheesesteak and milk and cheese. So just to let you guys know, Landis directed Coming to America. Philadelphia is one of the best eating cities in this country right now. Are you sure that Coming to America is not John Landis' Apex Mountain? Are you sure, bro? It's hard for me to give it to him because he did have a murder trial before. I don't know before that. I want to go pre-murder trial for him. But it's the... Quite simply, the biggest movie he's ever directed, right? You don't think Animal House might be as Apex? Does it change movies in some ways? Well, it's the question of when did he have the most juice? Is what you feel like for Apex. Not just the biggest you... Yeah, it's like when could he have done any project he wanted? It's probably after Blues Brothers, honestly. Because Blues Brothers did well. Who knows? Amici and Bellamy, no. How about Philly movies? Is it Rocky 3? No, I mean, this is my favorite Philadelphia movie by far. If you can make a case, this is the Apex Mountain for Philly movies. Sure. Best Blowing. Philly is like... And then 81 is Blown, right? Yeah, but this was so successful. But I'm saying that early 80s in Philly is like a real... It even has the four-minute Philly montage. And I don't know. Philly is just so... This is my favorite Philadelphia movie. This is a Philly, Philly... It almost has to be Philly. Yeah. What about Creed? For Creed now. I love Creed. Creed's good. 12 Monkeys. It's good. Oh, that's what 12 Monkeys is in Philly. How about eating salmon in a Santa Claus suit? Apex Mountain. Pass. For sure. Paul Gleason Breakfast Club? Yeah. Commodities? Yes. Oh, no. Yeah. Absolutely. Did you ever think about frozen orange juice? Didn't even know what they were. Concentrate before or after? I had no idea you could trade frozen orange juice. I thought the whole point was that it was frozen. The other thing is there was no internet when this movie came out, so you're just in the theater like... Okay. All right. I can't money now. Cool. Thanks, guys. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. You got to say so. The other thing about this scene is it's so chaotic of how they're doing the deals where they're just like grabbing pieces of paper. And it's like, it doesn't seem like it's a very official process. Like they're doing a, hey, one, one, two, they're doing the wholesaling thing. Best racehorse name. Billy Ray Valentine is just a great name. I don't know if that's a racehorse name, but it's... It's good. It's Billy Ray Valentine. I have Constance by the Lake. Constance by the Lake is a really good one. Pickinets. Oh, I can't wait for this. I have some good ones for you guys. How rich was Winthorpe to have such a great butler? Because they replace him and it's like, you're making $80,000 a year. But the butler works for the Dukes. Dukes. Yeah. That's why the butler can tell them what to do. The Dukes own the house and they essentially have the butler too. So all of that stuff is coming with his... So if I'm Winthorpe, I'm probably worth more than $80,000 a year. You give me a house and a butler? Yeah. But he's the MD of that firm, but it's like everything he does is paid for by the firm so they can take it away. It's like he's... Basically being like on a fucking 10-day minimum. Yeah. It's not making that much money, but at the same time, you get to fly around and get all this stuff for free. Why did the Dukes live together? They're brothers. I mean, they're brothers. They have a big family house. Neither of them got married? They don't have any... Neither of them are married, have kids? They're just like, hey. They're probably too cheap. What are they, like fucking stepbrothers? They're too cheap. John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell? They're bros, bro. They have the love of brothers. Mom, I need my meat. Mom. I'm guessing they're both widows? I don't... I don't know. I didn't get the implication. I thought that they were just like old spinster dudes who have like... They're married to the game. Yeah. Arsenic and old lace, but they're men. You know what I mean? Two single old rich guys who live together? That's not weird? What are you trying to say? I'm asking you why didn't they have... Why did they live together? They're both rich. Why didn't they have their own houses? Yeah, but... What's the point of living together? For... Companionship? For... Companionship? Yeah, they're best friends. They sleep in the same room? What happened? By the way, do we know that they live together? Yeah. They have the whole scene when they get picked up. They're getting dressed.
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