Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
12:16 – 15:09… the thing. I love boarding school movies. Great. Yeah. Even, even Toy Soldiers I really liked. Dude, I love Toy Soldiers. Toy Soldiers is really good. Is that Apex Mountain? Oh. By the way, season nine of Rewatchables will be doing Apex Mountain. But, um. Do you like Taps? Yes. Yeah. I, I'm not kidding when I say I like every single boarding school movie. And I think this is the best one. So it's like, all right, what do I like about boarding school movies? Well, you're taking, you're putting all the, especially you're putting all these boys together and there's just a lot of shit going on with that. Anytime …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Did you go to boarding school? I did a PG year one year. Okay. Yeah. Here's the thing. I love boarding school movies. Great. Yeah. Even, even Toy Soldiers I really liked. Dude, I love Toy Soldiers. Toy Soldiers is really good. Is that Apex Mountain? Oh. By the way, season nine of Rewatchables will be doing Apex Mountain. But, um. Do you like Taps? Yes. Yeah. I, I'm not kidding when I say I like every single boarding school movie. And I think this is the best one. So it's like, all right, what do I like about boarding school movies? Well, you're taking, you're putting all the, especially you're putting all these boys together and there's just a lot of shit going on with that. Anytime there's a woman introduced, it's like introduced, almost like introducing an alien to their whole weird world. The teachers have a huge impact. And there's always like, you can pretty easily do like, all right, that guy's the jock. That guy's the love strike woman. The architects. Yeah, right. You can hit the archetypes really easily. Yeah. And then you can put roommates together, which is the other thing. So you have, in this movie, you have Neil. I'm not going to do it yet. You have Neil. You almost, I can see your lips. No, I'm saving it. Twitch. Neil. You have him, who's like the star of the class basically. And then you have Todd, the legacy brother, who is just afraid of his own shadow. And now they're thrown together and they have to get along. Yeah. And their relationship as it develops, that's what boarding school is. And that's why I couldn't believe I sent you guys the deleted scenes from the laser disc. And there's this one scene of them practicing lines for Neil's play. And I couldn't believe they didn't put that in. Because it was like, that's the most important relationship in the movie is those two. It's not, Mr. Keating's a proxy for how these kids are going to grow. But it's like, those two are the heart of the movie, I think. Like, yeah, the desk throwing scene is so touching. Did you guys stay friends with the people you roomed with your first year of college? Like, was roommates, were you like, I easily can be friends with like, whoever I'm like, asked to live with? Or were you a little bit more like, I can't wait to get out of here and get my own place? My dearest friends to this day, other than you guys, of course, and Halo, my cat, are the people I met on my freshman year dorm floor. And the people from my like, journalism school orientation group. Carmelo Anthony and Akeem Warwick. On my freshman college, I was on the same floor with freshman year. Yeah. You just get thrown together and that's it. That's the thing. Like, it has to be a high school movie. Because the difference in like, what we're talking about with the teachers, obviously, people have teachers who play an outsized role in their lives, who come into their lives in college as well. But there's something just fundamentally different about where you are and as you're discovering who you are as a person in high school to college. But the boarding school aspect facilitates that part of the college experience in the
74:59 – 80:36… happening. So they burned the sets down. And there's, like, footage of them burning the Dead Poets Society sets down outside of Atlanta. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Apex Mountain? This is— Can we have a quick Williams discussion within Apex Mountain? I'd been saving it for right here. Okay. Hmm. I wrote Apex what? Apex Mountain, the first person I wrote was Robin Williams with three question marks. Interesting. You could make the case. Now, I will make the case for Mork and Mindy was a massive hit. And he was a huge, huge star in the late 70s. Good Morning Vietnam was a huge, huge hit. But I actually think this was …
The whole segment, as transcribed
And he hadn't signed his deal yet. And he made a lot of movies for Disney over the years. But he just didn't show up. And they were like, I guess this movie's not happening. So they burned the sets down. And there's, like, footage of them burning the Dead Poets Society sets down outside of Atlanta. Yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Apex Mountain? This is— Can we have a quick Williams discussion within Apex Mountain? I'd been saving it for right here. Okay. Hmm. I wrote Apex what? Apex Mountain, the first person I wrote was Robin Williams with three question marks. Interesting. You could make the case. Now, I will make the case for Mork and Mindy was a massive hit. And he was a huge, huge star in the late 70s. Good Morning Vietnam was a huge, huge hit. But I actually think this was his Apex Mountain. Because it's coming off Good Morning Vietnam. He's awesome in this movie. And I don't think any other actor could have been both of those parts. And I left this movie thinking, we did it, Robin Williams. Yes. You did great. You're at the peak of your powers. So you feel like this over technically like Fisher King or Hook, where he is arguably like a bigger star or Aladdin or Doubtfire? But I think this movie paves the way for him being able to do whatever movie he wants to get paid. Yeah. Yeah. This movie plus Vietnam. And now he's like, whatever he wanted to do, he could do after that. So he does Good Morning Vietnam. Because he was still a big star. Comic relief was a huge deal in the mid 80s. Yeah. Like him and Whoopi and Billy Crystal. Yeah. But I feel like this did for him what City Slickers did for Billy Crystal, where it just put him on another level. Yeah. He did Good Morning Vietnam in 87. He does this in 89. Awakenings in 90. Right. And I don't think he gets Awakenings without those other two movies. Because that was a big movie in 1990. It was a De Niro movie. And then in 91, he did – it's really interesting in 91 because he does Dead Again, which is a pretty fun Kenneth Branagh, black and white Hitchcock kind of movie. Fisher King, which I think there's definitely people who love that. And Hook, which was a very complicated movie, but – It's bad. Yeah. And then 92, it is Aladdin, which is like one of the biggest movies of that decade. What kind of weight do you give the Oscar, though, for Good Will Hunting? I feel like that was the culmination of the decade. Yeah, that was a career achievement Oscar. Though I think he deserved it for that movie. He deserved it. But yeah. I don't think that was – he wasn't at the peak of his powers at that point because he'd made a lot of bad movies by that point. Yeah. His 90s were really rough. Right after that, he just does What Dreams May Come, Patch Adams, Bicentennial Man, like one hour ago. What Dreams May Come is one of the five worst movies I've ever seen in my whole life. Do you like – what do you think is worse, Dr. Moreau or What Dreams May Come? No, Dr. Moreau is funny, though. It's like a comedy. You've got to look at it. You've got to look at it correctly. Flubber right before Good Will Hunting. Would you go Alexandria Powers, Apex Mountain? Alexandria Powers, that Chrissy – That was Chris, the girls, the blonde. I have a couple of unanswered questions. About Chris? Yeah. Well, can you save him? Sure. That's why I'm waiting. You become a little parliamentary about Rewatchables categories. Well, I'm just – we're in the right category. Point of order. I would say Pitts, yes. Apex Mountain for Pitts, for sure. Yeah. Not for Hawks. Certainly for Dalton. Charlie Dalton. So, Dalton, we should talk about that. Leaving this movie, I would have thought he was going to be a big star. And he really stopped acting pretty much immediately after. Now, I think he's a creative executive in LA or something. But I don't know whether he didn't want it or just something happened. But in this movie, he's as good as Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean – Robert Sean Leonard is really good. But I feel like he's on par with those guys. Am I crazy? He's definitely really charming. He has such a different energy. But yeah, he's – Yeah, he's magnetic. Yeah. Same word choice. I expected him to have a career with a lot of parts coming out of this movie. He's also one of the – that's one of the performances that you would love to just like transport into the version of this movie in 2019. Where like instead of always smuggling in cigarettes, he's vaping. You know? Yeah. Yeah. What is he pulling up on his iPhone? Right. Like in the hallway between classes? Like, you know, what is he replacing the second folds with? There's an person to pardon my take. Or Joe Rogan. He's always got Pornhub booted up in class, you know? Pornhub. Other than that, I don't know for the other Apex fans. What about your boy? What about your boy? Bobby Sean? Bobby Sean. Oh, that's a tough one. He's had a good, solid career. Yeah. I think this probably was his Apex. Just because it was like – for me, it was him and River Phoenix are neck and neck after this movie now. Like who's going to be the best actor of the next generation. And you don't think about him the same way after that. I think he was more of a theater guy, right? He was, yeah. Yeah, he's one of those guys. He does a lot of theater with Hawk or did a lot of theater with Hawk. I think he and – they did some like Kenneth Lonergan stuff, I think, over the years. So, yeah. He found himself playing puck, you know? Once you get that Midsummer Night's Dream experience. This was the perfect part for him. Like it really hit a lot of different things. River Phoenix in this part would have been strange. See, he would have brought some baggage with it. Like an edge. Yeah. Yeah. The Joey Pants Award for over actor. No, this is – Oh, no, I'm sorry. The Joey Pants Award for that guy. Norman Lloyd. He's one of those guys. Mm-hmm. Paper Chase. Gotta go also shout out to Melora Walters who's, you know, from Magnolia. She shows up in the cave. Oh, wow. Do you think that that guy can work in reverse? So, like, it wouldn't have been people you said that guy about at the time because it
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