Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
68:45 – 77:10… that Steven Tobolowsky is talking about where he's like, it's like a down the middle, mediocre Bill Murray movie. It just happens to star Michael Keaton. Apex mountain. It's funny. I had this written down, but then we already covered this groundhog day. I feel like this was the apex mountain for groundhog day, but I mean, all the global warming stuff is an even better reason, but I do feel like people cared about groundhog day in the early nineties. I really hated to come out. Oh, it's all shadow. Like it's so stupid. Uh, Andy McDowell. I would say yes. Hard. No. What would you say? Uh, sex lies in …
The whole segment, as transcribed
Why did this happen? Uh, I, I don't know what to say. It's fine. It's fine. It's like, it is actually the version of movie that Steven Tobolowsky is talking about where he's like, it's like a down the middle, mediocre Bill Murray movie. It just happens to star Michael Keaton. Apex mountain. It's funny. I had this written down, but then we already covered this groundhog day. I feel like this was the apex mountain for groundhog day, but I mean, all the global warming stuff is an even better reason, but I do feel like people cared about groundhog day in the early nineties. I really hated to come out. Oh, it's all shadow. Like it's so stupid. Uh, Andy McDowell. I would say yes. Hard. No. What would you say? Uh, sex lies in videotape. The bit, but the, as usual, we're 130 episodes in and we still haven't figured out apex mountain yet. Well, but I'm not asking what her best performances, but she gets to be the star of a green card after sex lies in videotape. So after sex lies in videotape, they're like, this woman is a movie star. We have to put her in the center of the frame in mainstream movies. And she never, I mean, her career is, I don't want to relitigate it too much, but her career is pretty weird. Like she kind of vanishes from, from movies after 1996. Like, so after this movie, she does four weddings in a funeral, bad girls, unstrung heroes, multiplicity and Michael. And then look at the movie she makes from 1997 till now. Like, is there one significant move, memorable movie on that list? You know, Sean, some people want to have kids and raise a family. So I actually researched this. Maybe that's not okay with you. Maybe that's not okay with you. No, no, no. I knew that this would get thrown my way, but she had her first kid in 1986 before she was even in a movie. Who was her famous kid? Margaret Qualley from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. So how old is she? She's her youngest daughter. She had her the same year that Four Weddings and a Funeral came out, 1994. So that's obviously she had multiple kids and was like, I can't. But it's not that she stops working. She just makes bad movies. Yeah, but here's the thing. And we've talked about this a couple of times, and this is one of my favorite theories. I haven't named this theory after somebody, but maybe it should be Andy McDowell. I think because the parts for female leads were so bad. Yep. Really up until the mid-2010s, you could even say. They all kind of had a shelf life of these four to five-year careers. Like we talked about Madeline Stowe. When you talked about how you watch Revenge for the big picture, and every guy loved her in Steakout. She was smoking hot, and she's in Revenge, and she had this five-year run. And then you kind of get pushed aside for whoever the next person is. And I think that's what made people like Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, Reese Witherspoon. They fought off that four to five-year, here's my shelf life where I get to star in three movies, and then I'm going to be pushed aside for the next person. Andy McDowell was in that mix where it was like, okay, you're in a couple. Now you have to go. Who's next? Let's put this person in. And that's just kind of what it was because none of the parts were – they're all playing the same part. They're like these – they're props for whoever the male star is. You're totally right. The theory is 100% legitimate. I feel like the actresses who get a chance to outlast that thing – and that's like – it's forced upon them by Hollywood because they basically discard women in the 80s and 90s. We got to bring Issa back. Issa, come back. We need to talk about this with you. It's a good topic for her. But like she could have transitioned into taking on more interesting supporting parts. Now, not everybody gets a chance to do that. You have to be a really good actor to do that. But I mean, I'm not overstating it when I say she's in a bunch of movies that you've just straight up never even heard of. You know, Inconceivable, The Six Wives of Henry Le Fay, The Fifth Quarter, As Good as Dead. These sound like made-up movies. I don't know. I watch movies all the time, Bill. You know how much I am obsessed with this stuff. I don't know what these movies are that she made in the 2000s. Sex, Lies, and Videotape is an amazing movie that we're going to do on the rewatchables at some point. It's my mom's favorite movie ever. I don't know what that says about me, but it says something. Explains a lot. That my mom's favorite movie ever is Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It is just so fucked up and amazing. And another movie that could come out right now. Oh, yeah. You would just exchange it with like, you know, whatever, YouTube clips. Or the guy would just have an internet server or whatever instead of videotapes. Yeah, Sex, Lies, and Pornhub. Yeah. All right. So, no free name, McDowell. I've got you, babe. So, you would say the 70s with Sonny and Cher. The Sonny and Cher Variety Hour, one of my first favorite shows. I got you, babe. It was Sonny and Cher's biggest hit. So, that's obviously Apex Mountain. But it's interesting that this movie is where that song lives on. Anybody under 40 doesn't remember the Sonny and Cher Variety Hour, but they know the song from this movie. So, in a weird way, it's belated Apex Mountain. How did Sonny and Cher feel about this? Because, you know, the song is obviously picked to completely torture Phil Connors. It's that, you know, it's this cloying, obnoxious relic of the late 60s, you know? Like, I wonder if they, did they get the joke? Is Cher right on the joke here? Oh, I'm sure Cher was pissed off about it. She was a legendary curmudgeon. She had the great Letterman appearance of the 80s, which she didn't like when Letterman kept making fun of her and came on and really went at it with them. And, like, it was like Hagler Hearns. It was really great. That's a good one. Any other Apex Mountain for you? I mean, is it Ramis's? This movie's a big hit. It gets people to take him more seriously. Probably, yeah. Feels like it, right? It's a culmination of a really great 17, 18-year run, starting with National Lampoon in the 70s, going all the way through. My personal Apex for him is the first 20 minutes of Stripes. It's incredible. I think the first 20 minutes of Stripes is the best 20 minutes of any comedy, any start of a comedy ever. If you're just like, what's the best? Because usually comedies are always better in the beginning, and they kind of lose steam in some way as they go along. So there's really strong competition. Well, Stripes, I think, just turns into a war movie at some point, and it gets pretty intense. Yeah, it gets super weird. From him stopping the cab on the bridge. He goes home. His girlfriend's cheating on him. She's topless. She leaves. He's got a pizza. The pizza falls over. He's playing basketball, and for some reason, dunking, doing the fake basketball thing. They decided all of it is just every beat of it is just awesome. So good. We got to do Stripes at some point. I wonder if Stripes has held up for under 30 people. I'd be interested to know that. Is there some weird shit in that? A lot of those movies are not streaming. You know, like is Caddyshack streaming right now? Is National Lampoon's Vacation streaming right now? Because if it's not, it runs the risk of getting overlooked, and then you don't have parents showing their kids movies. I mean, that's a big part of this. Like Groundhog Day, we didn't say it, but I mean, it's on Netflix. And if you haven't seen it, it's very easy to watch it. It's an hour and 35 minutes. It's one of the breeziest movies you could ever encounter, despite it having all these weighty themes. That's a big part, I think, of this stuff lasting. As far as Ramis goes, though, it was really interesting. I don't think I took him as seriously as a lot of the people who looked up to him did. And when he passed away, I think it was Judd Apatow had a lot to say about how influential his movies were on him. And how the idea of looking at really serious stuff in your life in a comic context, you know, he's in a very rare class of people like Albert Brooks is in there. You know, there's only a handful of people who were like, I'm going to look at what the afterlife is. I'm going to look at what therapy means. I'm going to look at what the idea of good versus evil means. Like most comedies and Ramis was a part of these comedies, too.
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