Apex Mountain on The Rewatchables
46:56 – 59:50… award. It should be like the arrogance you can't really pinpoint kind of award. Yeah. Maybe it's the Kobe Award. We'll figure out. There's the Kobe Award. Apex Mountain. All of them. I mean, you could argue. Wes Craven? I'm going to say Elm Street's still Apex Mountain for him. And honestly, what an amazing career. He really was there for the three stages of the second half of 20th century horror. He's got Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left in the 70s. He creates Freddy and Nightmare on Elm Street. And then he basically reinvents his genre in the 90s. He's pretty underrated now. I mean, he only died …
The whole segment, as transcribed
The Winkler Award should be like a different award. It should be like the arrogance you can't really pinpoint kind of award. Yeah. Maybe it's the Kobe Award. We'll figure out. There's the Kobe Award. Apex Mountain. All of them. I mean, you could argue. Wes Craven? I'm going to say Elm Street's still Apex Mountain for him. And honestly, what an amazing career. He really was there for the three stages of the second half of 20th century horror. He's got Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left in the 70s. He creates Freddy and Nightmare on Elm Street. And then he basically reinvents his genre in the 90s. He's pretty underrated now. I mean, he only died a couple of years ago. And in a year where Tobey Hooper has died and George Romero has died. It's really those guys and John Carpenter and only a handful of other people that are on that Mount Rushmore. And this movie is still straight up entertaining. You can watch it two-day and it moves. It's really fun. What do you think, Cam? I completely agree. I mean, what you just said made me really sad, actually. What am I going to do when John Carpenter dies? Those guys are all close. Yeah. I don't know what I'm going to do. Well, you know, there's a Halloween remake that's working now with Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm excited. So when they do this, they're basically asking the audience to forget some of the other sequels that have happened. Because this is basically what Slash Stallone did when he had the Rocky Balboa movie, the sixth one. Oh, yeah. Where it's basically like, hey, Rocky V. Remember when he was brain damaged in Rocky V? He's not brain damaged anymore. So it's kind of a wink-wink to the audience. Like, that sequel didn't work. Let's just move ahead. Which is really what they should have done with 48 Hours. Because they could have done 48 Hours again and just kind of pretended the sequel never happened. And Keo was in the Iceman and all that. So I'm still annoyed by that. But with Wes Craven, though, I have a confession for all of you guys. I thought Nightmare on Elm Street was a shitty movie. Wow. Which one? The first one. I thought the first two were incredible. So let me hold up. I didn't say you were going to like it. I like part three the best. Really? Dream Warriors. Dream Warriors. I really liked it. I'm going to dream no more. I like when they're like, oh, this guy, his dream power is he's super strong. And all they do is give him a muscle shirt. And that's it. It has an age well. And the girl is terrible. I mean, there's a reason she was never seen again. Heather Langenkamp or whatever. Yeah, Heather Langenkamp. Geez. So actually, the movie that Wes Craven made right before this is Wes Craven's New Nightmare, which is the weird meta Freddy movie. Oh, that's right. That failed. And a lot of critics thought it was interesting, but it didn't make any money and nobody was scared of it. And this was like a little bit of a last gasp on his career. Like he could have been out the game. Apex Mountain. Nev Campbell. It can either be this or the intervention scene with Bailey in Party of Five. Those are the two nominees. I'll let you decide, Cam. Oh, my God. I mean, that was quite an intervention. I got to go with the intervention, actually. That's how I feel, too. I love Scream. But Bailey. Oh, man. Claudia, break it down. Oh, my God. You're my favorite. I know I'm not supposed to say this, but you are my favorite. You're dredging up some dark childhood memories for me right now. It's the saddest hour in the history of television. Devastating. Bailey was the rock of the family. Anyway, I would say Apex. Even though this movie made $290 million or whatever, I still thought the intervention. Skeet Ulrich, clearly the Apex. Absolutely. I don't know what else is competing. He wasn't as good as it gets. Which I just remembered. What was it? Jericho. Do you guys remember Jericho, which is like an Armageddon- CBS drama. That was actually pretty good. It's on Netflix. It's good. I write for Jericho. He went a couple rounds with Jericho, right? That was a couple. So he's in Riverdale. So my kids now him know is Riverdale's Skeet Ulrich. Did anybody have more bad luck than Skeet Ulrich having his name turned into a euphemism for coming? Amen. Little John. Did that happen? That did happen. Yeah. Skeet, skeet. Dave Chappelle popularized it, I would say. Skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet. He makes love to his wife and gets that skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet. This is a whole nother thing. Well, fortunately, it's a podcast for a mature audience. We can discuss it. So couldn't he have just changed his name to Steve Ulrich at that point? Well, isn't Steve Ulrich not even his- That can't be his name. That's not his name. It's a bad stage name. His name's like Bob Jameson. It's one of the worst stage names. It's not the best stage name. I'm looking here. His original name is Seaman Ulrich. You guys missed the big semen discussion in Sides of the Lambs, the highlight of the Rewatchables. Oh my God. Oh my God. How they made the fake semen for Migs. Chris was horrified. I went all in. That scarred me. Yeah, because I was not even aware when I saw that movie that that was a thing that could happen in the world. And it really- I agree. It was like whoever thought of that should be in jail forever. I agree. It's the way I thought about that at the time. Shay, any thoughts? I don't have any further semen-based thoughts. I'm all out. I'm all out of semen. I got this great email. Hold on. I got to find this email I got from a reader. First of all, thank you for everyone who listens to the Rewatchables, but especially thanks to Howard from Calgary, Alberta, who wants us to know that the guy who played Migs, Stuart Rudin, was also in a movie called Sticky Fingers. Can't imagine what that's about. His IMDb is remarkable. His roles include homeless man, homeless man, homeless guy, bus shelter bum, crazy man on New York Street, wino, old bearded man, diluted man patient, hippie, trembling patient, bus rider with Godard, and Ian the Woodsman. He finally got a name. That's his IMDb. He finally got a name. And Migs. And Migs. Migs was his apex. That was his apex mountain. So yeah, those are, please keep sending those emails to the mailbag at theringer.com. Or Migs at theringer.com. Or Migs. And Migs, if you're alive, we'd love to have you on the Rewatchables. Matthew Lillard? Apex Mountain? It's got to be, right? Yeah. Are you an SLC punk? Any SLC punk fans? That was like an indie movie. Zach Mack is not in court. Considering how good he is in Scream, I would say this Apex. Jamie Kennedy? You know, I really remember Jamie Kennedy, like, culture trying to force him on me after this movie. With an X factor. Yeah, exactly. And he just never took for me beyond this. This is a callback, but his Apex Mountain is definitively the fact that he dated for a long period of time Jennifer Love Hewitt. Wow. And that is a thing that happened to him in real life. Wow. How long? The Cleopatra of our times. There are photos. That's not a performance per se, but it's an achievement by him. Jennifer Love Hewitt, wow. The 2000s version of if you said she was hot in front of your girlfriend or wife, they reacted horribly. Really? Yeah. Women did not like Jennifer Love Hewitt for some reason. I don't know who the current, who's the current? No, why was that? Because she seemed generally like a very pleasant person. That's why they didn't like her. Very tight with her mom. She showcased the boobs a little too much, which is always a way to turn them off. But also, like, they felt like she was fake. And they had no evidence. No evidence. No evidence at all. Just didn't like her. Just, they sniffed it out. Apex Mountain, David Arquette. Now, before you say yes, of course, this was Apex. I do want to remind you guys, he won the WCW heavyweight title. He did. Which was a tie-in to a movie. Which was a tie-in to a movie, but he did hold the WCW belt that was held by Ric Flair and a bunch of greats. So, I don't know. Shea, you decide. Yeah, this is absolutely his Apex. Okay, good. Yeah. And then... No, Eight-Legged Freaks. I was just going to say Eight-Legged Freaks. It's fair, though. Eight-Legged Freaks. Eight-Legged Freaks. That was big. Rose McGowan? No. Went on to get pretty weird. Dated Marilyn Manson. Yeah, that's her peak. I would say Dated Marilyn Manson's her apex. She's had some good moments. She's had an interesting career. I mean, she's like an independent filmmaker now, and she's an activist now, and she has a much different persona than she did back then. But she was in a lot of relevant indie movies. She was in Gregoraki movies and stuff. She had actually a pretty cool career for a while. She was in one of the Robert Rodriguez Grindhouse movies. Right, with the leg. Yeah. Where she had the shock on leg, yeah. I have to go back to her. Oh, shit, I remember that. Yeah, I like her. I have to go back to Research Corner for a second, because I remembered when Drew Barrymore had to cry and scream and be so upset in the first 12 minutes when it gets the wheels come off. To keep her energy really upset, Wes Craven told her stories about animal torture, like real life stories, because she was a big animal activist, and read her stories that just literally made her upset. And then he would just turn the camera on. They would film more. I love animals. That was in my research. I can't imagine how bad those stories would have had to have been to get that kind of performance out of. Was he showing pictures? I don't know how far I went. We'll never know, but I thought that was good. Apex Mountain, oh, no, Courtney Cox. No. No. It's got to be Friends. Yeah, you can't get higher than Friends. Okay, but let me throw this at you. This comes out during season three of Friends when she's super famous and everyone's like, ah, she's just like the shit character in Friends, Monica. She doesn't have personality. Then this comes out and it's like, oh, she can be the bitch, too. I would argue the combo is her Apex. This comes out, Friends is on. Yeah, this is her peak right here. I think if you look at all the other characters she's played since then, they're much more like Gail Weathers than they are like Monica, which is kind of an interesting thing. I read that she pursued this role because she wanted to do a character that wasn't traditionally nice. She wanted to get punched in the face. Yeah. Clearly. She wanted to fight. Right. And, you know, the sitcoms that she's done since then, she did that sitcom about tabloid magazine or tabloid TV show. Dirt. And then she obviously had the Bill Lawrence sitcom for a long period of time. What was that one? That changed titles a couple of times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the show? Wasn't she on a show where they just drink wine a lot? Yeah, that's what I'm referring to. I can't remember the name of the show. Yes. I like Bill Lawrence, but the rails had kind of come off for that show. Yeah. When the plot is like, there's just people in LA and they drink a lot of wine. That's all I remember. It's like, eh, you need a little more. I need a huge wine goblet. Can somebody be a doctor? Anyone else on Apex Mountain? I think we covered everyone, right? Henry Winkler. He was the mountain, actually. Unintentional comedy word. We go back to Winkler. There's not a lot of unintentional comedy, except for all the Winkler scenes are kind of funny now for some reason. And then Arquette is just off. He's just off. And it's kind of funny. And it's funny that to think retroactively that people are like, this guy, you might be something. Watch out for David Arquette. I think there's something kind of unintentionally funny about Skeet Ulrich giving a performance that he probably doesn't believe is like satire, but is satire. Like him being specifically cast because he looks like somebody that the director worked with 15 years ago. The fact that it's like kind of a joke that he's a carbon copy of a guy. Like I'm sure as an actor, he never would have accepted that. Right. But if you think about the weird kind of sadness. You think you can't tell him that? No. No. Wasn't that they always said that about Starship Troopers where Casper Van Diem thought it was a different movie than everybody else did? He thought it was a drama. Was that a real story though? I would believe it. I would totally believe that. He's very earnest in that movie. Yeah. I think they told him the whole time. They didn't tell him that, but everybody else knew. And then if you rewatch it, knowing that he thought that it makes much more sense. He was a soap star and they were like, this is just like one life to live with alien bugs. I think for an intentional comedy, I'd like to throw in the Liev Schreiber cameo because you just think of the Liev Schreiber voice immediately. Yeah. Absolutely. The HBO voice. Imagine him testifying in the trial where he killed Sidney's mother. Oh my God. Very compelling. Yeah. You know, magic versus bird voice. Right. Doing the documentary. Magic Johnson took the defeat very seriously. Absolutely. Picking nits. I have a lot of problem with the cell phones. We covered it, but I just don't think the reception. I probably want a little more evidence that my boyfriend wasn't the killer other than that the cell phone call. Just like he is there while the other killer is there chasing her and just randomly he's there, but then the phone falls out. And I just want to maybe delve into that one a little more if I'm Nev. What do you have, Cam? I, we're watching it this time. I did kind of wonder in the beginning how they disemboweled the boyfriend so quickly. Yeah, you didn't even see the killer. It's just, it's just like a, it's just like a, like a hot second. And then all of a sudden he's all over the place.
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