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Good story about Hoffman and being competitive with colleagues: in the early 80s, I saw a preview performance of Death of a Salesman on Broadway, with Hoffman playing Willy Loman. I was fortunate enough to have been given permission to visit him backstage after the show. When I went into his dressing room, there were four people in there. DH was sitting on a chair at the end of the narrow room. Sitting adjacent on a couch, talking intensely to Hoffman was Arthur Miller. Hoffman was clearly listening carefully, nodding his head, taking it in. Though I was chatting a bit with the other two people, not wanting to bust into the conversation at the far end of the room, but I figured how often does anyone get to hear Arthur Miller giving notes to Dustin Hoffman about his performance in what's considered to be one of America's greatest plays? I positioned myself closer so I could hear what they were saying. And the part I heard was: MILLER: You're playing against a very strong Biff, now. HOFFMAN: (nods, murmurs agreement. MILLER: You understand? HOFFMAN: Absolutely. MILLER: He's very strong. You've got to hold your own. HOFFMAN: Exactly.... Now, in my view, Hoffman certainly held his own, turning in a great performance. (Which I saw get even stronger in two more performances.) But after hearing that little bit of conversation, in subsequent performances, I couldn't help but thing that Hoffman and the young actor playing his son Biff -- who was, in fact, very strong in the role -- had some kind of competition going. Most likely, it served to fuel each of them to commit fully, giving everything they had to their performances. The competition (if there was one) only improved their work. (Oh, and that actor playing Biff was a 30-year-old guy from a Chicago theater company called Steppenwolf. His name was John Malkovich.)

I love how Paul has incorporated Cody and Devin into the mini-episodes. It’s nice to have their insight as well. Also, just like Paul I grew up with tomato/mayonnaise sandwiches. They are great. Tomatoes are delicious. However, I’m sorry Kraft, but I will never, ever, ever eat one of your weird hybrid flavors. First of all, I think it’s kind of lazy. What, I can’t be bothered to squeeze two different bottles? Get out of here with that shit! Americans need to be more active! And secondly, I’m not sure I trust your ratios. If you put too much ketchup or BBQ sauce or whatever your whole sandwich is gonna be totally fucked. There’s an art to condiments. You can’t just wing it! Also, Ranch is fucking disgusting. You think adding ketchup is going to somehow make that horror show edible? Get the fuck out of here...

I wanted to expand on me calling it 'superficial' as I keep pondering that. I think my main issue is all these points that they mention on the pod -- homosexuality, his mother, self-identity, earlier trauma, being raised by TV, even Vietnam I guess -- are raised so minutely in the film that I feel like it's just all on the surface. I take this movie as very straightforward almost, which maybe is at odds with its rep or intent. I see it as just about a guy with some sort of misguided dream, who meets another guy with a similar misguided dream. *edit to note that sycasey simulposted a similar explanation.

That's kind of how I feel about it. Compelling, but maybe a bit shallow in its message? Amy makes a good case, though I do NOT agree that this film does the same things Taxi Driver or The Graduate do and I'd keep both of those on the list before Midnight Cowboy. But the latter is clearly a very influential work so I'm not mad about it staying on the list. I'm kind of with Roger Ebert on the Andy Warhol party scene. I've always found that part pretty dull.

Precisely! I felt like there were hints at commentary on homosexuality, TV influences, masculinity, and the rat race, but none of it landed. There wasn't enough meat on anything to really make the point.

I had a very strong reaction to Midnight Cowboy. I watched it blind, meaning I had no idea what it was about or any of it's history. While I definitely didn't get that these two guys were supposed to be idealized (I guess the way some people seem to have interpreted Travis Bickle), I had no idea why I should care about them. I found the flashbacks to Joe Buck's experiences in Texas to be entirely confusing and muddled. After hearing them discuss the book and how dark his time was in Texas, I could have understood his character and maybe developed a little sympathy for his ... eccentricities? To me, they seemed to be two guys willfully bumming around NYC (oh, that era NYC!!) deluded into thinking they can sell Joe's body for sex while neither of them has any clue how to interact with women. I see the intent of the director, but I think the vision failed for me. Also, I mean... John Voight and Dustin Hoffman. I can't get past who either of them turned out to be.

When I saw them in Chicago, the movies were on HDTGMinfo.com a couple weeks beforehand.

Saw this movie for the first time a few days ago and really love it to bits, it was much funnier than I thought it would be and made me wonder if this was a major influence to Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho.

I'd just like to start this movie recommendation by mentioning how elated I am that not only is HDTGM coming to my fair city--Portland, Oregon--but that I was able to get tickets to the show. So, you know: huzzah! Now, on the very slim chance that Paul, June, Jason, and (guest) already don't have the movies they plan on discussing mapped-out well in advance of HDTGM's upcoming national tour--and most likely won't be watching movies based on if they were filmed regionally in accordance to every city the podcast is visiting--I would like to make a pitch for a movie that was filmed here during a very bleak period in Portland's cinematic history: the 1992 sex-thriller Body of Evidence starring a full frontal cardboard cut-out of Madonna, Willem Defoe, Julianne Moore, Joe "Da Whackiest" Mantegna, Anne "The Archer" Archer ...and I wanna say David Duchovny, because of all that gratuitous sex scenes, but I don't think he's actually in this one. Yep, just like Basic Instinct, Jade and Color of Night, Body of Evidence is one of those sweaty boobdunnits so popular in the 90's. As this movie is so succinctly described on the its IMDB page, "A lawyer defends a woman accused of killing her older lover by having sex with him." Uh-huh. If you've been yearning for a film that features a sex scene involving that most sensual of fluids (burning hot candle wax), then you, my friends, are in for a real treat. Don't just take my word for how absolutely batshit bananagans perfect this movie is for HDTGM. Here's what Roger Ebert had to say about the film: "When it comes to eroticism, Body of Evidence is like Madonna's new book. It knows the words but not the music. All of the paraphernalia and lore of S & M sexuality are here, but none of the passion or even enjoyment. We are told by one witness that sex with the Madonna character is intense. It turns out later he's not a very reliable witness." Currently, it's free on Hulu. So, it's also got that going for it.

Hey all! As promised, I’ve put together an updated Musical Mondays rotation. Nothing really has changed, in terms of order, except I’ve excised the people that can no longer participate. This should help eliminate the need to track people down when it’s their week. Of course, we welcome all our old friends to come back any time they can (as well as welcome new friends as they come ) Below is the current list of participants. If your name is not on the list, it’s because you have either asked to be removed or didn’t respond when I asked people to re-up. If you would like to be added (or re-added), feel free to say so Musical Mondays Cameron H TomSpanks Cam Bert Quasar Sniffer Cinco DeNio JammerLea Grudlian SlidePocket Gigi-tastic Theworstbuddhist AlmostaGhost Graham S

i'm not gonna lie. this is our best work yet. (let'z go) let me tell you bout Scott Aukerman he's the show host, he's my very best friend often times, we do best friend stuff but that's not relevant, cuz it's time for the plugs plugz, a-oh pull your wallets out, give 'em all your stuff plugz, a-oh give a little more, but you'll never get enough of the plugz. plugz. pluuuugz.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (2002, 91 minutes) Dir: "Kaos" (AKA Wych Kaosayananda) Starring: Antonio Banderas, Lucy Liu I think all I really need to say is that this film is technically the worst reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes, like, ever. It has 0% out of 117 reviews. Per the website: "A startlingly inept film, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever offers overblown, wall-to-wall action without a hint of wit, coherence, style, or originality." Roger Ebert: "[The film] is an ungainly mess, submerged in mayhem, occasionally surfacing for cliches, overloaded with special effects and explosions, light on continuity, sanity and coherence. There is nothing wrong with the title... that renaming it 'Ballistic' would not have solved. Strange that they would choose such an ungainly title when, in fact, the movie is not about Ecks versus Sever but about Ecks and Sever working together against a common enemy - although Ecks, Sever and the audience take a long time to figure that out." Fun fact: This movie has a Game Boy Advanced game inspired by it and the game has really good reviews! IGN gave it a 9 out of 10. Who would have thought? It even got its own sequel. Second Opinions: - "I love this movie. I haven't seen it since I was 13. I don't care if others don't like the film but I like it cuz it got action and thriller. Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu are amazing in this movie. I like the scene where they fight. And that one scene when she was shooting. All I know is that this movie is a classic and I really enjoy watching it again after so many years" - "This is an easy movie to lambast, but I won't take that route--it rates 3 stars for the simple reason that it accomplishes what it sets out to do: kick-butt action scenes and snappy one-liners. Banderas and Liu are simply cool. In the movie, they get to be cool with guns. It's not a film that makes you think, or even one that you have to really pay attention to, but it is exactly what it claims to be: an action film that goes ballistic. Bullets, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, thin plot, lackluster dialogue--the ingredients to 90% of all action movies. This is one for people who like Banderas and Liu. I do, so I enjoy the movie enough to buy it, and give it three stars." - "I watched this movie back when it first came out and used to have a framed poster of it hanging in my old apartment. I recently re-watched the movie on cable and enjoyed it again! I think I know why this movie got so many bad reviews and it has nothing to do with too simple of a story line. Really? That's the complaint? An action movie with a simplified story line...surely there have never been any of those before! No, I think many people didn't like this because of the casting. You have a male Latin lead with an Asian female lead, and "the white guys" are the bad guys. That's why people didn't like this movie. There were some great action scenes in this film, a great soundtrack, charismatic actors and a story line that didn't get in the way of the action. This was a great film, and they should cast more in a similar manner." - "No plot. Yes! Although it tries to sound smart, I wasn't paying attention. FBI agent Ecks (Antonio Banderas) teams up with an Intelligence agent named Sever (Lucy Liu) to take down a weapons expert and find his wife and son. That's about it. Tons of bullets fly everywhere, cars fly everywhere and people fly everywhere. This movie is great. "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is genius. That's all I have to say." - "This one it alright as well."

I can’t wait for 18 hour days! I went to Iceland in December 2017 and had the opposite experience! we have an AirBNB on a fjord too... gonna be a scenic week I hope!

Great 666th post pal!

I'm confused. This looks nothing like Vanessa Williams.

“And, uh, at Country Bear Hall you could be different and still fit in. Yup. Different. Mm-hmm...Unless of course your one of them filthy, no-good, bamboo pooping Panda Bears! They want our jobs and our women! No Bears but Country Bears! MCBGA!”

Robert Evans (from Behind the Bastards podcast and Cracked, at one point) wrote a book called A Brief History of Vice that talks about "The Drunken Monkey Hypothesis" that suggests alcohol from fermented sugar from old dates helped monkeys evolve because the higher calorie count in the sugar/alcohol combo helped sustain early humans living along the coastlines. Is it possible that the same thing has happened to the bears in this film's universe ... that some kind of meadlike fermented alcoholic honey helped ignite the higher consciousness of bears?

I realized at some point that MC Gainey is kind of the Country Bear’s Chewbacca.

So this movie means that we get to talk about my favorite week of the year! FAT BEAR WEEK!!! Every year in the fall Katmai National Park in Alaska holds a March Madness style competition online to see which of their Brown Bears is going to be the reigning champion and be the fattest, most chonkiest, Absolute Unit of a bear they can possibly become before hibernate kicks in. It's truly an amazing time. Last year's winner was the magnificently corpulent BEADNOSE! I can't wait for this year's event!

So while you can't get drunk off honey you CAN get high.There's a form of honey from the black sea region of eastern Turkey and parts of Nepal that has hallucinogens in it from the natural neurotoxin grayanotoxin in some rhododendrons nector. It's know as "Mad Honey". It's been around for millennia and has even been used as a tool of war. In B.C.E. 67 Pompey the Great lost over a 1,000 men in a battle with the Persian King Mithridates after they were tricked by the pots of honey the Persians had left out for them to eat . The men were too sick and weak to fight back . In parts of Turkey and Nepal mad honey is used as a form of traditional medicine. It's used as a way to get a boost of energy, relive hypertension,and is seen as a form of natural Viagra. Mad honey gives you a sense of euphoria, lightheadedness, and sometimes hallucinations . However the honey can have unfortunate side effects like vomiting, diarrhea, loss of consciousness, seizures and although rare, it can be fatal if you eat too much. It's also one of the most expensive honeys in the world at $60 to $80+ a pound .

Okay so I went to rent this and I said to myself, "Self, I like you more than this." And I didn't watch it. So I found this podcast very surreal. Besides Paul, did anyone ever go to see the Country Bears Jamboree on purpose? I remember seeing it as a kid, and my entire group being like "this sucks. Can we go on Thunder Mountain again?" Also, are we told the names of the bears in the ride? Because I did not know who they were. And I reluctantly googled it just now and it doesn't seem like they are the same as the characters in the movie. I mean there is a Trixie but no Beary? Also, I would really like a Funny or Die Short, directed by Kulap, about Jason and Paul hunting Country Bears in their natural habitat, ie Disney.

This movie is 88 minutes long. You know how long 88 minutes can be, don't you?

I was a little bit disappointed in this episode. It's never a good sign when the panel is displaying more recency bias than the audience. (Phil seemed to throw Amy under the bus a bit for not mentioning the dearth of horror films on the AFI list, and perhaps that explains Phil's pick, but Paul has no excuse.) I think Amy expected people to pick classics like The Exorcist or Texas Chainsaw Massacre or one of the Karloff/Chaney/Legosi Universal monster movies. Instead, she got three films that she has already covered on The Canon. (To be fair, she also already covered The Exorcist, at the Overlook festival a year ago. If you're keeping score, out of Scream, The Blair Witch Project, Get Out, and The Exorcist, all four were inducted into the Canon.) So as it turned out, the "vote" was pretty elementary: of COURSE Night of the Living Dead would deserve a place before the other three, simply because it has stood the test of time and is as brilliant today as it must have been 50 years ago. And pushing back against Paul's statement, I don't know if a list would need Get Out if it has Night of the Living Dead. Look, I like Get Out as much as the next guy. I would have voted for Get Out for a third Oscar if I could. Best horror film in my lifetime, hands down. But it's a film that draws heavily from the racial politics of Night of the Living Dead, which did it better and more subtly in my opinion. (Speaking of the influences of Get Out, I can't believe this episode on the best horror films doesn't even mention Rosemary's Baby. I know, I know, the Polanski of it all, but still, how is it not worth talking about?) And while they mentioned that AFI made a separate list, 100 Thrills, they don't go into just how shitty that list is, since it combines horror, thriller, action, and adventure films all into one hodgepodge list (Lawrence of Arabia is #23, Night of the Living Dead is #93). While it's tempting to come here and just say, "Why wasn't the film I care about mentioned?" (in my case, that film is The Shining, which I will forever call the best horror film of all time), the fact that so few got the benefit of an in-depth discussion is disappointing. The fact that 3 of the featured films were made in the last 25 years is a disservice to Alien and Carrie and The Thing and The Fly, not to mention all the movies from the silent era that showed how to build dramatic tension in the film genre, all the Universal monster movies, and even through the B-movie exploitation era of Castle and Corman. I'm not the biggest horror fan, but it's a historically important and significant genre, and I know Sam Zimmerman and Phil Nobile Jr are vastly knowledgable about that history, so to not put that on display here was a bit of a bummer. Also, obviously The Shining deserves to be on the list.

"Everybody loves a good apocalypse story..." ...except Jessica St. Clair

While it doesn’t make a case for a thriving population of sentient bears, it’s worth noting that the reason given for Trixie leaving Tennessee was that she ran off with a panda bear who is described as being a “rich, millionaire, real estate guy.” It’s also worth pointing out that the Country Bears’ response to this is this derisive exchange: “What's with the pandas? They get everything.” ”You're telling me...” It’s incredibly depressing to me that even in such a small community, the Bears aren’t immune to the corrosive specter of racism.