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Live from Chicago, Paul, June, and Jason discuss the 1996 fantasy adventure film The Adventures of Pinnochio starring Martin Landau and Jonathan Taylor Thomas. They talk about Geppetto and Pinocchio getting in a bathtub, donkey transformations, Pepe the talking cricket, and much more. This episode is brought to you by The Daily Show Podcast Universe, LoveBooks (www.lovebookonline.com/bonkers), and Future Fit (www.future.com/bonkers). Subscribe to Unspooled with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson here: http://www.earwolf.com/show/unspooled/ Check out our tour dates over at www.hdtgm.com! Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepubli…wdidthisgetmade Where to Find Jason, June & Paul: @PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter @Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on Twitter

Can't believe there's not much love for the 1992 classic "The Cutting Edge"... horrible acting, bizarre story, 90s tropes, the works. As a huge hockey fan this was a pivotal movie for me Trailer

Who exactly was this movie for? Like what age group were they hoping to get? Because it's pretty horrifying so I don't think young kids would be able to handle it. Much like the evil owner of Pleasure Island they lured them in with the promise of a fun time with harmless J.T. T but then did a switcheroo and boom it's the story of a terrifying puppet and actors only your parents know. You cannot tell me other children were raised on Absolutely Fabulous vhs tapes (God bless you grandma and your insistence we watch what you wanted. Though maybe it isn't good that 7 year old me wanted to be Patsy ..) And knew Dawn French on sight. I'm willing to buy they maybe clocked Rob Schneider because he was on SNL but I would assume the target audience is too young for that? So who is this for? Nostalgic parents who yearn for the terror of the cartoon? ( You cannot tell me that shit wasn't scary) Kids old enough to handle it but not so old they find it boring? What is that age?!

As an adult I shudder to think about the amount of water park water I have ingested in my lifetime.I assume that is how you get modern day cholera. Forget poisoned wells that are also sewers, wave pools are the new breeding ground for monstrous disease.

While it all looked like fun and games, even if those boys on Pleasure Island weren't polymorphed into a bunch of donkeys, Recreational Water Illnesses (RWIs) are a real thing and if after drinking a pint of unfiltered amusement park water the worst thing they experience is diarrhea, they can count themselves lucky. Even when properly chlorinated--which I'm guessing 19th-Century tween boy Bacchanalian nightmares probably are not--public water parks are notoriously unsanitary. You can catch anything from Legionnaire's Disease to the norovirus all due to the fact (as the CDC points out) that even with proper wiping, the average person is walking around with about 0.14 grams of fecal matter tightly lodged within their sphincter. So when you enter the water, get splashed, or are otherwise soaked to the bone on one of those wonderful flume rides we all love so much, all that fecal matter diffuses into the water. And while chlorine certainly does help, it can't always take care of *all* of it. So, no, I don't recommend drinking any of the strange water spouting from amusement park fountains.

Did anyone else feel like Pinocchio’s lies at the end of the movie we’re pretty fucked up and cruel? Like, I get that he’s trying to hit the monster’s gag reflex with his massive wooden nose, but there’s no rule in the movie that the growth in his nose has any correlation to the magnitude of the lie he’s telling. Instead of looking his caregiver and guardian in the eye and calling him a piece of trash, couldn’t Pinocchio have just said, “Snow is hot” or something else equally prosaic? Gepetto might be a big old sack of who-gives-a-fuck as a character, but he did risk his life to save your ass, you ungrateful little abomination. He was swallowed by a rival puppeteer. His day has been bad enough.

I get that Felinet and Volpe we’re trying to take advantage of Pinocchio’s naïveté by promising him that if he planted his gold in a cemetery it would multiply; what I don’t understand is why they had him bury it so deep—especially if part of their scheme was to have him stare at a clock for an hour. It’s their con! They could have just as easily suggested six inches instead of six feet. It just seems to be a monumental waste of time and energy when they know they’re going to have to go back and dig it up. I know they’re a couple of unscrupulous con artists, but that’s not really an excuse for shoddy work. No matter your profession, it always pays to work smarter rather than harder.

Following the debacle at the chili pepper incinerated puppet theater, Gepetto is desperate to find his creepy wooden moppet but doesn’t know where to begin his search. Leona, ever the rationalist, starts asking him questions to see if they can’t narrow down where his soulless little abomination might have run off to. After some cajoling, Gepetto says that Pinocchio would go somewhere he “feels safe” and concludes that, because he’s made of wood, Pinocchio would probably feel the safest in the forest. I’m sorry, but I don’t follow that line of thinking at all. Just because he’s predominantly composed of wood, doesn’t mean that somehow being surrounded by trees should have some kind of ataractic effect on him. By that line of thinking, since I’m 60% water, if I’m ever running away from transmogrifying puppeteer hellbent on forcing me into the theater arts, my safe space, and the most logical place for my loved ones to start looking for me, is in the middle of the goddamn ocean. It’s just a bizarre conclusion to draw. Also, in the next scene, I found it super weird when Pinocchio arrives in the forest and he comments on the pleasing smell of the pines. It’s strange because we learned earlier in the film that his name, Pinocchio, is derived from the fact that he’s been carved out of pine. I don’t know why, but that feels incredibly icky to me. It would be like walking into a crowded room and getting off on sniffing other people’s musk.

The studio must have really thought this movie was going to be a bigger deal than it was. I was reading an article about it written back in 1996 where the director, Steve Barron (who also directed the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie) says that it took two years just to get the songs rights. Stevie Wonder wrote and performed two songs for the movie. I also discovered that this film actually had trading cards. Not surprisingly, the majority of the cards seem to feature Jonathan Taylor Thomas despite him being in the film for less than five minutes. And for those of you who are thinking this is the only way to get an Udo Kier trading card, you would be wrong. He is also featured in trading cards for Barb Wire, another HDTGM classic.

I cannot stress how much this fucked up monstrosity WAS WRITTEN EXPLICITLY FOR CHILDREN. Normally most original fairy tales were stories originally told for adults. Not Pinocchio! It was published in one of Italy's first weekly children's magazines Giornale per i bambini . ( Google translate tells me this means Newspaper for children) This was for Kids!!! Lynching, cricket murder, burning off Pinocchio's feet, being turned into a fucking donkey and abused and overworked to death by a farmer.... This is just your average late 19th century addition of Highlights y'all! This movie had no chance but to be a monstrous horror show ok?! PINOCCHIO IS THE DEVIL'S CHILDREN'S BOOK DO YOU HEAR ME

Oh, a mall, you say?

In the original book Pinocchio kills him with a hammer as you mentioned and his ghost does pop up "Poor Pinocchio! I really pity you!" "Why do you pity me?" "Because you are a puppet and, what is worse, because you have a wooden head." At these last words Pinocchio jumped up in a rage and, snatching a wooden hammer from the bench, he threw it at the Talking-Cricket. Perhaps he never meant to hit him, but unfortunately it struck him exactly on the head, so that the poor Cricket had scarcely breath to cry "Cri-cri-cri!" and then he remained dried up and flattened against the wall. " The fairy has her servants fetch Pinocchio from the tree after he is hung and calls three doctors, A Crow, an Owl, and what I can only assume is the Talking Cricket's ghost? "And you—have you nothing to say?" asked the Fairy of the Talking-Cricket. "In my opinion, the wisest thing a prudent doctor can do, when he does not know what he is talking about, is to be silent. For the rest, that puppet there has a face that is not new to me. I have known him for some time!" Pinocchio, who up to that moment had lain immovable, like a real piece of wood, was seized with a fit of convulsive trembling that shook the whole bed. "That puppet there," continued the Talking-Cricket, "is a confirmed rogue." Pinocchio opened his eyes, but shut them again immediately. "He is a ragamuffin, a do-nothing, a vagabond." Pinocchio hid his face beneath the clothes. "That puppet there is a disobedient son who will make his poor father die of a broken heart!"

So I actually spoke at the lie show AND I WAS WRONG. I felt so bad I called the Paul help line to correct myself. I told everyone that they were turned into donkeys for their skin. But I thought I had mis-remembered. Only boys who don't study get "donkey fever" . And only Pinocchio was going to be turned into a drum because he ended up breaking his leg ( as a donkey) in a circus and being sold to a guy who wanted him for his skin for a drum. So I go to double check and now I'm more confused than ever. Because it looks like I found a short story called Donkey Fever . I usually listen to the episodes and look things up that I want to talk about and somehow found this. So then I went back and ended up reading the chapters in the original book. It turns out that I was sort of right and sort of wrong? So the Coachman basically lures children to ToyLand where they get Donkey Fever from not studying and being good. This is apparently his business model. He then sells the former little boys. ( When he meets Pinocchio and his friend Candlewick he fucking bites a donkey's eat off but pretends he's giving it a kiss? HOW DO YOU FAKE A KISS FOR BITING A GIDDAMN EAR OFF!!?) Pinocchio is then sold to a circus where he breaks a leg or something to that effect ( the book says he goes lame) while performing. He's THEN sold to the man who wants to turn him into a drum and that man throws him into the sea. And Candlewick you ask? Well I have the 1916 version which isn't as hard core but apparently he FUCKING DIES FROM BEING OVERWORKED AND ABUSED . I CAN'T STRESS ENOUGH HOW THIS WAS ACTUALLY WRITTEN FOR CHILDREN IN A CHILDREN'S MAGAZINE Should I call again and apologize for calling in very late and tried and messing yet again? Should you guys just start a shame bell walk for my lack of clarity! I'm normally so precise on research! ( Tbf at the show I had a really awful time with the theater management and if you saw two women having panic attacks on the lobby that was me and my friend hi!)

The issues with having Pinocchio in Lorenzini's puppet show was addressed from a couple of different angles, but I also wondered what the appeal was for Lorenzini? He clearly wanted Pinocchio for his show, but why? You have trained puppeteers who can make the dolls move and act however you want. But it would seem like it would be a lot of extra trouble trying to teach a sentient doll all of the songs and how to act in the show. Why go through that headache?

Pinnochio is basically like a new born baby in a lot of ways in this movie. He doesn't know what anything is, how things work etc... yet the first day he's "alive" he follows the boys to school sits in class (no one notices or cares which is a whole topic in itself) but he knows how to lie immediately! He can barely speak coherently but somehow already knows what lies are, how to lie, and under what circumstances a person would lie...??

Something I don't think ever got explicitly address is that, I believe the Cricket was suppose to be dead and we were seeing his ghost! This is not a reach for a Jacob's Ladder scenario, however one element of the source material that never got mentioned was that (in the source material) when Pinocchio meets the talking cricket who warns him about being disobedient, Pinocchio throws a hammer at him and kills him. In the movie, when Pinocchio comes across the cricket there is a line to the affect of: "Ow, watch your step" (or something) that is said just off camera. Then we see the cricket with this weird ethereal glow around him that's never explained. I believe it was a subtle nod to the original story without having to definitively say, in a kids movie, that the cricket died. I was at the live show. A great time as always!

When Pinocchio and Geppetto were climbing out of whale Lorenzini so Pinocchio can lie in order to break free under him, I noticed his regular puppet ears and his ripped out donkey ears were being switched back and forth from different shots.

Seems to not have made the cut on the ep but at the show Jason started in almost immediately at how weirdly pervy and sexual this movie could be and I agreed completely. The very first sentence that we hear Martin Landau speak is "This log has a will of its own." To which I could only respond, "That's what she said." This totally set the tone for me for the whole rest of this bonkers movie. So many wood puns turned double entendre. The wallpaper on Paul's Mac would attest to the perv quotient of this movie as well. Both shows were so great! 6 for 6 at Chicago shows and they just keep getting better! Thanks guys! And check out this Jason-being-a-creeper progression during our photo op, had no clue why the lady taking the photos was taking so many pictures and laughing so hard until hours later!

I have a theory as to why JTT-Pinnochio wanted a "wooden girl" even though he was a real boy. It was a set-up for a Pinnochio/Mannequin crossover movie. Picture it. It's the 90s, and Pinnochio has been living alone for centuries because Gepetto couldn't carve an adequate girlfriend. As it turned out, Pinnochio is a huge asshole, one girlfriend wasn't "adequately sanded in certain areas", one was rejected because Gepetto ran out of wood, and we can't even talk about the time Gepetto brought him a girlfriend that he carved out of mahogany. Now, living as "Pete", he moves to America, and becomes a carpenter. He walks through a department store, sees a particularly fetching manneqiuin, and the magic happens.

One thing that I thought was funny that wasn't touched on in the episode was at the beginning of the whale scene. When Pinocchio enters, Geppetto says that Pinocchio looks so skinny and asks if he has eaten. First, it's been like 3 hours since he last seen him, it's not like he would be withering away. And secondly, he's a puppet. He doesn't lose weight. My only thought is that maybe he was referring to the bullet holes after being shot. But that didn't make him skinny. P.s. loved the show and it was great meeting you.

Toe pick!

Sorry for putting my politics into this. But I'd like to hear a interview with Andrew Yang. I know this is probably just a show for entertainers to talk to Conan but I'd like to quantify how the mainstream press constantly sees and treats his campaign as a joke and under represents him like others polling less or equal to his numbers like Mayor Pete and Beto. Check out #YangMediaBlackoutt on twitter. He's a smart dude and does great interviews like here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87M2HwkZZcw

Steve Carell

Jon Lovitz. can someone please get him on the podcast?