Episode 96 — Monkey Shines

[MDS 1138 22]

Not to disparage June too much, but does anyone else think that last conversation took on some real Karl Pilkington undertones? Maybe just because it's about monkeys... but I could almost hear some of the points being made in his voice.

[AndrewPrysby 0]

I have a theory on the title Monkey Shines it is an homage to The Shinning where while Danny can continuously communicate through his mind in this case Allan only has separate "shines" where he can connect with the monkey.

 

Thoughts?

[Bernard_Shakey 3484]

Long time listener, first time caller. Here are some scattered observations in no particular order:

- Not to be a Northern Exposure apologist, but Allan's feelings towards her relationship with the Tooch seem a tad unfounded. To me, Allan's ranting implied that she betrayed and possibly cheated on him by hooking up with Dr. Hot Tooch. The problem with that is it's already been established that she never visited Allan in the hospital, and she raced upstairs before Allan got home so she could pack up her odd assortment of belongings. Thus, she never met the doctor and decided to end the relationship before being introduced to the doctor at the party. Sure, she stone cold abandoned Allan when he needed her most, but she didn't cheat on him.

Does anyone remember Allan's complaints about the "clinical c-nt"? Perhaps that can shed some light on his perception of her.

First of all Finnytron, great post.

But as a correction: Janine Turner most definitely met and started goochin' the Tooch while Allan was in the hospital.

When they first interact the Doctor excuses himself from talking to "coach" to talk directly to her and asks her "How are you holding up?" - She says "good".

Then when Allan tells her 'It's been a while' (Staind) she says "I know, I should have come to visit you more at the hospital".

Also the Doctor then calls her by name saying "Linda, would you get this gentleman a drink"?

You can't blame the guy for being upset at this, but hey, he's the freakin' Tooch! That's just how he operates. (no pun intended)

[walterwoodsiv 215]

Not to disparage June too much, but does anyone else think that last conversation took on some real Karl Pilkington undertones? Maybe just because it's about monkeys... but I could almost hear some of the points being made in his voice.

 

June Pilkington: "It's dangerous, innit?"

 

Paul Gervais: "What do you mean?"

 

June Pilkington: "I mean, when it comes to monkey actors, do we need 'em?"

[drscientifical 3]

June's frustrated attempts to explain her point is so epic.

It inspired me to edit It down into a moving PSA.

it's an mp3, don't know where else to host it: sendspace.com/file/yxbanc

EDIT: put it up as playable mp3 here because I figured it would be less sketchy: picosong.com/fAqg

[Lukas Holmes 2287]

Somehow June's insanity has broken loose a great deal of next-level-bonkers in this thread. I literally cannot understand 50% of the posts explaining what June was saying. Literally. Bonkers. Goddamned monkeys.

[JasonMcNamara 2]

Wow. This was amazing to listen to stoned.

[Jesse Carrigan 119]

I'm just getting to this, and this may be controversial, but I'm totally with June. I find this first half with Allan and his struggle to come to terms with his injury to be really compelling. (I remain somewhat unconvinced about the monkey actors though.)

[The Burning Gentleman 67]

Zouks trying to call back "Be a man!" was one of the best moments of this extraordinary episode. The callback itself was funny, but that it didn't land - not with me at first either - made it even better.

[Joe Lerini 7329]

Paul: "I don't know if this is real science, but there was an episode of Happy Days..."

 

I had a serious giggle-fit at that line.

[Jesse Carrigan 119]

The monkeys destroying the lab was pretty hilarious. Actually, a lot of this movie is pretty funny.

[Jesse Carrigan 119]

Guys, I think I need help. I think I love this movie. WHAT DID YOU DO TO MEEEEE

[hypnotizingchickens 1025]

not sure if anyone else here has the same refined juvenile tastes that I do when it comes to tv shows, but I just got around to watching the Halloween episode of Uncle Grandpa that aired last night and.....

 

 

coincidence?!?

 

definitely.

[VinsanityV22 500]

To Michael Harris, I just wanted to say: FUCK YOU, BRO, lol. Who does one hundred and ONE dollar donations? Just had to get in that one other dollar so that you could look down on all the $100 donors, didn't ya? Big man!? lol.

 

Glad they didn't get guests. Again. Which they did last year for Halloween III: Season of the Witch. It's a tradition now, as far as I'm concerned. Apparently part of the tradition is Paul saying that the "no guest" thing is the first time they've done it every year too, lol.

 

Alright, that's how far the Soundcloud stream got. MP3's downloaded. READY to listen!

[jarrycanada 2483]

as talked about on the podcast: The origin of the term monkeyshines comes from

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfMs2vCfWSA

 

-Sly Sanders you shoud one up him and do it Ted Danson style from

,donate 102 dollars but under a anonymous name and come back here to the boards and tell everyone you did it.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

wow, a lot of hostility up top towards Christopher Guest. He is amazing in everything. To each his/her Own. #oprah

And here I thought they were dissing Lance Guest. The man was the Last Starfighter, we owe him so much!

[Jesse Carrigan 119]

Dammit, that last jump scare. You win, George Romero. You win.

[teedle 60]

I'm just getting to this, and this may be controversial, but I'm totally with June. I find this first half with Allan and his struggle to come to terms with his injury to be really compelling. (I remain somewhat unconvinced about the monkey actors though.)

 

I don't know if I liked the first half more or I just hated it less than the rest of the movie.

[noteethleroy 3]

Amazing episode. I have one omission:

 

How in the hell did Ella burn alive The Tucc and that Clinical Cunt? The monkey cam shows The Tucc getting in the cooch and Ella starts a fire under the bed. So that means both people (assuming it wasn’t some freaky Tucc threesome) were awake at the time the fire was started. In actuality once the fire started they would have stopped having intercourse, smelled the smoke, and then would have immediately left the room to finish up in the hallway. Fire just doesn’t magically engulf things without first dousing the item with something extremely flammable; it takes time to get bigger. I didn’t see a gas can in Ella’s other hand. The only logical explanation is that during the sex Ella snuck in, boarded up all the windows, locked all the doors from the outside, then escaped through the heating vent once the fire started.

 

She didn't die in that fire, she saw the monkey do it and realized that she would go to jail because no one would believe her story. So she hacked off her hair, changed her name and moved to Alaska. I think you know the rest.

[Valerieblaise 74]

I'm just getting to this, and this may be controversial, but I'm totally with June. I find this first half with Allan and his struggle to come to terms with his injury to be really compelling. (I remain somewhat unconvinced about the monkey actors though.)

 

I agree with you and June about the first half. It certainly could've been shortened a little, but while I wondered when they were going to get to the scary brain surgery thing, I was mildly-to-fully interested in the first hour.

 

One thing that jumped out at me during the podcast was that they kept referring to John Pankow. The male cast of this movie other than Allan was Cousin Ira, the Tooch (allowing for different spelling on that one) and Jimmy James. I actually recognized Ugly Doctor as a small town doctor from the 1994 tv miniseries of "The Stand," but I recognized his voice before his face & that one is pretty obscure. Also another tiny Stephen King/Romero connection.

[elizamuffins 4228]

I'm just getting to this, and this may be controversial, but I'm totally with June. I find this first half with Allan and his struggle to come to terms with his injury to be really compelling. (I remain somewhat unconvinced about the monkey actors though.)

 

I loved this movie.

[MondayCity 194]

According to Rotten Tomatoes, Variety called "Mokey Shines", "A befuddled story about a man constrained from the neck down told by a director confused from the neck up." Oooh snaps. Is Variety implying that the director needed a helper monkey too? Would it be ok with June to give a monkey an AD credit? Hell, this could have been directed by a team of monkeys. Give the whole group a credit. Imagine years later, a bitter George Romero says, "I didn't want a happy ending, but the goddam helper monkeys shot some extra scenes and recut the movie while I was in Europe. Those fuuucking, cocksucking pieces of garbage!"

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

About crediting six monkeys, are we actually sure there were six monkeys involved? Are we just going by what some random Amazon review said or is that a verifiable fact from the production? If Crystal the Monkey was the only monkey in The Hangover and the only monkey in Animal Practice, wouldn't it make sense for Boo to also be the lone monkey in Monkey Shines? I know movies often use multiple animals for a single role, but that is not always the case, so I'm just not sure what the case is here.

[DirkBender 31]

Apparently it's a derogatory term for slaves.

 

crap, I had forgotten about that, but come to think of it, "shine" (alas) lives on as a racial slur, or at least it had in the Northeast in the latter part of the 20th century, when I'd heard it.

[lherman 35]

 

So, all that, I'm on board with, for the most part. Where I got confused was with her whole crediting six monkeys instead of one thing. So I listened to that part of the podcast again, and I think I understand. This is the best I can do to summarize her point:

 

If we as a society watch movies like this, and then we see in the movie's credits that one single monkey did all the "acting," then we as a society will get a mistaken impression about the capabilities of monkeys, and this in turn will feed the dangerous trend of anthropomorphizing animals. Anthropomorphizing animals is dangerous because if we judge animals by human standards, we might think of the animals as pests, or even "sinful" murderers, when ultimately, animals do things for animal reasons that have nothing to do with good or evil. Ultimately, when a Franken-monkey kills your ex-girlfriend, it's humanity's fault for making a Franken-monkey in the first place.

 

Or put somewhat more succinctly: This movie teaches the wrong lesson, which is that animals who do bad things are just as culpable as humans who do bad things, and the credits, which give the mistaken impression that one monkey did all this work instead of six, lend credence to our belief in monkeys' agency to do human-like harm.

 

I think...?

 

 

this is exactly what i was thinking too as i tried to wrap my head around this argument. a classic HDTGM exchange!