Episode 97 — Rhinestone: LIVE!

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton star in the musical comedy that no one wanted. Recorded LIVE at Largo in Los Angeles, special guest Matt Jones joins Paul, June, & Jason to talk about an 80’s classic by the name of Rhinestone. They’ll cover everything from Stallone’s funny t-shirts, the art of slams, and the Stallone & Dolly duet. Plus, we delve deeper into what the deal was with the suicidal cowboy during audience Q&As. Be sure to help Paul with The Sylvester Stallone Podcast (available at www.wolfpop.com) by asking Sylvester Stallone questions to askstallone@gmail.com!

 

 

Los Angeles: Get your tickets now for the late LIVE HDTGM at Largo on Friday, December 5th at 10pm over at www.largo-la.com!

 

 

Pick up your copy of Deadpool Bi-Annual #1 written by Paul & Nick Giovannetti at www.amazon.com or wherever comic books are sold!

 

 

Make sure to tune into the brand new season of The League on Wednesday nights at 10pm over on FXX and check out The Hotwives of Orlando now over at www.hulu.com!

 

Also, check out Jason Mantzoukas in “They Came Together” on VOD, June Diane Raphael & Casey Wilson in ASS BACKWARDS for free on Netflix & HULU & Paul in OJ: The Musical available on VOD & iTunes! Don’t forget to grab yourself a brand new HDTGM Daredevil T-shirt over at the Earwolf store and a copy of Paul’s comic book Aliens Vs. Parker now available at www.amazon.com!

[HoldenMartinson 221]

BADGE!R!!!!!

Edited November 7, 2014 by HoldenMartinson

[HotSaucerman 2051]

I tried to find this movie on the.... free sources *cough*putlocker*cough*.... but it didn't work. I don't care though. If you're doing a free podcast, better start picking movies from Netflix or something....

 

edit: Hahaha, best ending of a HDTGM podcast ever!!!

[Cameron H. 23786]

If you're doing a free podcast, better start picking movies from Netflix or something....

 

I'm sorry, but isn't that kind of backward thinking? If we had to pay for HDTGM, then yeah, I could maybe see your point, but since it is free, then I don't mind paying what is usually only a few dollars for a copy. For instance, Rhinestone is currently only $2.87 on Amazon. What else can you really get for $2.87?

[Handinpants 91]

Judy's review is my favorite in the history of the show. She hates the movie, but gives it a 5-star review and then tells why it doesn't deserve it throughout the entire review. Fucking flawless.

[VajayjayLeno 336]

Speaking to NYC as a country music mecca:

 

What if this actually is a works where records don't exist? Live music is king and getting and keeping your stars for your clubs is the way to get rich in the music business. And if you ran the biggest country music bar in NYC, you'd have the market cornered in the biggest city in the country. It all totally makes sense as an alternate universe where Edison failed to get recorded music off the ground.

[paultab 225]

Having read the lyrics to Rhinestone Cowboy, I can see how it's a jumping-off point for this movie. It is about being a country singer in New York, and not feeling at home unless you're on stage. Like how the article that Pushing Tin was based on probably didn't have anything to do with a guy showing up with his young wife that then sleeps with John Cusack, so much as the adrenaline-fueled pressures of a job that seems tame when you watch somebody doing it.

 

ETA: Agreed, that was the most amazing signoff edit ever! Heee.

 

ETA2: I just got the DVD and started watching it, and "Rhinestone Cowboy" is played at the Rhinestone after Dolly leaves the stage and before the interesting cowboy takes the stage.

 

ETA3: At 1:04, there is a voice lesson! Under a tree, she teaches him lip runs and diaphragm breathing.

[pepperjack 303]

Man, I really do enjoy the timbre of Matt Jones' voice. Howard nailed that one.

[Cameron H. 23786]

If nothing else, this movie has confirmed for me that Stallone is some kind of extra-dimensional being sent to our Earth to mimic hu-man emotions.

 

To set the scene, Stallone has had his his slow dance with Parton and they have shared a quasi-moment, he then drives her home in HER truck*, they have their botched kiss courtesy of Matthew Cuthbert, and then there is a real Waltons-esque moment where there is an exterior of the house and everyone is saying goodnight to one another. At the end of that scene, we hear Nick say, "I hate hillbillies..."

 

What in the Hell? I mean, you would think at this point of the movie Nick would have grown, if not an appreciation for, a certain level of respect for this woman. Instead the implication is, "I can't stand you, your lifestyle, your music, family or friends. I mean, yeah, I'll fuck you, that goes without saying, but otherwise you suck."

 

The line is also said not as a close up or as if being muttered, but at the same volume he just said goodnight to these two individuals who have put him up in their home, suggesting that they 100% just heard him call them a couple of hicks.

 

*This is an activity that seems to happen a lot in movies that I simply just don't get. Look at Bella in the Twilight movies. Edward and Jacob are always driving her around in her truck. Why!? There is never even a question of it. The woman in the movie just kind of tosses the keys to the man as if to imply, "I know it's my car, but you have a penis which somehow makes you more qualified to drive my own vehicle."

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

Throughout my viewing of 'Rhinestone,' I just couldn't help but wonder how Frank Stallone's presence and songwriting could have affected this movie, or what if Frank Stallone recorded the vocals to all the songs and Sly lip-synced to them on-camera? Also, how might insertion of Patrick Swayze as Dalton from 'Road House' improve things, especially in the rowdy bar scenes. I think instead of/in addition to "Would Nic Cage make it better?" we could discuss "would Swayze tearing out the throat of Freddie make it better?"

 

Conclusion: Yes, especially since he would refuse to wear the outfits Stallone puts on during the film and would instead perform shirtless while doing Tai Chi.

[klobbermang 532]

Matt Jones needs to be on more podcasts. Not only is he funny, he's insightful as well!

[Nerdlove 82]

How did you guys NOT discuss the Clockwork-Orange esque table at Freddie's house?

 

 

Or the row of sex dolls that are just hanging on the wall there?

 

But the biggest question of all: What is going on here?

 

 

Jake's dad looks directly down at her tits and says, "Mercy, don't you look sassy?"

 

Jason, for someone as turned on by incest as you claim to be, I would have thought you'd hone right in on this.

[jarrycanada 2483]

My last milking of my poster for this podcast...

 

 

I am so happy Paul said it. it was a really long movie to watch. It's also the kind of movie that I remember it being funnier then it was. anyone notice that Stallone looked like Ronald McDonald

with out his clown makeup on, hair wise it was spot on.

 

My favorite part of the movie was Stallone's family dinner. You could not ask for a more stereo type Italian dinner. even at east side Mario's. also like in "over the top" he gets into a contest and only ask for a Taxi rather then say a cash prize. Too funny.

 

another great episode in the can, 5 stars.

[Shannon 2953]

OMG JASON SAID IT OMG

 

gif cr: rafibomb

 

 

...okay I have to finish the episode, I was just very excited by this

[SlidePocket 707]

Early in the show, you said that Paramount was the studio behind Rhinestone when talking about the film's trailer not showing enough scenes, but it wasn't them that was 20th Century Fox by the way.

[Nerdlove 82]

If you follow this link to the box office from the week Rhinestone was released, you'll see that the top 5 were:

1. Ghostbusters

2. Gremlins

3. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

4. Rhinestone

5. Karate Kid

Romancing the Stone was in #11, Police Academy was #12, Sixteen Candles was #14, and Spinal Tap was #19. So many good movies (or at least, fun classics that people remember) all out at the same time! And then there's Rhinestone...

[MaryAliceOrchard 61]

MOUSE FUCKING ON COTTON.

[Bernard_Shakey 3484]

Quagmire's bedroom!

[JaimeGandarilla 85]

MOUSE FUCKING ON COTTON.

 

Mice*

[JaimeGandarilla 85]

Why did Matt Jones steal Bob Odenkirk's voice and transported it 50 years in the future?

[Five Six Seven 50]

So, now that watching this movie is one of the things I've done with my life, I should probably try to wring something out of it.

 

1) Rhinestone takes fake audiences to the next level. If I had to pick a winner between the pantomime clap-along in the first musical scene (where they were clearly instructed not to actually let their hands collide in a way that would produce sound), and the surreal fake laughter of the same audience later on (where I have no idea what they were told), I would choose to nail the doors of the venue shut, and set it on fire. From the inside. So I could forget, forever.

 

2) Richard Farnsworth pretending to sing and play guitar is worth the effort of getting this movie, if you happen to hate good things. The awkward aside conversation to Stallone's character -- during a song -- features Farnsworth bobbing up and down in such a disturbing, unwholesome fashion that it made me think of his scene in The Straight Story where he's sitting around a campfire with a teenage hitchhiker girl he had passed on the road, talking about family and holding a weiner in his fist.

 

3) I keep thinking about Gold Eagle Murder Singer (whose song is clearly an attempt at an alibi for his Loretta's allegedly accidental death-by-tractor). Freddie Ugo is certain he will kill the crowd (figuratively), because, as he says, "I coached him myself". Assuming that's not just bluster, I wish we could have seen that movie. I'd love to learn how Ugo, who seems to never have an unexpressed thought or an unfiltered emotion, bossed Gold Eagle around and somehow didn't end up accidentally killed by his own limousine.

 

4) I insist that the first song Nick and Jake perform together, in the Tennessee bar before returning to New York, actually works. Not works-works, but at least movie-works. He still can't sing well, but he sings well enough that it's not fully comical, and for the last couple of minutes their stage chemistry clicks well enough that -- in the movie world, at any rate -- you could believe they were going to go on and win the day. But it's as though the filmmakers only had a certain amount of competence to spend, and they sunk it all into that sequence, because once they hit the stage in New York, it's just poop. Poop, poop, poop. I'd really be interested to know whether they shot that segment first, or maybe last, or if there was some other production factor that caused it to come within range of what they were aiming for when everything else went so far off the mark.

 

5) Stallone seems to have an intermittently effective comedic deadpan. As long as he's not speaking or doing things, and is just reacting facially to something in his environment, his performance has unironic positive value.

 

6a) Let us announce quorum on this point: "You sound like baby Hitler" is one of the best lines in cinematic history.

 

6b) And also this point: Dolly's voice is so good it's almost unreal. If I heard a new singer today doing what she can do, I would write it off as studio gimcrackery.

 

7) Mike Post was involved with the score, but Sylvester Stallone wrote or co-wrote five of the songs. Obviously I can't help but wonder how it would have turned out if Post had written those songs instead of Stallone, and had punched up the script instead of Stallone, and had starred in the movie instead of Stallone.

 

It's a sunny day, maybe I should go outside now.

[andyradicalpossumtackler 17]

Loved this, but I feel like they glossed over the one plot twist I NEVER saw coming: the scene where Stallone he wants to just be a country singer from now on. Just: "I am good enough, and this is my life now". I am forced to assume that one month before this movie, someone made a bet that they could turn Stallone into a cab driver, and Stallone just decided to stick with it. I think that would explain a lot, if everything we know about him is a product of a series of bets where he always ends up barely passable at something he decides is his life's calling.

[jarrycanada 2483]

The five star reviews paul readed where outstanding. but what I found funny is later looking at amazon how many 5 star reviews there are. I mean I've never seen that many 5 star reviews for a movie of this level.

[Cameron H. 23786]

So during one of the duets (I can't remember if it is the one with Wild Otters or the group that looks like rejects from Dr, Teeth and the Electric Mayhem) as Dolly and Sly are busy spaz dancing and exuding a raw sexual energy not seen since Mick Jagger and David Bowie urged us to dance in some streets, one of the band members goes into a blistering guitar solo and Sly holds his mic up to the guy's electric guitar...

 

He realizes that the sound that guy is producing is coming from the amplifier, right? It's as if the director said, "Hey, everything is great, but could you, I don't know, look like more of a doofus?"

 

No, scratch that. That had to be an actor decision all the way.

 

Also, while I am on the topic of sexual chemistry, I know they were benign kisses, but every time Sly and Dolly would kiss on stage I couldn't help thinking: "Ewwww, gross."

[justinmh05 1968]

It's disgusting that the Sly songs from this shitshow are not on iTunes.