Episode 172 - The Last Dragon: LIVE!

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Hannibal Buress joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1985 martial arts film The Last Dragon. Recorded live from Colossal Clusterfest in San Francisco, they talk about everything including how insecure Sho’nuff is, the glow, and Eddie Arkadian.

 

 

 

Check out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/user/howdidthisgetmade

Where to Find Jason, June & Paul:

Paul’s new comedy Drive Share is available on Go90. Paul can be seen on Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, Opening Night, and Veep. You can see June and Paul on NTSF:SD:SUV:: on HULU. June stars in Grace and Frankie on Netflix, as well as Lady Dynamite alongside with Jason.

 

Jason can be seen in The House, The Lego Batman Movie, How to Be Single, Sleeping with Other People, and is still indeed in The Dictator.

[devscoots 2561]

If we as a culture aren't careful, we might reach a point where we have too many podcast festivals. If you can conceive of such a thing.

[Willthefilmgeek 2]

The medium oriental, I'm not Jewish joke, I though was a play on Oriental sounding a bit like Yentl. Which was released only 2 years previous.

[grudlian. 4725]

June posits that whatever is in the tank is a flesh eating mermaid. Is The Last Dragon in a shared universe with The Lure?

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Is The Last Dragon in a shared universe with The Lure?

This changes EVERYTHING

[paultab 225]

I want to, real quick, call attention to my favorite moment in this movie (it got the biggest laugh from me), and maybe the only time the writers are taking a stab at grounding the movie in the real world.

 

When Sho' Nuff and his gang are trashing Daddy Green's Pizza, there is a moment towards the end where Sho'Nuff destroys the video jukebox, and Daddy Green goes "That isn't mine! I DON'T OWN THAT!" This gets into some real random specifics about the synergy between restaurants and vending machine companies and I love it.

[pscudese 701]

When Rock interviews the new henchmen, the first one hands him a news article in lieu of his resume.

 

The headline reads, "Co-Ed Thrown Into Incinerator.”

 

There are two articles presented and if you blow up the shot, the one on the left discusses the 1969 interaction between President Nixon and former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Even Herry Kissinger makes an appearance.

 

Just found this funny.

 

[walterwoodsiv 215]

Eddie Arkadian is the best Paul F. Tompkins character.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

When Rock interviews the new henchmen, the first one hands him a news article in lieu of his resume.

 

The headline reads, "Co-Ed Thrown Into Incinerator.”

 

Didn't Laura Charles sing about incinerators in the 7th Heaven theme song (or whatever)?

 

Which is extra odd because not only are there no incinerators in the movie, but there is also no fire, at all.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Eddie Arkadian is the best Paul F. Tompkins character.

That's funny, because I thought Laura Charles could've been Maya Rudolph doing Diana Ross.

 

[grudlian. 4725]

Didn't Laura Charles sing about incinerators in the 7th Heaven theme song (or whatever)?

 

Which is extra odd because not only are there no incinerators in the movie, but there is also no fire, at all.

Incinerators are in the missing 40 pages. Which is the non-Simpsons "A wizard did it."

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Incinerators are in the missing 40 pages. Which is the non-Simpsons "A wizard did it."

I bet you're right, because that warehouse/factory they fight in at the end should totally have had an incinerator. It could have played an integral part of their sho'down.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Okay guys ... I know I am going way out on a limb here, but I posit that Sho’nuff and Bruce Leroy are the same person; Sho’nuff is old Bruce Leroy.

 

We already see via “the glow” that the supernatural exists in the universe of The Last Dragon. Also, Leroy's Master (who is hilarious and didn’t get ANY coverage in the episode) sends Leroy on these random snipe hunt quests to teach him the lesson that the master he must find to get his glowing is himself, which is reemphasized by the empty fortune cookie. This would explain why Sho’nuff knows about Leroy and why Sho’nuff seems so obsessed with finding and defeating Leroy – because he is also trying to find and defeat himself. It would also explain why we don’t see Sho’nuff “glow” until the final sho’down with Leroy.

 

Sho’nuff represents an alternate timeline for Leroy where The Master’s lesson never dawns on him, and he spends years of his life never figuring it out, and he grows more and more angry that The Master has punk’d him, and on top of that, his little brother constantly torments him about what a wussy virgin he is. This turns him evil, and he uses his power and skills to create his Harlem shogunate.

 

How and why the time paradox occurs, I’m still working that out … I think the explanation is part of the lost 40 pages.

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

I want to, real quick, call attention to my favorite moment in this movie (it got the biggest laugh from me), and maybe the only time the writers are taking a stab at grounding the movie in the real world.

 

When Sho' Nuff and his gang are trashing Daddy Green's Pizza, there is a moment towards the end where Sho'Nuff destroys the video jukebox, and Daddy Green goes "That isn't mine! I DON'T OWN THAT!" This gets into some real random specifics about the synergy between restaurants and vending machine companies and I love it.

This made me laugh, too ... that's a odd economics and small business ownership lesson thrown in the middle of an ass-whooping

[SweatyPremise 28]

No one talked about my favorite characters. The Chinese dudes who wanted to be black and kept tricking Leroy. This multicultural vision of New York was an ideal that we all fall short of. The entire film is a love letter to Bruce Lee from Gordy.

 

But my favorite thing about this movie is how it's a Hertzogian meditation upon meaninglessness. Ultimately Leroy's master tricks him and then tricks him again in order to get him to embrace the nothingness at the center of a fortune cookie without a fortune. I guess you could try and say the film is about Leroy learning to trust himself, but I think it's actually Leroy learning to become a Buddha figure (which is why he calls the young Huxtable girl Lotus, a clear nod to the Lotus Sutra), find Nirvana, and embrace the joy that comes with a true understanding of nihilism.

[SeaSkunk 212]

Who wore it better: Bruce Lee, Uma Thurman, or Leroy Green?

 

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/b4/1d/42/b41d42f5ed942613e324eb2198a12aaa.jpg

 

PS - Does anyone have a copy of that Betty White holding an urn picture?

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

via Imgflip Meme Generator

[Jollygreen52 57]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned that the master Leroy Green is looking for is named Sum Dum Goy. Goy being a yiddish term for a gentile. Which turns out to be a fortune cookie machine, whose name is essentially Some Dumb Gentile.

[grudlian. 4725]

So, does anyone have any idea why, for one scene only, Eddie Arkadian wore a hair piece for only one scene in the movie?

[taylor anne photo 11311]

The whole Jewish & Asian thing is a racial stereotype that Jewish people have a specific fetish for Asian people. It's mentioned in The Social Network when Andrew Garfield's character says something along the lines (cause I can't find the exact quote) "I don't know if there's a mathematical equation for why Jewish men love Asian women but it's true." So I think that's what they were trying to do with their horribly racist line lol.

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

The whole Jewish & Asian thing is a racial stereotype that Jewish people have a specific fetish for Asian people.

More of a mutual thing. As a friend's dad once put it:

 

"We both put a premium on education"

[taylor anne photo 11311]

More of a mutual thing. As a friend's dad once put it:

 

"We both put a premium on education"

I think that in media Asian women typically tend to be the ones turned into a fetish which is why I phrased it so but since this was an instance of a man hitting on a woman and her saying she's not Jewish then it can go all kinds of ways lol.

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

For Hannibal: Julius Carry (Sho'nuff), Vanity (Laura), Leo O'Brien (Richie) are dead.

 

The rest of the leads, including Berry Gordy, are all alive.

 

Also: Wikipedia says our friend Ernie Reyes Jr made his film debut in this. I didn't see him?

[Cameron H. 23786]

For Hannibal: Julius Carry (Sho'nuff), Vanity (Laura), Leo O'Brien (Richie) are dead.

 

The rest of the leads, including Berry Gordy, are all alive.

 

Also: Wikipedia says our friend Ernie Reyes Jr made his film debut in this. I didn't see him?

 

Ernie was the kick ass little kid that helped storm Seventh Heaven.

 

[JoeFindlay 10]

His father, Ernie Reyes Sr., was one of the fighters at the end (One of the vague Ninja thugs for Eddie).

 

Ernie was the kick ass little kid that helped storm Seventh Heaven.