Episode 202 - Look Who's Talking Now (w/ Conan O’Brien)

[JulyDiaz 2797]

Conan O’Brien (Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend) joins Paul, June, and Jason to discuss the 1993 romantic comedy and the final installment in the series, Look Who’s Talking Now starring John Travolta and Kirstie Alley. They talk about the sentient Danny DeVito sperm, the talking dogs not moving the movie’s plot, the daughter’s home made Charles Barkley doll, and wolves.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

OMG Conan?!

I'm so happy he's on Earwolf playing on all my favorite podcasts

[justinforabit 15]

I am wet, with excitement for another studio episode. And Conan & June!!! I'm double wet. With excitement!!! I love you all! 

[LTL 154]

How  did they not talk about the closing credits  Jordy "It's Christmas, C'est Noel" ... maybe because in the States Jordy's "Dur Dur D'etre Bebe" wasn't a hit like it was in the rest of the world .. trust me youtube it.

[JimKata 62]

Found this comment about the Charles Barkley doll on a YouTube clip from the film:

Quote

 

Joseph Bolton5 months ago

I own the actual prop doll from this film. It was a custom made prop and was signed by C.B. I recently inherited it from my father, who was the production designer. The story he told me was that the prop department were freaking out when he came in for his cameo because when they saw him, they realised that they had made it 5 shades to dark and they were worried he would be offended, or think that they did it on purpose. Turned our that he loved it and didn't care. It's kind of a funny thing to own.

 

 

[grudlian. 4725]

The most important thing about this movie is the Diane Keaton dog wants a slice of lemon with her water. Don't do this. Lemons can upset a dog's stomach and cause vomiting or diarrhea. The small amount of juice from lemon in a bowl of water may not cause problems but do you really want to risk it?

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

I haven’t listened to the entire episode, but my first thought “I wonder what June thinks of Paul’s Mail Chimp impression” since she’s a monkey rights activist. 

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

2 hours ago, JimKata said:

Found this comment about the Charles Barkley doll on a YouTube clip from the film:

 

Had the prop master never SEEN Charles Barkley before? I understand not everyone is a basketball fan but he would be on, say, the news. And maybe I had to make a doll of him I might try to find a picture? 

[KellStarr 39]

I wanted to mention the 2nd opinion where the reviewer calls the movie a “show”... my grandma calls all media “shows” and despite the number of times we call them movies, she consistently calls them shows.

So there is precedent for this term and my grandma is a really sweet lady

[Nora_F 6]

Was browsing this movie on IMDB, and noticed that the family's last name in Ubriacco. Ubriaco (with 1 c) means "drunk" in Italian. Not sure if that is a coincidence, a misspelling or what, but might explain a lot of what's going on in this trilogy. 

[DrGuts1003 462]

Wow, absolutely loved the fact that they had Conan on as a guest.  I feel they did a good job of hitting all of the awful/weird things of this film, although I do wish they would have taken a deeper dive into some of them.  Here are just a few of the lingering questions I had after watching this...

- I know it's been clear that the rules for who talks and who understands who do not make sense, but one other example of that that was not mentioned is the fact that Rocks has a conversation with his mom.  In these films human babies cannot communicate with their parents, but apparently puppies have the ability to communicate with their parents.  It also seems odd that the film introduces Rocks' parents at the beginning of the film and then completely forget about them.  Wouldn't have been interesting to hear Rocks' mother's thoughts on the fact that her owners have just put her babies in a box on the side of the street for anyone to take one?

- The sports allegiances in this film are odd.  They live in NY, but Julie is a fan of Charles Barkley who played for Phoenix at the time.  Travolta makes the comment that at least she's not a "Dallas fan".  Now Dallas was a horrible team in '93, but you would think he would hate the idea of her being a Celtics or Nets fan instead.  Then there is the whole "Bash brothers" routine that he does with Mikey which is something that was created by Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco when they played for Oakland.  These just don't seem to be the actions of someone who lives in New York.

- I am glad they called out the fact that Kirstie Alley seemingly has accepted that she and the kids are going to die in the taxi when it crashes in the forest, but I also wanted them to comment on what her plan was after they initially crashed.  She tells the kids that she going out to "look for pine cones".  Why?  If it was a lie to shield her kids from the grim reality, it's a terrible lie that doesn't make sense.  And if she was being serious, what were pine cones going to do?  Did she plan on using them as a side dish with her clam souffle?

- One of the plotlines of the film is that Mikey has become disillusioned about Christmas after seeing the mall Santa is not the real Santa.  His parents then do a terrible job (no surprise) of trying to deal with this.  First, they do that horrible Chipmunks routine (how long did they take rehearsing that?) that probably would have turned me completely off of Christmas.  Then they give in and get him a dog.  But wouldn't it have been better to get him the dog for Christmas and say Santa got it for him?  The forest ranger does more to re-ignite Mikey's Christmas spirit by playing the sleigh bells on the radio.

- Did anyone else notice Kirstie Alley's father is reading the tax form booklet like a magazine when they are all together for Christmas Eve?  Man that family really loves accounting!

[RyanHorn 31]

8 hours ago, LTL said:

How  did they not talk about the closing credits  Jordy "It's Christmas, C'est Noel" ... maybe because in the States Jordy's "Dur Dur D'etre Bebe" wasn't a hit like it was in the rest of the world .. trust me youtube it.

Seriously. This music video is insane. It has the family without the dogs. The kids go into a doll house? Or the parents are giants? Where are the dogs? What's up with Santa? How old is Jordy?

[gigi-tastic 2322]

So I had to Google to see if clam souffle was a thing (hoping against hope that such a monstrosity was pure fantasy) and apparently it is. Here's the ingredients list from a recipe from James Beard's Mother's clam souffle :

 

INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash Tabasco
1 cup clam juice
5 egg yolks
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 cup drained clams
6 egg whites
Butter for the casserole

 

No offense to James Beard or his Mother but I still gagged at the thought of this dish. I'm sorry I see the words clam juice and I dry heave. 

[Cameron H. 23786]

Paul seemed to be confused as to why the dogs appeared sound like they were chewing when they were thinking, but I think the confusion is that he and the gang seem to be under the impression that the babies, dogs, wolves, etc. are communicating telepathically. However, I've always been under the impression that they aren't communicating via their mind but rather the words we're hearing is the translation of their own languages - both verbal and non-verbal. That's why in Look Who's Talking Too the children's mouths sometimes move. If you were to remove Bruce Willis and Roseanne Barr's voice overs, as adults, all we would be hearing is baby gurgling, but they are still "talking.". It's the same deal with the dogs. They are just speaking a separate language that only they understand. So, no, the dogs can't speak with or understand squirrels or clouds or whatever. Babies can speak with babies and animals can speak to animals of the same genus. We're just getting a peak into what all their strange noises actually mean.

[pscudese 701]

As Paul mentioned, the ad on the taxi cab is for Señor Pizza... which is a callback to a previous  Kristie Alley film.

What film you might ask? How about the one where Patrick Dempsey is a pizza delivering gigolo! Yup... We're talking about 1989's Loverboy!

 

Oh and the tag line in the trailer is, "His customers always come first."  Suuuupppper appropriate easter egg for this kid's film. Or maybe the gang is right and this really isn't a kid's film after all!

 

Trailer:

 

[Cameron H. 23786]

Did anyone else think that Olympia Dukakis' pep talk about infidelity was insane? Apparently, her husband was shipwrecked with a bunch of USO girls, but she refused to believe he didn't cheat on her until - years later - she met some of the women and *they* said he didn't cheat on her. Yeah, that sounds healthy.

I'm not trying to blame Alley's parents for all their relationship problems, but I feel like at least some of Travolta and Alley's dysfunction should be attributed to them.

[The_Awesometeer 20]

You guys talked a lot about how bad of parents both John Travolta and Kristie Alley are a lot.  They don't know if their kids have homework, I'm pretty sure Kristie Alley didn't use car seats when driving her children through the snow, but most importantly they let their kids tell horrible jokes.  At one point in the movie Julie tells a knock knock joke.  It went like this "knock knock" "whose there?" "transsexual".  There are three major problems with this joke.  First it isn't complete.  There is no "Transsexual who?" to follow up and complete the joke.  Secondly, what does this 4 year old know the word transsexual and think its funny to use in a joke?  Do they not monitor what their kids watch or listen to?  Lastly, its a really bad joke.  It makes no sense.  I can put up with them being horrible parents and putting their kids in dangerous situations just for their own selfish reasons but they could at least teach their kids to be funny.

[RyanSz 3140]

I'm having a a weird Mandela effect moment because I thought for certain I remember seeing a line of NBA dolls similar to the WWF Brawlin/Cuddle buddies. They would have been released around the same time as the WWF one so Barkley would have been one of the athletes chosen, but for the life of me I can't find anything on them.

Also, speaking as someone who worked in a dog pound for a summer, there are more reasons that a dog is to be destroyed other than "I wanna kill this dog," and yes destroyed is the term used. It's that term usually because the dog has something wrong with it like rabies or another condition that can affect the rest of the animals in the pound or humans, so they need to be put down, which is the term used more for dogs that haven't been adopted in a given period of time. So Travolta is realistically bringing a very ill animal into his home with two small children and running the risk of someone getting ill or hurt. Or even more realistically, the entire movie is a Jacob's Ladder Scenario for the dog who imagines itself being saved from the pound, saves the family from wolves, and reunites the family in the end.

[DrGuts1003 462]

I’m disappointed Conan didn’t share any stories from the time he hung out with David Gallagher (aka Mikey) at the offices of Teen Beat magazine.

You can watch it here.  Mikey shows up at 5:18 in the video.

[DrGuts1003 462]

1 hour ago, RyanSz said:

I'm having a a weird Mandela effect moment because I thought for certain I remember seeing a line of NBA dolls similar to the WWF Brawlin/Cuddle buddies. They would have been released around the same time as the WWF one so Barkley would have been one of the athletes chosen, but for the life of me I can't find anything on them.

Also, speaking as someone who worked in a dog pound for a summer, there are more reasons that a dog is to be destroyed other than "I wanna kill this dog," and yes destroyed is the term used. It's that term usually because the dog has something wrong with it like rabies or another condition that can affect the rest of the animals in the pound or humans, so they need to be put down, which is the term used more for dogs that haven't been adopted in a given period of time. So Travolta is realistically bringing a very ill animal into his home with two small children and running the risk of someone getting ill or hurt. Or even more realistically, the entire movie is a Jacob's Ladder Scenario for the dog who imagines itself being saved from the pound, saves the family from wolves, and reunites the family in the end.

Are these Hoopster Heroes what you were recalling?

 

Also, while I knew the term ‘destroyed’ is used when referring to putting a dog down, is it appropriate to use it in front of a small child?

[RyanSz 3140]

2 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

Are these Hoopster Heroes what you were recalling?

 

Also, while I knew the term ‘destroyed’ is used when referring to putting a dog down, is it appropriate to use it in front of a small child?

YES that's exactly what I remembered!

And destroyed is a horrible term to use in front of impressionable kids, though at least the kids don't see the the freezer used to store the bodies that are awaiting disposal pickup, that was unsettling the first time I saw it.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

2 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

I’m disappointed Conan didn’t share any stories from the time he hung out with David Gallagher (aka Mikey) at the offices of Teen Beat magazine.

You can watch it here.  Mikey shows up at 5:18 in the video.

Haha seriously there's nothing better than classic Conan bits

[WatchOutForSnakes 807]

3 hours ago, RyanSz said:

Or even more realistically, the entire movie is a Jacob's Ladder Scenario for the dog who imagines itself being saved from the pound, saves the family from wolves, and reunites the family in the end.

I can get behind this 100%

[WatchOutForSnakes 807]

2 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

I’m disappointed Conan didn’t share any stories from the time he hung out with David Gallagher (aka Mikey) at the offices of Teen Beat magazine.

You can watch it here.  Mikey shows up at 5:18 in the video.

That is amazing! How could he not have brought that up?!

[AdrianFlynn 68]

June already upset the breakdance community now poodles have no expressions