Episode 242 - The Boyfriend School

[RyanSz 3140]

Was it ever explained how Gus found Gertz at the gas station the first time as Lobo? Was he stalking her or just following the billowing clouds of smog coming off that deathtrap of a car of hers every two seconds?

[pscudese 701]

44 minutes ago, RyanSz said:

Was it ever explained how Gus found Gertz at the gas station the first time as Lobo? Was he stalking her or just following the billowing clouds of smog coming off that deathtrap of a car of hers every two seconds?

I think he was just following her.

But I'm still unclear what his plan was if the robbery wasn't taking place. What was Lobo's plan upon entering the rest area? 

[pscudese 701]

3 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

Hi Pete  

But Gertz isn’t as assertive as that. She’s always like, “I’m kinda seeing someone. It’s complicated.”  We are also meant to believe that Shelly Long is preternaturally attuned to people’s emotions and desires. From the moment they meet, she is able to intuit Gertz isn’t happy in her present relationship, and I believe this is also confirmed later when  Gertz explicitly tells her so—although, I could be wrong about that. Regardless, we, the audience, know her boyfriend is a scum bag, so while it isn’t something I’d recommend in real life, in the movie, Shelley Long’s instincts prove correct.

Shelly Long also fixates on Gertz is because she truly believes Gus in love with her, and to her there’s nothing greater in the world. Yeah, there are other fish in the sea, but he’s *in love.* Compared to Gertz they’re all a bunch of sad, lumpy blob fish.

 

I guess my hang up is... we as the viewer know Gertz is a good person, but she does judge Gus by his looks. Why spend your time on proving her wrong if you (ie. Shelly) were in fact not the "villain." Shelly should spend her time finding someone who Gus will like and in turn respect him and his eventual hot bod. A real sibling would be like, "yeah she's cute... but fuck her! let's show her what she's missing." IDK. 

[grudlian. 4725]

50 minutes ago, pscudese said:

I think he was just following her.

But I'm still unclear what his plan was if the robbery wasn't taking place. What was Lobo's plan upon entering the rest area? 

During the robbery, I honestly thought it was staged to make Lobo seem heroic. I thought they were really getting into this ridiculous plan. It wasn't until he started talking to himself that I realized this was actually happening.

So, I don't get what the plan was either. It seems like his heroics made the plan work.

47 minutes ago, pscudese said:

I guess my hang up is... we as the viewer know Gertz is a good person, but she does judge Gus by his looks. Why spend your time on proving her wrong if you (ie. Shelly) were in fact not the "villain." Shelly should spend her time finding someone who Gus will like and in turn respect him and his eventual hot bod. A real sibling would be like, "yeah she's cute... but fuck her! let's show her what she's missing." IDK. 

I don't blame Gertz for not being into Gus at the first dinner. It definitely wasn't just his appearance. He was also acting weird and nervous which made a bad first impression. And that meal was enough to ruin anyone in my mind. Plus you'd have this annoying woman as your sister in law. It was just a bad situation.

Despite all that, looks are kind of important. Certainly not the most important aspect. I've certainly gotten more attracted to someone I wasn't initially into as I've gotten to know them. But, if the introduction was anything like that dinner (which wasn't Gus' fault), I'm not going back just in case they have a great personality.

[Cameron H. 23786]

1 hour ago, pscudese said:

I guess my hang up is... we as the viewer know Gertz is a good person, but she does judge Gus by his looks. Why spend your time on proving her wrong if you (ie. Shelly) were in fact not the "villain." Shelly should spend her time finding someone who Gus will like and in turn respect him and his eventual hot bod. A real sibling would be like, "yeah she's cute... but fuck her! let's show her what she's missing." IDK. 

I guess I never got the impression Gertz was judging him by his looks, but rather his lack of confidence and the overall awkwardness of the evening. That’s why I’m okay (within the fiction of the movie, of course) with the charade. Shelly Long knows that Gertz will never be able to disassociate the Gus(#1) she met that night with the Gus(#2) she knows him to truly be, which is why she has to invent “Lobo.” It’s like if you’ve ever thrown up a favorite food and from that point forward you can’t even think about it without feeling sick. Gertz doesn’t turn him down because he’s ugly, she turns him down because he was kind of a sad sack, and she doesn’t want to have another shitty night. Which, by the way, I think is a totally valid reason to turn someone down and is a situation with which most people can relate. That’s why, even if he loses the weight and grows hair and all that, it still won’t work. He’s still Gus(#1). To elaborate on my earlier analogy, if you puke up a hamburger with ketchup and mustard, throwing some cheese and pickles on another one isn’t exactly going to make it appetizing. He needs to be a whole new dish altogether.

It’s also important that this comes from within him too. He needs to gain or regain his confidence. It’s a classic “fake it til you make it” scenario. No, the idea isn’t for him to be “Lobo” forever, but to use the “Lobo” persona as a crutch until he reaches a point where a fully actualized Gus can emerge. 

So, no, I don’t see Shelly Long as a villain. At the end of the movie, when Gertz accuses Long of doing what she did to “prove a point,” Long says: “Now, look, I’ll admit you waved a red flag in my face, but I wouldn’t have done anything about it, if Gus hadn’t truly, totally fallen in love with you.” (1:28:08)

At worst, she’s a well-meaning meddler. In the end, she helps her brother fight off his depression, helps Gertz find a good man (despite the initial deception), and brings two lonely people together. I’d call that win despite the methods employed.

 

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

3 hours ago, Cameron H. said:

They touched on it in the episode, but one of the moments I really enjoyed was when Shelly Kong’s husband says he recognized that “Lobo” was foreign because of his BO. What I particularly loved was the thought that a badass, illegal immigrant biker would be just cruising around town in a tourist t-shirt from his home country.

I mean, he needs something to back-up his claim to be from New Zealand. It certainly wasn't his accent.

[RyanSz 3140]

So what aesthetic was Shelley Long going for throughout the movie? Her pseudonym was dressed like a Southern Belle, then for the dinner she said she was making French cuisine if I remember right but she was dressed like a Chinese massage parlor worker, during the training she dresses in a very yuppie fashion, and then she starts to decorate in Americana stuff. It's like someone asked the set designer "we have these different sets of props which do you want to use?" and the designers reply was simply "yes."

[Robert Denby 103]

2 hours ago, RyanSz said:

So what aesthetic was Shelley Long going for throughout the movie? Her pseudonym was dressed like a Southern Belle, then for the dinner she said she was making French cuisine if I remember right but she was dressed like a Chinese massage parlor worker, during the training she dresses in a very yuppie fashion, and then she starts to decorate in Americana stuff. It's like someone asked the set designer "we have these different sets of props which do you want to use?" and the designers reply was simply "yes."

Her husband seemed to be making Asian food. The dish that made Gertz sick was something with jellyfish. 

[Robert Denby 103]

I really have to question Jaimie Gertz’s reporter’s skills. She goes to the romance novel convention, sees the table with Shelley Long’s novels, a life-size cutout of Shelley Long, with Shelley Long standing next to it, but doesn’t figure out who Long is until she sees her autographing one of her books. Bob Woodward she ain’t. 

[DrGuts1003 462]

Did anyone find the cartoons that were shown in the opening credits disturbing?  Presumably these are the cartoons that Gus is publishing weekly but they are rather grim drawings.  In one the doctor and nurse are pointing and laughing at Gus while he is nude.  He tries to hang himself in his hospital room.  The nurse gives him a vial of something that eats through metal.  When he leaves the hospital, there is barbed wire around the place.  And as he leaves the nurse tries to kiss his.  Either this is one messed up hospital or Gus has a very warped sense of humor.  This on top of the stalking he does put up some major red flags that Gertz should recognize if she were any kind of journalist, which the movie shows she isn’t.

[Johnnyunusual 11]

Frustratingly, I wasn't able to find this film (or Ninja III) on streaming or even for rent or purchase in Canada.  But listening to Shelly Long describe piglets death in episode I couldn't help but think that she would be the perfect guest actress on Welcome to Night Vale.  Her morbid yet scientifically precise ice cold delivery of how Piglet would die is very much in the tenor of that show. 

[Deanomite 1]

Why is didgeridoo music associated with a kiwi? Didgeridoos are an indigenous Australian invention and have nothing to do with New Zealand, Maori, or even Islander (is Easter Islanders) history  

[DrGuts1003 462]

So early on Lizzie tells her brother that he needs to wear teal bikini briefs in order to make himself more appealing women.

Later in the movie, after Gus has sex with Emily we see him the next morning wearing teal underwear, but instead of bikini briefs, they are blousy boxer shorts, practically tennis shorts.

Was this a result of the movie trying to avoid an R-rating?

Or was this a case of Gus trying to make a compromise to his sister’s creepy suggestion?

[Robert Denby 103]

13 minutes ago, DrGuts1003 said:

So early on Lizzie tells her brother that he needs to wear teal bikini briefs in order to make himself more appealing women.

Later in the movie, after Gus has sex with Emily we see him the next morning wearing teal underwear, but instead of bikini briefs, they are blousy boxer shorts, practically tennis shorts.

Was this a result of the movie trying to avoid an R-rating?

Or was this a case of Gus trying to make a compromise to his sister’s creepy suggestion?

I thought they looked more like swim trunks. Maybe he was planning on a trip to the pool, but got sidetracked by boning. 

[Cameron H. 23786]

While I recognize that in real life it would be extraordinarily problematic for someone to assume a false identity in order to court/seduce another person, it is a literary trope that has been around since at least Shakespeare. Off the top of my head, Twelfth Night, Comedy of Errors, Love’s Labours Lost, Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest all have characters using some form of disguise or mistaken identity in order to romance another character. And while some of those disguises are superficial, in many cases, the use of such disguises is meant to reveal some deeper truth about the character. In that grand tradition, Don’t Tell Her It’s Me use of the “Lobo” disguise allows the reticent Gus to access the bravery and confidence that’s been lost to him due to his health and mental issues.

Honestly, what I found far more problematic, especially given recent events within both the comedy and comic book community, was his sister’s proposition that he should use his fame to prey upon the fans of his work. When she first visits him on his palatial pier palace, she picks up a very kind get well card addressed to him from a fan. It’s just a sweet card wishing him well and a speedy recovery, with nary a hint of sexual or romantic interest composed within. Yet, after his sister reads it, she immediately suggests that “an enterprising single guy could find a date amidst all those thousands of adoring fans.” I’m sorry, but the idea of them scouring his fan letters in search of women suitably enamored with his silly, bubble-headed cartoons, is super gross. Don’t do that.

[vrbm 0]

On 6/20/2020 at 2:26 PM, AlmostAGhost said:

I mean, he needs something to back-up his claim to be from New Zealand. It certainly wasn't his accent.

Surprised it didn't come up more in the episode. Lobo's accent is a mess and several times it veers into a bad Australian accent. The kind of bad Australian accent people often think is a good Australian accent. 

In this clip (from about 1.01) you can hear what sounds like a didgeridoo as part of the soundtrack/score. The didgeridoo is an Indigenous Australian instrument, not a Maori instrument. 

 

[Mick2152 0]

I literally signed up for an account to share this theory of mine, based largely on the fact that I saw both of these movies in the last month or so.

The Boyfriend School (1990) is a prequel to "Three Men and a Baby, (1987). It shows how Steve Gutenberg's character Gus becomes Mike, one of the titular bachelors  living in the oddly fancy New York City apartment. 

Evidence:

1. He is a cartoonist in both. So Gus was a moderately successful cartoonist in some random local town. He does newspaper comics, and is apparently good enough to afford a weird boat/house/thing, a Harley, and so on. In 3 Men, Michael is a cartoonist, with at least one breakout character, a weird cat looking thing who is never really explored or explained. He is obviously successful, living on the upper West Side of NYC in a palatial apartment with fancy friends and so on. He also sketches constantly, drawing the mural on the wall of the apartment's... Lobby? Foyer? Again, never explained. 

2. New York City connection. In the Boyfriend School, Gus said it was always his dream to go there and be a big success, the American artist dream etc. Emily is even worried about him leaving for the city at the end of the film, though there's the Big Fake Out and he says he will stay. After the Emily thing goes terribly...because OF COURSE IT DOES, he decides to follow his dream and move out of his weird industrial shack and on to NYC.

3. The name. In New York, Gus Kubicek becomes Mike Kellam, the charming cartoonist who tries constantly to meet and talk to women, with varying levels of success. How hard would it have been for Gus to pick "Mike" as his new name? 

4. Age. In 3 Men and a Baby, the three bachelors are clearly a little on the older side, celebrating Tom Selleck's 30th? 40th? birthday at the beginning. There are frequent references to their married friends, life changes, discontented girlfriends and so on. If Gus spent as long as he did feeling like a loser, and with the clear dismal ending of his Emily relationship, of Course he was looking to play the field a long as possible. 

5. Family. Of the three bachelors in 3 men, Gutenberg is the only one who never mentions an extended family of any kind. The other two call their mothers, but not Gute. Possibly because his sister is a legitimate crazy person, who once convinced him to grow a mullet and use an absurd accent to woo a woman he had met once. Shelley Long's character is the worst person in Boyfriend School, and Gus/Mike has clearly cut her weird fish-hanging ass out of his life. 

In theory, this could show that there's a large shared universe of Steve Gutenberg movies - a GuteVerse, if you will. That, or it's all a coincidence that I only noticed because I've been stuck inside the house for the better part of three months. 

[HelloooNurse 7]

I found Shelly Long to be so likable in this movie despite the creepy premise. It just makes me want to go watch The Money Pit. I thought for a moment that Steve Gutenberg was not gonna have sex with Jaime Gertz as Lobo, but I guess there’d be no final conflict to overcome. I had no idea Gutenberg was a sex symbol, but my introduction to him was seeing the kid soccer movie The Big Green as a child.

I have to second the person who mentioned the dance. I didn’t have the captions on but I thought it was The Shag as well. I’m from N.C., so that’s something I have heard of.

There was an odd background actor moment near the beginning at the romance novel convention. When Jaime Gertz is interviewing Shelly Long a woman walks in FRONT of the camera and past the two actresses wearing a scarf on her head that had a giant price tag still attached to it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman. How did no one on set catch that?!

I’m quite shook at June’s comment about brothers and sisters being too close. Am I gonna turn into this sister character one day? Oh no...

Also, what’s gonna happen with the motorcycle that Jaime Gertz literally just left in the hands of some poor airline employee? 

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

On 6/20/2020 at 12:35 PM, Robert Denby said:

Her husband seemed to be making Asian food. The dish that made Gertz sick was something with jellyfish. 

I'll just say that the Asian cultural appropriation and/or Orientalism in this segment was a little bit "yikes."

Par for the course in the 80s, though.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Paul was a bit confused about the convenience store selling pre-made coolers full of ice, but given that they seem to be living in some kind of coastal Southern town (per IMDb the actual shooting location was Charleston, SC), it seems plausible to me that local merchants would have these kinds of things ready for vacationers looking to quickly pick up some ice on their way to the beach.

[GottaLoveTheGute 41]

50 minutes ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

Paul was a bit confused about the convenience store selling pre-made coolers full of ice, but given that they seem to be living in some kind of coastal Southern town (per IMDb the actual shooting location was Charleston, SC), it seems plausible to me that local merchants would have these kinds of things ready for vacationers looking to quickly pick up some ice on their way to the beach.

I think there was beer in that cooler too. You can very briefly see a flash of what looks like a Budweiser can. It can be common to see a cooler full of beer on ice near the register.

[GottaLoveTheGute 41]

Love this episode, but it did trigger some mixed feelings for me. My wife and I used to host a podcast called Gotta Love the Gute where we analyzed Guttenberg’s films in release order. Our last episode covered 3 Men and a Baby. That was 5 years ago and I haven’t been able to watch a Gute movie since (until now). We stopped for a variety of reasons. It was a lot of work for one and we were already starting to get burned out. We also had our first child on the way, but there was one big reason we were never going to avoid. We were about to enter the Gute’s quite long string of bad movies. We had a chance to meet him and like June said in the episode “ He’s a lovely man.” He was really nice to us and we just couldn’t see slamming him for his post 80s era movies. Sure there are more than a few clunkers in his early days. That’s to be expected for any young actor, but he was king of the world in the 80s. To go from tying Gene Hackman for most projects in the 80s to being cast once or twice every couple of years must have been devastating. The man we met was a kind and very humbled former box office draw. It would have felt so wrong to rip on his later movies after meeting. I’ll share more Gute tales in a bit but that’s enough for now.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

10 hours ago, HelloooNurse said:

There was an odd background actor moment near the beginning at the romance novel convention. When Jaime Gertz is interviewing Shelly Long a woman walks in FRONT of the camera and past the two actresses wearing a scarf on her head that had a giant price tag still attached to it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the woman. How did no one on set catch that?!

Hah, I noticed that too. But given that this is a convention where some people are dressing in costumes and whatnot, perhaps they're saying the scarf was actually purchased at the convention?

[Quasar Sniffer 4174]

3 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

I'll just say that the Asian cultural appropriation and/or Orientalism in this segment was a little bit "yikes."

Par for the course in the 80s, though.

 

This struck me as especially strange, since I've actually had jellyfish salad and it's very inoffensive tasting, mostly it's a delivery device for sauce or dressing. It'd be like vomiting over eating iceberg lettuce.

And @Cameron H., I thought the EXACT same thing about Shakespearean comedies. I thought it was interesting since, reading Shakespeare and romance novels are such aesthetically different experiences, but this movie sort of merged the two. I'm not saying it was successful, but it was a neat idea.

I know there is a LOT of the movie before Mr. Gute shows up as Lobo, but I think his sister's motivations would be better explained if we got more backstory on what his character was before his illness. Maybe even, for example, Shelly Long tries to hang a picture of her brother atop his Harley in the Andes mountains to remind him that, five years ago, he traveled from Alaska to South America on an epic multi-continent motorcycle/mountain-climbing trip just before he got sick. But now, he's in recovery and he shows no signs of that fearlessness and daring coming back. In fact, he's sinking deeper into depression than he ever was while sick, so Long is just desperate to make her brother well again and she sees this opportunity to contrive a romance as a way to force her brother into mental and physical health, even if they both have to "fake it until they make it," which does occur by the end anyway.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

2 minutes ago, Quasar Sniffer said:

This struck me as especially strange, since I've actually had jellyfish salad and it's very inoffensive tasting, mostly it's a delivery device for sauce or dressing. It'd be like vomiting over eating iceberg lettuce.

And @Cameron H., I thought the EXACT same thing about Shakespearean comedies. I thought it was interesting since, reading Shakespeare and romance novels are such aesthetically different experiences, but this movie sort of merged the two. I'm not saying it was successful, but it was a neat idea.

I know there is a LOT of the movie before Mr. Gute shows up as Lobo, but I think his sister's motivations would be better explained if we got more backstory on what his character was before his illness. Maybe even, for example, Shelly Long tries to hang a picture of her brother atop his Harley in the Andes mountains to remind him that, five years ago, he traveled from Alaska to South America on an epic multi-continent motorcycle/mountain-climbing trip just before he got sick. But now, he's in recovery and he shows no signs of that fearlessness and daring coming back. In fact, he's sinking deeper into depression than he ever was while sick, so Long is just desperate to make her brother well again and she sees this opportunity to contrive a romance as a way to force her brother into mental and physical health, even if they both have to "fake it until they make it," which does occur by the end anyway.

I'm thinking about the comparison to Shakespearean comedies. I think there the big difference is that there's usually some kind of desperate circumstance that forces the subterfuge to happen. Like, Twelfth Night: woman is shipwrecked, penniless, and her brother is dead (she assumes). She needs some way to survive, so disguises herself as a boy in order to get a job. The increased stakes help the comic shenanigans play well, and also naturally make the audience sympathize with the lead. I haven't read any romance novels, but I assume similar increased stakes are typically there too?

That level of desperation seems missing from Boyfriend School. The dude has already survived cancer, so what's with rushing him into the dating scene?