Episode 243 - The Peanut Butter Solution

[gigi-tastic 2322]

How on earth did the Signore even get a teaching position with the list bullshit the principal rambled off?! He's been thrown out of two schools, forged famous paintings, and changed his identity 4 times! Do we think this means he's I arrested before and is a known felon?  He has to have been right? This guy definitely has served time. Or has he just always managed to be two steps ahead of the cops? Either way he's got to have investigations open on him and his various identities!

WHY DID SHE NOT DO A BACKGROUND CHECK BEFORE HIRING THIS GUY?! If she could find all this out why didn't she at least check him out during a trial period at least!  The way it's stated in the movie it sounds like she decided to get this background check done fairly recently, so this must have all been either very public information , this principle has friends in Interpol (I don't know what Canadians have in liue of the FBI), Or she needs to quit her job and open up a detective agency because she's just That Good!

[Elise 3]

Being born in 1981 in a French-Canadian town in the province of Quebec, the Tales for All series was an integral part of my childhood. These movies were a huge deal in the '80s and early '90s where I grew up. Over a dozen of them were made during that period, and a lot of people my age have seen most more than once. About half of the movies were filmed in English then dubbed in French (The Peanut Butter Solution, for example). The other half were filmed in French then dubbed in English. I don't know if they had the same impact in English Canada, though. My husband, who grew up in Toronto and is only a couple of years older than me, has only a vague knowledge of some of them, and the DVD box sets released in the 2000s were in French only.

The tone varied widely from one movie to the next and, although they all had some quirkiness to them, not all of them had a fantastical element or were scary. The first and perhaps most memorable film of the series, The Dog Who Stopped The War, is about a battle between two groups of kids over a huge snow fort. It's full of '80s winter clothing, bad child acting, and cheesy lines that people of my generation still quote. Also - SPOILER ALERT - the dog dies at the end. Because of this, it's remembered as the saddest children's movie of all time around these parts.

Another iconic movie in the series is Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveller. In it, kids are given the ability to shrink and travel around the world on stamps in pursuit of the titular Tommy Tricker, a boy who steals an invaluable collector's stamp. It features a teen Rufus Wainwright singing on a mall stage during a chase scene.

The two Tales for All movies I remember as being the weirdest are, by far, The Peanut Butter Solution and The Great Land of Small. Looking into it after listening to the podcast, I found out that both involved Czech filmmaker Vojtěch Jasný. He co-wrote the former and directed the latter. I should probably watch them again as an adult to see how they compare today. To me, they fall into the same category as other fantastical movies that I saw when I was very young, like Willow or three of my favourites at the time, Labyrinth, The Never-Ending Story and Goonies... It's amazing to look back on movies that were considered appropriate for children back then. I may be the exception, but I was not scarred by them. I actually enjoyed the strange atmosphere and nonsensical plots, Peanut Butter Solution included.

[RyanSz 3140]

16 hours ago, Elektra Boogaloo said:

The fact that forum posters are confirming that, in Canada, this movie is shown to young children has me rethinking everything I know about Canada.

”Paul was actually kicked in the face and has a scar.”

AND YOU ARE ONLY BRINGING THIS UP NOW. This is huge news. 

I wonder what Marcus Lemonis would think of Signore’s business.

Even bigger reveal is someone had gotten footage of Paul getting kicked, he even had a crop.

[GrahamS. 803]

I’ll go on record as perhaps being one of the few  people from the USA who saw this in elementary school (or perhaps sixth grade). From what I vaguely remember, we thought it was weird but funny. Then again, our teachers often showed us random, weird shit. we also watched Troll.

i thought all the kids in this were great and everyone gave solid performances. I actually  generally enjoyed it until the slave-labor part, which—as weird as the first two-thirds of the movie were—seemed to come from a COMPLETELY different movie.

The most disturbing part of the movie that no one has talked about: Michael’s nightmare where the dog attacked his long hair. 

Also, I saw the female “wino” (whose name was Mary, I think, but I’ve already forgotten) as being mean and only begrudgingly helping Michael. My interpretation of the “fright” was that she was the one who scared him and made his hair fall off, because she tries to do it again at the end and he brushes her off. It’s not clearly explained, but that’s my take on it.

[Johnnyunusual 11]

1 minute ago, GrahamS. said:

 

i thought all the kids in this were great and everyone gave solid performances.

I disagree.  Not that all the kids were bad, but it was inconsistent.  Also, Connie (the fuckin' man) was a mixed bag of acting (some scenes didn't work as well as others) BUT he retains his charisma throughout.

Bunch of things:

There's a scene in which the dad says, showing his painting "If I wanted real, I'd take a bloody photo."  This scene follows immediately after Michael puts the Solution on his head and states that he's an even better at painting than Dad and right before Michael's hair returns.  Apparently one of the writers of the film is a Czech surrealist filmmaker (who helped oversee the film), which makes me think this small line is something of a mission statement as in "this is a logic of feeling than a representation of real logic."  I mean, it doesn't forgive the fact that the internal logic is still messed up and doesn't work as well as something like, say, Adventure Time, which also moves according to its own logic but I do think a storybook for little kids' logic where the parents and everyone accepts whatever thing the book is about.

Speaking of, this seems even less like a Grimms' fairy tale and more like an Anyhow Story, which were a series of creepy, upsetting, cruel amoral "children's" stories written in the Victorian age by Lucy Crawford.  One story is a tale called the New Mother about kids who behave naughtily, so their mother is replaced by a new mother with "glass eyes and a wooden tail" one day and the kids eventually just abandon their home THE END!  It was actually a huge influence on Coraline.

Also, the fact that the Mom was still in the family was shocking.  The way the family was acting, in particular Michael, didn't feel like grieving so I assumed that this was about a painful divorce that rocked the family to its core.  Also, I feel like Sus might have been intended to be an older sister but frankly it works better the way she is.

Oh, and there are four brothers: the Signor, The Rabbit, Dr. Epstein and Tom, the ghost.  When Michael's dad confronts the Rabbit he demands to know where his brother is "right here" he says, indicating Epstein.  No your other brother.  Its subtle but he stumbles over explaining "I think he died in a fire.", just like how Tom died.

[DannytheWall 196]

7 hours ago, E.Lerner said:

 I think we need to read The Signore's prohibition against using imagination in his class as more of a _warning_,  

Ooh I like this. THANK YOU

I was really struggling to figure out what this movie was trying to say thematically. It's easy enough to hand-wave it away and say "Oh, it's a kids' movie. Power of imagination, sure." But that's a *topic,* not a theme. 

On one hand, maybe it was saying "Imagination is good"-- it's tied to Art and expression and individuality/freedom early in the movie. But then again, maybe it's bad, because it's appropriated by the villain to create magical paintings, the very villain who is against imagination/expression/freedom/etc. But then again, it's good, because Art is what saves the children, maybe?  Worse of all, the "Fright" -- the thing that started all the shenanigans and is undeniably a Bad Thing-- is mentioned by Michael (in yet another horrible ADR line): "Hey, do you know what I really discovered in that old spooky house? Was that the biggest part of the Fright was in your imagination." Wait. So if you *didn't* have imagination, you wouldn't have had the central conceit of the movie?! Are you saying "Signor was right"?! 

Ultimately, I just hand-waved it away and said "Oh, it's just a HDTGM movie, sure." But to find that there's a theme that says "be careful, imagination is powerful and dangerous" is a bit more thriling and, even if it's unintentional, rewards the movie a few more points. 
 

[DannytheWall 196]

1 hour ago, Johnnyunusual said:

Oh, and there are four brothers: the Signor, The Rabbit, Dr. Epstein and Tom, the ghost.  When Michael's dad confronts the Rabbit he demands to know where his brother is "right here" he says, indicating Epstein.  No your other brother.  Its subtle but he stumbles over explaining "I think he died in a fire.", just like how Tom died.

Aren't all these brothers quite suspect? The art dealer clearly works with the criminal Signor. Who else would have fronted the forged paintings? Isn't the Rabbit (a street name if I've ever heard one) admiting that he's still receiving paintings from him? How do we even know if the Doctor ALSO hasn't changed his name and identity at least four times as well? I'm not convinced of his medical knowledge by any means.

In the podcast, Jason says something about a sequel, but I say, PREQUEL!

You could go all the way back to when these four brothers were kids. Obviously, the junior Signor has a juvenile criminal history, dragging the others along. And how does Mary even get a recipe for magical hair-growth as one of her "prized possessions" in the first place? I'm seeing things like the kids stumbling onto a quest to create magical paintbrushes, probably each brush with a separate power. There's hair monsters like Looney Tunes' Gossamer or maybe Tribbles. And the day must be saved through the power of-- oh, let's say, love.    

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

[slowly stirring, stretching his limbs, rubbing his eyes as they focus upon his inexplicably-rusted flintlock rifle and the pile of bones by his side where his dog normally sleeps, combing a hand through a beard that he's never had before]: Hey guys! How long was I out?

Anyway, about the Signor --

On 7/3/2020 at 9:07 PM, RyanSz said:

Did anyone else notice that Connie's family might be really well off? When the Signor is getting ready to tear up his drawing after ripping Michael's flaming dog, Connie makes a threat of never coming to the class again and how much his dad is paying this school, or at least the last part sounded like that. The Signor instantly stops what he's going to do and steps away in a huff. It made me think that the dad was donating a boatload to this school and Connie could cause this to stop if he told his dad about his art class experiences. Also before seeing the principal run down Signor's misdeeds as a fraud, it should have been obvious when he as an art teacher was telling his students he wanted no imagination in the classroom, which is the complete opposite of what art is.

The gang seemed flummoxed by the fact that Signor wears a robe, and it makes me wonder if they've never seen Monty Python before. Teachers in upper-crust private or boarding schools in Britain and its territories wore modified academic regalia in the classroom well up through the 80s. Some may still do it, just to be snobs about it (other than Hogwarts, that is).

In fact, Signor reminded me most of the School Headmaster from Pink Floyd's The Wall ... hair, garb, ridicule of creativity, industrialization of children's bodies, everything.

This may mean that, sorta as @RyanSz said, the school in the movie may be a richy-rich prep school. Which makes it even more baffling that no one checked into this persons credentials before they hired him.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

3 minutes ago, The_Triple_Lindy said:

 

You just reminded me of Ripping Yarns, so hey, something good came out of this movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpaL65TzYv8

 

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

4 minutes ago, theworstbuddhist said:

You just reminded me of Ripping Yarns, so hey, something good came out of this movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpaL65TzYv8

 

I'd never seen that. This movie is changing lives!

[The_Triple_Lindy 2482]

Trust me, you guys -- Signor's hire was not a fluke. This guy could get hired just about anywhere. The principle is probably not the only one involved in the hiring process. I've served on search committees at my school. Here's basically how it goes:

Signor submits and an application, and he's probably one of 150 applicants for that position. Because HR has so many rules to follow regarding equal opportunity hiring and to avoid discrimination, the only information committee has on him is what he puts in his application, cover letter, and CV. The committee members are faculty at the school who don't want to be doing this extra work, so they look for anything they can to narrow down the field -- 50ish applicants are folks just out there applying for jobs and don't meet the minimum requirements; another dozen or so want too much money; another dozen are honestly overqualified for the position -- until they finally have 10 or so names, which frequently comes down to a crap-shoot between identical-sounding, faceless candidates.

Then the first interview with the committee, which for Signor probably went pretty well because, as has been mentioned in this thread extensively, he knows how to teach fine art and could probably bullshit through a Q&A and teaching demonstration. He'd be quirky, sure, but that often appeals to academics. Then, the second interview, probably with the principle this time. It's probably at this stage that the background checks happen. Bear in mind, none of the people involved so far are responsible for the background check. That's usually done by some service contracted by HR, which means it is done outside the school and can take time. If they're in a rush to fill a faculty slot, they might offer the job before HR hears anything from the background check. We had one guy who had already been given a full teaching schedule before we learned that he had used a stolen social security #.

Basically, there's a lot wrong with the hiring process at schools. It's totally conceivable that they hired this guy and now just can't get rid of him. Hell, they are all bad teachers -- the one guy wouldn't just stop for a second and watch this kid's hair grow with his own eyes?! What a dick. And as for Signor, did anyone see his office? They been trying to get rid of him for a while.

[DrGuts1003 462]

Can we talk about how crazy Connie and Suz’s plan is to find Michael and the rest of the kidnapped children?  They have Connie sneak into the back of the Signor’s truck and use a bag of sugar and a funnel, so that he can leave a trail for Suz to follow.  Why allow Connie to be captured like that?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just have both of them tail the Signor’s truck on their bikes?  Or get Suz’s dad to tail him in his car?

Furthermore, the sugar plan was deeply flawed.  As we saw, the trail could easily be eliminated with something like a street sweeper.  Plus he only had a 4 lb. bag.  It’s unlikely that he has enough sugar to last the whole distance.  I was stunned when Suz rediscovered the sugar trail and said she finally found it after days (plural!) of searching.  You’re telling me that no wind, rain, or traffic disturbed that sugar line in all that time?

Lastly, when Connie and Suz put this plan into action, the Signor leaves the art shop and asks Suz if she would like to go for a ride.  She says no, she’d rather ride her bike.  So The Signor just leaves her be.  Why was he so polite to her and accepting of her refusal to come along?  Or was he polite to every child and he just succeeded in getting that many kids to willingly come along with him?

[gigi-tastic 2322]

7 hours ago, DannytheWall said:

Aren't all these brothers quite suspect? The art dealer clearly works with the criminal Signor. Who else would have fronted the forged paintings? Isn't the Rabbit (a street name if I've ever heard one) admiting that he's still receiving paintings from him? How do we even know if the Doctor ALSO hasn't changed his name and identity at least four times as well? I'm not convinced of his medical knowledge by any means.

In the podcast, Jason says something about a sequel, but I say, PREQUEL!

You could go all the way back to when these four brothers were kids. Obviously, the junior Signor has a juvenile criminal history, dragging the others along. And how does Mary even get a recipe for magical hair-growth as one of her "prized possessions" in the first place? I'm seeing things like the kids stumbling onto a quest to create magical paintbrushes, probably each brush with a separate power. There's hair monsters like Looney Tunes' Gossamer or maybe Tribbles. And the day must be saved through the power of-- oh, let's say, love.    

Clearly the homeless brother was so wracked with guilt by their past crimes and indiscretions he turned to drink and became a hard core alcoholic to deal with his PTSD.

[gigi-tastic 2322]

4 hours ago, DrGuts1003 said:

Can we talk about how crazy Connie and Suz’s plan is to find Michael and the rest of the kidnapped children?  They have Connie sneak into the back of the Signor’s truck and use a bag of sugar and a funnel, so that he can leave a trail for Suz to follow.  Why allow Connie to be captured like that?  Wouldn’t it be easier to just have both of them tail the Signor’s truck on their bikes?  Or get Suz’s dad to tail him in his car?

Furthermore, the sugar plan was deeply flawed.  As we saw, the trail could easily be eliminated with something like a street sweeper.  Plus he only had a 4 lb. bag.  It’s unlikely that he has enough sugar to last the whole distance.  I was stunned when Suz rediscovered the sugar trail and said she finally found it after days (plural!) of searching.  You’re telling me that no wind, rain, or traffic disturbed that sugar line in all that time?

Lastly, when Connie and Suz put this plan into action, the Signor leaves the art shop and asks Suz if she would like to go for a ride.  She says no, she’d rather ride her bike.  So The Signor just leaves her be.  Why was he so polite to her and accepting of her refusal to come along?  Or was he polite to every child and he just succeeded in getting that many kids to willingly come along with him?

Also didn't it end near a wet street? It looked like she was near a puddle. The sugar would have melted in it even if they had kept going!

[gigi-tastic 2322]

Was no one else Concerned that  Suze put a RAW EGG in her smoothie concoction and tried to feed it to Michael in the morning at the star of the movie?!  She claims ghosts exactly how her mom made it! 

[Cam Bert 8145]

I believe this is Michael's picture

[grudlian. 4725]

If Michael was so embarrassed by his long hair and not allowed to cut it in school, why didn't he cut it short in the morning? Why leave for school with Crystal Gayle style, floor length hair?

[gigi-tastic 2322]

15 hours ago, grudlian. said:

If Michael was so embarrassed by his long hair and not allowed to cut it in school, why didn't he cut it short in the morning? Why leave for school with Crystal Gayle style, floor length hair?

I think it just kept growing? Like I think he did cut it

[FrancisRizzo3 212]

When I heard Jason say "hairshirt" my mind immediately went to the Barenaked Ladies' classic song about gender expectations, "What a Good Boy".

These are some of the lyrics"

I wake up scared
I wake up strange
I wake up wondering if anything in my life
Is ever gonna change
I wake up scared
I wake up strange
And everything around me stays the same

It's the hair shirt I wear
And this hair shirt is woven from
It's woven from your brown hair

 

Is it possible that one of the preeminent Canadian bands was influenced by one of the preeminent Canadian kids films?

[Elizabeth B. 0]

When I looked up the other movies in the Tales for All series I was surprised to find I had seen one of them in school, Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. I remember it being pretty good, nothing too strange happened. It had magical elements, but there weren't these weird twists like in The Peanut Butter Solution.

The Wikipedia entry says, "It is a children's film in which a young boy, Ralph, and his sister discover a magical ability to travel the world, riding within postage stamps. Complicated by a series of rules, they are soon lost in such far-flung places as Australia and China. Ralph is plagued by a debilitating stutter, and the film is essentially a coming-of-age story wherein Ralph can speak unfettered by the film's end."

Based on these two movies, its seem like they try to teach kids lessons about overcoming obstacles, but the message gets overshadowed by these insane magical adventures. Oh and Rufus Wainwright is in this movie. He and his sister also did a couple songs for the soundtrack too.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

1 hour ago, Elizabeth B. said:

When I looked up the other movies in the Tales for All series I was surprised to find I had seen one of them in school, Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. I remember it being pretty good, nothing too strange happened. It had magical elements, but there weren't these weird twists like in The Peanut Butter Solution.

The Wikipedia entry says, "It is a children's film in which a young boy, Ralph, and his sister discover a magical ability to travel the world, riding within postage stamps. Complicated by a series of rules, they are soon lost in such far-flung places as Australia and China. Ralph is plagued by a debilitating stutter, and the film is essentially a coming-of-age story wherein Ralph can speak unfettered by the film's end."

Based on these two movies, its seem like they try to teach kids lessons about overcoming obstacles, but the message gets overshadowed by these insane magical adventures. Oh and Rufus Wainwright is in this movie. He and his sister also did a couple songs for the soundtrack too.

One thing I don't think my fellow Canadians have pointed out about these movies (and indeed, pretty much all Canadian films and music and some other media) is the concept of "CanCon" - Canadian Content. Media companies are required to employ Canadian crews and resources in exchange for funding, grants, tax breaks, etc. Radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music. TV stations and cable networks must show a certain percentage of Canadian programming. As I recall, the first Tommy Tricker film was co-sponsored by Canada Post, with kits that you could give kids to get them excited about stamp collecting (which, full disclosure, I absolutely did when I was a kid). This splendid website talks more about the Canada Post angle, and has entries on a lot of other goofy Canadian productions: http://www.canuxploitation.com/review/tommytricker.html

As a result, we in Canada used to joke about how certain bands or films were "CanCon" fodder - they existed to create work for someone and maybe they would turn a profit, maybe not. "Your tax dollars at work," we would grumble. This complaint died down as the Canadian film and music industries matured and adopted American approaches to creating those media, especially once our undervalued currency started luring productions from the US to Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver for films and TV series, all of which needed experienced crews and support. Those "runaway" productions gave our crews valuable experience so that now, a lot of the time you can't tell (at least, not immediately) if something was made in Canada or not, and I suppose that helped with making them exportable to other countries.

There is an extra wrinkle to that when it comes to Quebec, as I mentioned in a previous post, because most of their homegrown media is in French, and they don't have the same barrage of American TV and films that English-speaking Canada does. A lot of their imported media comes from France and Belgium, and that's where they export to as well, not including subbed or dubbed series that could come and go from anywhere.

[theworstbuddhist 572]

2 hours ago, FrancisRizzo3 said:

When I heard Jason say "hairshirt" my mind immediately went to the Barenaked Ladies' classic song about gender expectations, "What a Good Boy".

These are some of the lyrics"

I wake up scared
I wake up strange
I wake up wondering if anything in my life
Is ever gonna change
I wake up scared
I wake up strange
And everything around me stays the same

It's the hair shirt I wear
And this hair shirt is woven from
It's woven from your brown hair

 

Is it possible that one of the preeminent Canadian bands was influenced by one of the preeminent Canadian kids films?

What a good boy. What a smart boy.

My earliest memories of BNL (before I saw them live for the first and last time around 1992 I think?) is their covers of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" for a tribute album and Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" on their original cassette. A lot of people still love the Cockburn cover (I'm not one of them) and the other one has not aged well...

[Elizabeth B. 0]

Haha yes! When I heard hair shirt my mind jumped to the BNL song too. I went to a religious college and remember learning it's a shirt made of a rough, uncomfortable material that a religious person would wear as a form of self punishment. It's still kind of fitting the villain of this movie would fashion himself a hair coat. Although it reminded me more of a Cruella De Vil.

[doxrus 54]

Can I just say - no offense to Tall, Jason and Diane -  but some times I find reading this message board funnier than the show! 

[doxrus 54]

My first thought on seeing Signor's hair coat was Buffalo Bill's "skin suit" in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (the book was released three years after this film!) Add to that the creepy "hair" hallway entrance to the child slave labor factory, and you have one deeply unsettling, scarifying "children's" film. Wearing body parts of your kidnapped victims?