It’s been a long ride to get to today.
I started thinking about this podcast a few years ago.
I love podcasting. I really do. I think it’s a totally different thing than writing reviews or writing a newsletter. It requires a different set of skills, and it’s not a solitary act. Just putting together people you want to podcast with is a whole process, and after the experience I had on ‘80s All Over, it was crucial that this be built to last. I talked to quite a few people about being my co-host before I met Aundria Parker, and it was pretty much clear right away that she was the right person. The same is true of Craig Ceravolo. I’ve known him for years, but the idea of working together was something that only came into focus as I got further into the idea of what kind of show I wanted to make.
Our warm-up season was essential for us to figure out how to make a show with people living in three different cities working on three totally different schedules, and it took a while. Lots of little steps forward and little steps backward. We tried several different behind-the-scenes set-ups before we found the one what works for us, and once we did, we were finally able to just focus on making a show.
Our very first guest is the great Bill Oakley, and everything about our recording was a dream. He picked a really fun line-up of films, everyone had a ton to say, and it felt like the format really worked. Everything was perfect… except we didn’t record Bill’s end of the conversation. D’oh! We went on to record several more episodes before we were able to schedule Bill for a do-over, and I want to thank him here for being such a mensch. Not everyone would have come back and done the whole thing again, but he showed up with a smile and gave us just as much the second time.
It feels like it took forever to get here, and there were a lot of obstacles on my part that I needed to clear away in order for this to happen. But it finally has! So let’s dispense with any further preamble and get right to it.
BILL OAKLEY was a writer/producer for The Simpsons, eventually showrunning the series for several seasons with his creative partner, Josh Weinstein. They co-created the cult favorite Mission Hill, and more recently, Oakley is the creator and writer of Space: 1969, an original audio comedy for Audible. He’s also become a beloved figure on Instagram for his fast-food reviews, and just celebrated the Seventh Annual Steamie Awards.
Bill chose three Hip Pocket movies for us to watch and discuss: the very silly Who’s Minding the Mint?, Norman Lear’s blistering satire Cold Turkey, and the all-star comic avalanche that is It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Each episode, we pick one film to discuss as a response to the movies our guest chooses, and this week’s response was the 1991 Sylvester Stallone comedy Oscar.
Finally, Drew chose to induct Monty Python’s Life of Brian into the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame.
If you’d like to support The Hip Pocket at Patreon, you can find us at https://www.patreon.com/c/DrewMcWeeny.
If you’d like to find us on BlueSky, you can find us at https://bsky.app/profile/itsthehippocket.bsky.social.
The Hip Pocket is hosted by Drew McWeeny and Aundria Parker.
Craig Ceravolo is the show’s bandleader and producer.
It is a Formerly Dangerous Production.
[the Hip Pocket theme plays]
DREW: Welcome, everyone. I'm Drew McWeeny, and this is The Hip Pocket.
What is a hip pocket movie? We think that they're the films that we hold close to us, movies that we love for whatever reason, movies that we share with people. They're good movies, bad movies, blockbusters, forgotten indies. What matters is the reason why these are the films that stick to us, and there is no better conversation to have with another movie lover to get to know them.
Every week, I love having these conversations with my two friends. First up, we've got my band leader, my old buddy, Craig Ceravolo. Craig, welcome.
CRAIG: Hello, Drew.
D: Welcome to the second season of The Hip Pocket. The first…
C: Can you believe it?!
D: I know! The first guest season of The Hip Pocket. So…
C: Very excited.
D: Yeah. I can't believe we got here finally. And everything looks like it's up and running, and we can't get this party started until we get the Haim to my Feldman here. So, Aundria, good morning.
AUNDRIA: Good morning. I have a license to drive, and, baby, I'm ready to go.
C: Oh, boy. That was…
A: I know.
C: That was… what a handoff.
D: For those who are just joining us, we spent our first ten episodes getting to know each other as film fans. We went through every decade from the 1940s until right now. We each picked a hip pocket film to talk about for that decade. We covered a ton of stuff from Bringing Up Baby and Fun and Fancy Free to Aftersun and Sing Street, with so many different things in between. Stone-cold classics like Nashville and Mary Poppins bounced off of far less well-known fare like 800 Bullets or The Chocolate War. You can listen to the first season now, and you'll hear us start to get comfortable with each other's taste, and you'll learn a little bit about each of us personally as well.
And so this season, we are now inviting guests into the mix. We've actually done this episode one time as a sort of test run, by accident, and our guest was good enough to come back and do it to… do it with us one more time. We wanna thank you for that before we get started today. So, please, let's bring on the great Bill Oakley to be our first guest here on The Hip Pocket.
BILL OAKLEY: Hello. It's it's great to be back here to see you guys all again and do this same exact podcast the second time.
A: Hi, Bill.
C: What you don't know is that we, we loved it so much, we decided that we just wanted to trick you into coming back.
D: That's actually the format of the show. It's just going to be you each week.
B: Well, I’d like that. If there was some comp… especially if there was some monetary compensation involved, I would probably be even more interested.
D: I, I… for those who are somehow unaware of Bill Oakley, he is a legend in this industry. He is a writer, a producer, best known for his legendary work on The Simpsons and the terrific Mission Hill. These days, he's equally well known for his terrific fast food Instagram reviews. Bill, when you said that you would do the show and then you… we talked about the format… you sent us your, your list, and…
B: Yes.
D: … right away, it felt to me like the perfect version of what I was hoping guests would give us, which is… it feels like every Simpsons writer could have this set of films in their DNA somewhere. This feels to me like an explanation of so much of, kind of, your comic sensibility that these are the films that you chose. And what a… what an interesting trio. Can you tell me how you landed on this?
B: You know, I guess, part of the magic of this podcast is that you're required to pick three films that kinda go together in a certain way, right? Or you pick the third? Did you pick the third film in this case?
D: I picked the fourth one for you, the sort of reaction to your films.
B: Okay. I totally forgot about that one in the intervening time. Okay. But the, the… in, in this particular case, it was pretty easy for me to come up with two of these movies because two of them are my legitimate all-time favorite comedies. The third one, I had only heard about and watched it for the first time in preparation for this… for this event.
D: Which I think is… that's a lot of fun. One of the things that's happening a lot is either Aundria is seeing things for the first time, or guests are bringing things in that are new to us. It’s… that's part of the fun for me. If we had all seen every movie every week, I think it's a little less interesting. I think the fact that there's discovery here is part of the fun of it. And I love that you brought a movie that you were… you'd always had in your head and you always were curious about, and it seemed like it fit with the other two. And it does. It truly does.
B: Oh, yeah. For sure. These really are a pretty unique set… a trio of films that all share similar, similar DNA to some extent that… you know, a, a, a… they're both… they're all packed to the brim with comedians from the ‘50s and ‘60s, some of whom went on to be famous in the ‘70s, and some of whom sort of vanished.
D: I love that it’s, it's guys who trace all the way back to vaudeville and, and some of their…
B: Yeah.
D: … performances, and then very modern performers as well. And it's the… that's kind of the last moment where you had literally silent movie stars butting up against guys who were working in the 2000s…
B: Yeah.
D: … and I think that's kind of remarkable. Let's talk about this first… the, the one that you had not seen first. And it was new to me. I think it was new to everybody here. It was definitely a film that, again, I knew the title of, but I'd never seen Who’s Minding The Mint?
[trailer for Who’s Minding The Mint? plays]
B: Yes. And in this… in, in preparation for our second go at this, I watched it again. I watched all these movies again, although I fast-forwarded through some parts of them. This movie was a disappointment. Ultimately, I feel like it… I'd heard about it only because Josh had men… my partner, Josh, had mentioned it. We, we wrote some sort of comic piece about Mad, Mad World, and we needed some more ones in that list. He'd seen it, and he put it in the list. Then thirty years went by, and I didn't see it until last month. And it, it's another one where it’s, it’s, it's loaded to the brim with sitcom stars and old comedians. Milton Berle, very prominent guy. Joey Bishop, prominent guy. I really kind of… in a strange role for him. And Jamie Farr, who had not yet gone to prominence as Klinger on M*A*S*H. However, this… of the, of the trio, this one is the odd man out, in that it's not very good. It’s, it’s, it's funny. Like, there’s, there's sporadic humor. Bob Denver, very fun… always a very talented guy, Bob Denver. But there is… the plot is endlessly repetitive, and it’s, it's just not that entertaining. And there's a lot of stuff that's kinda stupid in it. Like, especially all the stuff involving that kinda, like, that maritime guy with the mustache and the pipe and, and his… and all the boats that he has to assemble to go through the tunnels.
It’s… what a weird movie this is. But I can also say, I wonder if it was made on the heels of Mad Mad World, and they were like, let's just get together a whole bunch of of com… comics and make it cheap. Because this one, compared to those other two? This one is cheap. It looks like it was cheaply shot on a whole bunch of sets and a lot of greenscreen because, obviously, they didn't fly that whole cast to Washington. And, you know, I wonder… I wonder how successful this was ultimately at the box office. It probably still… I mean, it probably made its money back running on afternoon rerun TV mov…. back when they showed movies in the afternoon. But, ultimately, I was not… I didn't love it. I didn't like it, really. I didn't even like it.
D: Well, it was it definitely was a disappointment, box-office wise when it came out. It's one of the few films directed by Howard Morris, who I knew as a kid from The Andy Griffith Show and from… he was the voice of the gopher in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons, and so… as a performer, like, I really… I, I had an affection for him. Mel Brooks loves this guy. He's in High Anxiety, in History of the World Part 1.
It's a very silly movie, though. And I… part of it is… Jim Hutton is an odd lead for this kind of thing. And I think there was a moment where they were really trying to make Jim Hutton happen as sort of the new Jimmy Stewart. And he's got… I understand why a Hollywood exec would look at him and think that… but he is not the charming center you need for… to hold this film together, and I think that is its fundamental flaw. On top of the silliness, on top of everything else, if you don't have the right guy leading the heist and putting everybody together, none of it really pays off. It's frantic, and I think frantic is a big buzzword for this kind of comedy. They can easily start to feel like they're noisy if they're not done properly because you just get a lot of people doing a lot of business, and there's so much business in Who’s Minding The Mint?
B: One thing that I noticed upon my second watch of this movie was how much that guy reminds me of John Mulaney. Like, he looks like John Mulaney…
D: Yeah.
B: … and he has the same kind of distance, the emotional distance… he kind of… he, he kind of feels like he’s, he's in a different version of the movie. He’s… he's parodying his own movie, you know, and, and he, he doesn't have the sincerity that… for instance, as opposed to Dick Van Dyke in another movie we're gonna talk about… if Dick Van Dyke had been in this role, you would… you, you would have fell for it…
D: 100%.
B: … you know? And this guy doesn’t… doesn't really… he… you never quite buy that he's actually going through this… any of this stuff, or caring about it that much.
D: It's also really wild looking at Jim Hutton as somebody who grew up with Timothy Hutton movies and was largely unaware that Jim Hutton even existed. To run into him, it's like, oh goodness. I, I did not realize how close he was. Yeah. So, for you guys, too, this was brand-new, right, Craig? Aundria?
A: Yeah. Brand-new. I, I feel very much the same that both of you guys do. It’s… the silliness doesn't pay off with anything of any weight, so it ends up just feeling kind of noisy and and busy. It's not, it's not a bad movie necessarily, but it, it just…. it’s, it’s, it's too silly. Is that a thing? I mean, I love silly, but it's just kind of like, okay, this is for a much simpler audience. We get it. Like, you know? It… I don't know how else to explain it really.
B: Maybe really little kids liked it. I mean, I suspect it probably was successful with kids in the after-school crowd, when they had to come home and watch the afternoon movie after school, you know?
D: Oh, but that's perfect for it. It feels like those live-action Disney films from the ‘70s, too.
B: Yeah.
D: It's kinda got that line where it's very backlotty, and it looks like everything is shot on, like, four different reversals on the same back… back lot street.
A: Yeah.
B: Yeah. For sure.
D: I think everything was starting to feel… there was a thinness between television craft and film craft for the first time, and you could tell when they used the TV division at Universal to make a movie or the TV division at Columbia because they felt different.
C: Yeah. It just felt a little, It doesn't matter. Just do whatever. Just, just throw it in. It doesn't matter. There was absolutely no effort into, like… the plot make… the… making any sense or any… it just, they're, like, I… it just doesn't matter. Just get it out. Let's just get it going.
D: Like, yeah, whatever, whatever's gonna keep the next scene going. I think, I think the, the difference between doing this well and doing this poorly is such a skill level. And I, I think farce is one of the harder things to direct. I really think keeping all the balls in the air, getting all the plates spinning, making sure that everything lands the right way. I think it's extraordinarily difficult. That is why I am so fascinated by your second film, Bill, which every time I go back to it, I like it more. I grow I learn more respect for it, and I am more impressed by how Norman Lear pulled off the unbelievable Cold Turkey.
[the trailer for Cold Turkey plays]
B: As I said, I watched this again yesterday, and it still made me laugh. This has to be the 30th or 40th time I've watched this movie, and there were many parts where I laughed out loud, and I rewound… you know, I clicked, backed it up a minute to watch, watch it again and laugh again. This movie is a masterpiece, and I actually think it… of all three of these movies, it's the best. It is the best. It's the most entertaining. It doesn’t… it, it feels like… it feels just like a Simpsons episode, a good Simpsons episode. And the jokes are… it's an interesting story. It's very entertaining. It's brilliantly cast, brilliantly cast, and, like… and there's not a dull moment. You know? God, I love this movie so much, and I really thank you for having me on this podcast because I hadn't watched the movie in years. Now I watched it twice in a month, and I’m, like, I'm really convinced this is the funniest movie I've ever seen. And it’s, like, I can watch it over and over and over.
D: For people who have never heard of Cold Turkey, which is, I would imagine, quite a few people, unfortunately. This film is still a cult item. I feel like it has not turned back into sort of a mainstream thing that people know and and love, but it should be. So tell people what this movie is, Bill.
B: This movie was a theatrical movie that was released, like, in 1972 or, or thereabouts about an entire town somewhere in the Midwest… Iowa, I believe… that is, that's gonna win $25,000,000 if everyone in the town can give up smoking for 30 days. And the premise… obviously, now people don't smoke as much as they did back then. But at that time, it was a pretty timely premise. And they… and the whole town, it's a cast of characters. It's very much like a Springfield type of thing. There's a cast of characters, each… each distinctive, each played by a very talented comedian… Dick Van Dyke being in the moral center of the show, also a very talented comedian… and, basically, the whole town, it's the struggle of people trying to quit smoking. People who are really seriously addicted to smoking, having to quit for 30 days, and all the trials and struggles they go through to win this $25,000,000, and there's a lot of social satire. There's a lot of just great… there's a… there's a lot… there's a lot of very entertaining satire, some of which is quite dated, like the David Chetley type stuff, and some of which is still freaking hilarious, like the sight gags. The sight gags in this thing are the some of the best sight gags I've ever seen in a movie.
D: I’m really interested in Norman Lear as an artist overall, and I think Norman Lear's body of work on television is undeniably significant. He is one of the guys who kind of changed how television was used and what it looked like, and the prime time landscape in the ‘70s would not have been what it was if Norman Lear didn't exist. It just would have been a radically different thing.
B: Yeah.
D: I think he pushed… he pushed the idea of social messaging in comedy as something that worked hand-in-hand, and that he found a way to do very well for a very long time. And I think there’s… in his television, even with characters as extreme as George Jefferson and Archie Bunker, who are abrasive by design and sort of outsized and and larger than life, I still think his television stuff has a gentleness to it. And there is a warmth, and I think that's part of television. You want characters and families that you want to be with over time. He has no such concern in Cold Turkey. He does not get… these people are whatever he wants them to be for the comedy and for the satire. And so it is a bracingly edgy Norman Lear, and not…
B: Yeah.
D: I think if you only know his television, not what I expected at all. It's a reminder that, like, his anger about the way America was changing or could change or might change, I think, is very real, and this is one of the more potent Norman Lear moments. I, I love the satirical points in this movie, and I do think the news media stuff is… it's very much of its time, but I think it's sharp and funny.
B: Yeah.
D: I think the way he, he does all of that is very clever. I, I think the cast is so incredible, but it's the tone. It's the fact that Lear sets this tone that everybody buys into, and he does it right up front with that Randy Newman song.
[a bit of Randy Newman’s “He Gives Us All His Love” plays]
B: Yeah, and then it comes back… so great at the end. It's such a perfesct ending.
D: The way he deploys it both times is so laser precise, and what I love about Randy Newman is how mean he is to the characters he writes. His characters are self lacerating and unbelievably ugly at times. When you listen to the character writing in songs like “I Just Want You To Hurt (Like I Do)” or, or “Short People” even… like, he is kind of a mean songwriter. And this movie, both times, it hurts when you're laughing at how Randy Newman's played. And it really undermines, or underlines Lear's fear that we were starting to change as a country in ways that were tied to television and religion and, advertising. And, and I love the effect that it has on this community when this project lands on them. I think every character is so memorably etched and so quickly etched.
B: One thing I noticed that I did not notice until I watched it yester… I've seen this movie 30, 40 times, as I said… first time I ever noticed this. Norman Lear is in this movie for about six seconds, and I, I had to rewind to see it again. In one of the montages of people having a horrible time quitting smoking, he is a guy who's just sitting on a park bench making a horribly miserable face. And I had to rewind. I said, “That is Norman Lear.” So that was the… there… even the rewatch, the 41st rewatch, was valuable in that sense. Now you also, by the way… I think this movie is ultimately hopeful. I think… and, again, it's like a Simpsons episode. Most Simpsons episodes do not end darkly…
D: Yes.
B: … Frank Grimes being a notable exception. But in general, they're hopeful. And I think this is hope… like, it's hopeful. They're, they're… they undercut the hopefulness with the smokestack joke at the end.
D: The smokestack joke is a real punch.
B: It, It does. That's true. But at the end, they do win. They… only Doctor Procter gets shot. Spoiler, sorry. Everyone else… everyone else, they win, they get the money. They're very happy and everything works out for them. And then, obviously, the… the dark side of it is the, the missile factory is pumping all this pollution into the air out of smoke stacks that look like cigarettes. We get it.
D: Yeah.
B: But, but, ultimately, they did get what… they did win, and everybody came out the better for it as… you know, they all successfully quit smoking.
D: There are so many things individually that I love in this movie. I think Tom Poston, who…
B: Oh my god.
D: … is an incredible actor to begin with, truly a, a guy who has made so many shows better by showing up on them. But his performance in this film…
B: How did he do that? I couldn’t… I watched it again. He’s, like, how could it… he's so sad. He, he has, like, four different emotions going on in that speech he makes about how the lung… the smoke pouch is in my lung… is connected to the liquor buds in my mouth… and he's so… he's a little drunk. He's real sad, but he’s, he’s… it’s, it’s… he's got, like, six things going on, and it's genius.
D: That's kind of a lost art is the perfectly calibrated comedy drunk.
B: Yes. Oh my goodness.
D: I don’t think we really have that as an archetype. And, and for obvious reasons, I think, we have a… we're at a very different place culturally, but, man, there were a few guys who were so good at it. And I think Poston is just perfect. Flawless. He hits every note right, and it's one of those scenes… I start laughing when I think about it, then I put it on, and it makes me laugh harder than I think it will when I watch it. It's that much funnier.
B: Now, he's only in it briefly. Okay. But I think the real… the real… if there were an Oscar just going to this movie, the performance of this movie goes to Barnard Hughes. Barnard Hughes is so fucking funny in this thing and I… of all the things… I repeat, I still to… say to myself at least once a week, “The Doctor Proctor, proctor doctor, doctor Proctor,” or, or the… or his patient in this, in the, in the surgical room going, “For God's sakes, let him smoke!”
D: That’s, that's amazing. Yeah.
B: The one thing I also wanna say about this is the sight gags are the things… there's a lot of great stuff in this, but the sight gags are what slays me every time. And it's the montages. There must be four or five montages in this movie of the, the, the first, like… the one montage is, like, the first day of not smoking. The next montage is, like, a week in and things are miserable. And then there’s, there's just a whole bunch of different ones, like people overeating and stuff like that, people over… people smoking… the, the woman eating the chalk when she's writing on the chalkboard…
D: I love the rise of the “massage specialist”’s business.
B: Yes. The funniest one… there's so many good ones that I watched over and over…. the… is the one… is people losing their shit. The, the one of people losing their shit is so funny, and they're so… they're, they're shockingly violent. Like, when the teacher… the, the crossing guard slams that ice cream sundae into that little kid's face with, with a real hatred. And the other one's, like, the guy throwing the bucket of paint on the other guy, the guy in the grocery store just throwing loaves of bread all over the place for no reason. And then there's two more. One is a guy just driving on the street, and the woman, his wife apparently, is arguing with him, and he just slaps her across the face really hard while driving. There's no joke there, but it’s, it's a shocker. And then right after that comes the biggest laugh in the movie where the guy is thrown down the bowling alley. You know, you never really see that in real life…
C: And that's what I was thinking of… when he kicks the dog…
B: Yeah. That's fun, too.
D: Yeah. And I, and I liked that Lear goes just cartoony, just cartoony for, like, a split second with the dog or something like that. But…
B: Yes. Yeah. Yes. Now this is one of those things I can say as a, as a writer. They really worked hard, I think… you know, Norman with his partner, Bud Yorkin… I think that they both wrote the script, I guess, right? They really worked hard on this thing. Like, it’s… there was no… not a single moment where they were like, oh, that's good enough, you know? And I remember… this is kind of the way we did in The Simpsons. It's like, it's taken four hours to write this freaking joke. Well, we're not gonna stop until we get the right joke. And that's what they did in this movie, as opposed perhaps to Who’s Minding The Mint? where they were like, oh, that's good enough. And this joke, every single joke, they worked… they clearly worked hard on every line, the casting, and it's like… it shows. It shows. It's like, as I said, the classic Simpsons episode where it’s… the labor, it pays off. This movie is 50 years old, 52 years old, and it's still making me laugh.
[clip from Cold Turkey plays]
D: The last movie we're gonna talk about today is a movie that kind of I I feel like this is the titan when you think of this genre. This is the one that casts a very large shadow. And I wanna preface this by asking you, do most of the comic writers, your age or my age, do they all kind of have Mad Magazine as a common reference point from growing up?
B: Absolutely. Yes. 100%.
D: Because it feels to me like I know Mad tried to make a couple of movies. I know they've dabbled in it a few times. This movie, just from the poster, the Jack Davis poster, to the sensibility of the film itself is the closest, I think, I've ever come to tapping into that mania that was so much a part of what I loved in classic bad magazines. I'm talking, of course, about the gigantically famous 1961 release, It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World.
[the trailer for It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World plays]
D: I'm sorry. ’63. Yeah. So… this one, I… unavoidable, I feel like, if you're a fan of this kind of comedy.
B: This movie is… yes. This is the king of this genre, and I don't know whether it invented the genre. Probably somebody did it in the ‘30s or ‘40s or ‘50s, but it was the king of this genre, and it was a huge production. You know, it’s… it, it premiered at the Cinerama Dome. That was the first movie at the Cinerama Dome. It was a giant effort, and and it had a incredible cast. All… many of those people were at the peak of their fame. And it was an enormous movie, too. It was, like, three hours long with the intermission. And so it’s… now, as, as you said at… Mad Magazine, yes. As a kid, I could not…. I couldn't figure out that… I couldn't believe this wasn't associated with Mad magazine.
D: Yeah.
B: … because it had Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And Mad did a book, one of those books of, like, reprints called It's a World, World, World, World Mad. And I was, like, there's gotta be a connection here. And as a kid, I watched the movie, and I was like, where's the Mad logo? Where's Alfred E. Neuman? I don't get it! And I… and for years, I was in this… I just couldn't believe that it wasn't associated with Mad. I thought it was.
D: I think this is, this is a movie that I was… I knew of but did not get to see until the early ‘90s, and it was because they put it out on laserdisc. And this was an early, like, giant important project for MGM.
B: I had it.
D: And I remember George Feltenstein being the guy that ran MGM Home Video. This was a pet project of his, finding the extra footage, restoring it to the full roadshow length. Like, all of that stuff was very important to him. And I didn't really get it until it started… until it was announced and people started coming in to ask for it. Every comedy writer in Hollywood came to our store to buy that disc. It was crazy. That's where I met Brad Bird for the first time. And Brad, like, for a week before it came out, was in the store every day hoping it had maybe come in early and he could pick it up early. And, like, he was manic for that thing. And it really was…
B: Which store was this?
D: Dave's Video.
B: Where was that?
D: Dave's Video was on Ventura. It was right by Woodman.
B: Oh, okay.
D: It was right next to the Dangerous Visions Bookstore.
B: I was in Pasadena. So it wasn't the same place.
D: Yeah. We were, we were the early, like, we were… it was us and Laser Blazer on the other side of the hills. But it was all industry, and everybody went insane for that movie. That… we could not keep it in the store. We could not buy enough copies of it. It was a huge seller. And that was the first time I realized how influential it was, or how deeply ingrained it is in people's DNA. And I think if you're a certain age, this movie was a giant deal.
B: No question. I mean, it, it definitely… what a… few movies that had that sensibility, I think that across the board, Cold Turkey does it better. And that's one of the things about this movie that, that having to rewatch all… in watching all three of these movies, I realized even though I have evangelized It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World for 30 years, I actually really only like the middle of the movie that much. I think the be… I think the beginning is kinda slow until they get on the road, and I think the end, I think after… everything after they're at the Big W is not that entertaining. But I think the middle part is a masterpiece, and it also looks great. I mean, compared to these other movies, it's a big-budget thing.
D: Oh, man.
B: Like, it was shot in what? Cinerama and all that stuff. It's incredible, that stuff in the desert, all that stuff with the airplane, and that stuff that… there's gold. There's nothing but gold after gold after gold in that middle part. And every comedian from Phil Silvers to Buddy Hackett to everybody… they're all at the top of their game.
D: I, I have a lot of favorite parts. Craig, do you have a thing that makes you laugh more than anything in It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?
C: Yeah. I think it's the Jonathan Winters scene.
D: Destroying the gas station?
C: Destroying the gas station. I… you can’t… it doesn't stop. Like, it just keeps going. And I love, I love comedy that just lingers like that… where it's so ridiculous that it just becomes hilarious. Thinking of, like, the injured knee in Family Guy kind of way that everything just lingers on this one bit. I love when you… a bit that just goes into the ground way too long. I think that one does it, but it's brilliant.
D: Yeah. Well, there's a point where something loops right around. I, I find it, it's really difficult to get there, but there is a point where you can do something long enough that it's funny, it stops being funny, and then it starts being incredibly funny again.
B: Yeah.
D: And, you know, the destruction of the gas station is unreal. I find Dick Shawn in this movie…
B: Yes.
D: Like, he's coming in from another planet. Every time they cut to him and the girls dancing with him, I find that unbelievably funny. There's something about Dick Shawn in general… I, I was a little young for Dick Shawn. I'm really only as an adult appreciating what a super freak he was on film and how fascinating his choices are. He makes decisions nobody else would make ever. I find that… I find that really compelling. Aundria, is there something that you loved a lot?
A: I was gonna say Jonathan Winters, man. Jonathan Winters in the gas station. It’s, it is the standout for a reason, because it's that good. This movie is… it's the definition of madcap. It's the definition of screwball. It is… if you have Cold Turkey in the middle and you have this one on one side of the spectrum and you have Who’s Minding The Mint? on the other, I think that's a really good way to kind of look at them. Like, this is huge and produced so well, and it's got all these things where Minding the Mint is much smaller and a little more careless, but then you've got that sweet spot in the middle of Cold Turkey where it just hits all the notes perfectly. So this… you know, where your mileage is, is which one you should watch, I guess, you know, which one you're in the mood for.
C: I mean, would you have edited that if you had your hands on it before it was made? Would you guys have gone in and gone, maybe this can be taken out.
B: I don't know. Part of this thing is… it’s… part of what's appealing about this is its monstrosity… is that it's so giant. It's such a huge thing. Like, making this a 90-minute movie would not make it better. I think it's supposed to be a sprawling epic, and, unfortunately, you can’t… there's no way you could sustain that level of comedy for 3 hours. You have to have… it has to have some peaks and valleys. So I think it's part of… I mean, part of what makes this movie amazing is the sheer scope of it… the immense number of famous comedians who are in it… the fact that it looks amazing, the fact that it's so long, and it's such a giant undertaking. I mean, that’s, like, as opposed to the other two, this thing is, is an epic.
D: It’s… I, I love looking at later filmmakers who, clearly, this thing is rattling around inside of them. I feel like Zemeckis and Gale, when they started writing together, all of their early stuff, whether it's I Wanna Hold Your Hand or Used Cars or 1941, the script especially, I feel like this movie is the shrapnel that's just bouncing around inside of them the entire time while they're writing. And then I feel like they finally get it out of their system. But I, I get the temptation. Like, you look at something like this, and it's very tempting as a filmmaker to try and do this thing. But is farce more difficult, Bill? Is it tough to do something that is juggling this many things? Writing The Simpsons seems like truly a jigsaw puzzle of comedy. Not… you're not just writing characters. You are balancing so many things comically when you're putting each of those together.
B: I think farce is incredibly hard. Now, most Simpsons episodes are not farce. I think most of them are regular, essentially, regular sitcom episodes with a slightly different take on them, but some of them are, are farce, you know, like the Prohibition episode or whatever. You know? Some of them are are just nonstop silliness from end… from beginning to end, and those are incredibly hard, you know? Those are incredibly hard to pull off. And, also, even if you pull them off, they're… it's incredibly hard to make them popular, you know? A lot of people don't like farce, and a lot of people have different senses of humor, you know? As… as people lots of people find Jimmy Fallon to be hysterical. Lots of people don't find I Think You Should Leave to be hysterical, and, you know, that's two ends of the spectrum. So finding… making something popular that's funny is one of the hardest things there is.
D: I… it's crazy to me that Stanley Kramer directed this movie.
B: Yeah.
D: Maybe the least funny filmmaker of all time. That guy's whole body of work is super straight-faced and socially conscious and uber-serious. I think you’ve got this one outlier where it's like he tries to cram all of Hollywood comedy history into one movie.
B: And succeeds, ultimately.
D: Yeah.
B: There… this movie is a… is a legend for a reason, and it's like, it's got a lot of… it's the, you know, the funniest stuff I've ever put on film in there. But it… there's also a lot of stuff that's not all that funny that's taking a long time, but that's part of the journey.
D: Yeah. I think it’s… I think the sheer scale of it is awe-inspiring. You, you can't help but be kind of humbled by the fact that… my god, look at what they did.
[a clip from It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World plays]
D: When I saw your list, I, I thought of a number of responses, a number of movies that might be a response to it, and I ended up landing on a movie that came out twenty years after Cold Turkey. I ended up seeing this film several times before it came out because they kept test screening it at the theater I managed. And part of the reason I'm fascinated with it still is I watched them pull it together in the edit and watched them try to figure out how to turn certain things up and turn other things down, and it really was educational. I don't know if the final film totally works, but I really still am compelled by the shaggy sort of nature of 1991’s John Landis movie, Oscar.
[trailer for Oscar plays]
D: And the reason I, I picked this is it is a case of… it's a more modern case of trying to do this kind of thing, where you put together this solid supporting cast around a central figure, and you let the supporting cast be the engine of the thing. And it is running from one room to another to let different comedy energies bounce off of things. And I think Landis is one of the few guys, and I know Landis is enormously problematic as a human being, but one of the few guys who both understood musicals well enough to do modern musicals and also this kind of comedy. Like, I think he really does have a knack for finding the supporting cast.
I think this is a very silly film. I think this is a movie that doesn't completely work, but there are things about this that I love dearly. In particular, I think Marisa Tomei and Tim Curry are so well-utilized in this movie as comic energies, and it's the beginning of her career. This is basically the big break moment for her. This is what gets her My Cousin Vinny. This is what launches the rest of her career. But she is one of those things where I, I truly think she gets the assignment here.
B: Yeah. Absolutely. I think… didn't we discuss this before that Sylvester Stallone was not what was wanted for this movie?
D: Yeah.
B: Like, that, that, that he had someone else in mind. Right? I forgot who it was.
D: Yeah. It was… I, I think he definitely… there were several people that he went to before Stallone was a Hail Mary pass to get this made.
B: Yes. Exactly. And he's the weak link. I mean, he's got a lot of screen presence. He's Sylvester Stallone, of course, but this movie would be so much better with someone else in that role.
D: Well, when you watch, like, him and Peter Peter Riegert, for example, Riegert is sort of his right-hand man, and a lot of the movie is supposed to be banter between the two of them. Riegert totally gets what he's doing and is ready to go. And it is interesting watching Stallone try to match Riegert’s energy. And, man, one guy's kind of running laps around the other guy in some of those scenes.
B: It's not, you know, per… I'm stating the most obvious thing in the world here, but performing comedy is hard, you know? And it's very, like… performing action is not as hard. I don't think being, you know… but being a screen presence is a big deal. But performing come… come… comedy with the subtlety necessary to pull it off, you can see, you know, someone like Dick Van Dyke, obviously, is an absolute master at that. You can see Bob Newhart, both in Cold Turkey or anyone in Mad, Mad World. So Sylvester Stallone is… I wouldn't say he's the worst actor in all three of these movies, but he currently is a contender.
D: Yeah. Yeah. And it, it’s, it's crazy because you look at the supporting cast around him. You've got Richard Romanus, who's so good as the, the opposing gangster. You've got Eddie Bracken, who shows up as a guy named Five Spot Charlie, and he's like a cartoon squirrel in the five minutes he's on camera. He's hilarious. You've got Chaz Palminteri, who's very good in this. Vincent Spano, who I didn't know was funny. I really… to me, this is kind of an amazing moment for Vincent Spano because I didn't know he could do this, and I think he's pretty good in this.
C: Harry Shearer.
B: Oh, yeah.
D: Harry Shearer and his brother. Oh my god. The two of them have so much fun together in this movie and are so in tune with one another. But, yeah, it's Tim Curry for me. I, I… Tim Curry in this, he shows up, and he's so weird, and he's made such a gigantic choice for this character. And his smile… how did Tim Curry not play the Joker?
B: Oh, wow.
D: Because Tim Curry's smile is truly one of the most special effect looking things I've ever seen. He's wild looking, and I love… Landis uses him beautifully here. Lets him be sweet and lets him be funny, and I think it's a career you'd never seen in a movie, really.
C: Yeah.
D: Yeah. It's… you see how much business they throw at Stallone to try and keep him active in this movie. The new words thing, the one word a day thing, the, the money bag. The, the… they really are giving him everything to try and make him work as the comic lead. And this feels like the moment where Hollywood went, I don't think it's his bag.
B: Yes.
C: Can you think of anything where he, he gets closer? I can't, I'm trying to go through his comedy catalog and I can't even…
B: Didn't we… what was it? I know we had this discussion before. It was something about Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot. Oh, yes. He was… he was trick… that's a funny story.
D: Yeah. It’s… and it's, you know, they, they had such a rivalry that Schwarzenegger, all he had to do was say he liked the script, and Stallone would jump on it. And so Schwarzenegger put the word out that he thought Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot was the best script in Hollywood right now. And boom. Before he could move, Stallone was on it. He's like, I'm doing it. I love Arnold. I think… I think that's very funny. But, see, Arnold, I think, had… he was smarter about his sort of comic…
B: Yeah.
D: … the, the people he worked with, Ivan Reitman understood what made Schwarzenegger funny… if you're going to make him funny… and uses him very shrewdly in something like Twins. I think… I don't think anybody figured that out with Stallone. I… for ‘80s All Over, we had to cover Rhinestone. And if you have not seen Rhinestone, the country music Pygmalion riff that he does with Dolly Parton trying to turn him into a country music singer convincingly… it's a nightmare. Like, I truly felt at certain points watching that movie, like, I was out of my body and hallucinating. There was no way that movie was what it was. I can't believe they let him do comedy again after that, but this feels like Hollywood kinda going, this, this is the last chance.
C: Did he do anything comedic after Oscar?
D: I don’t… I don't think straight comedies. I think straight comedies…
A: Yeah. I was gonna say there's, like, lines in Expendables and stuff, but not…
C: Yeah. Yeah.
D: … that’s… the closest is Demolition Man, maybe? And Demolition Man is smart enough to err on the side of it's more an action movie that's winking at you than it is a straight up comedy. And I think that's about as far as you can go with him. But can you see why this one was the response, Bill, like, in terms of the kind of filmmaking that they're trying to call back to?
B: Yeah. I think they're, they're, they're calling… it's a very, it's an ensemble cast filled with very talented comedians doing kind of a, a screwball thing. I mean, it’s, it’s, it's very much in keeping with the genre that we, that we started with.
D: Well, I really appreciate you picking these, and I love the fact that you have now introduced Cold Turkey to Craig and Andrea, who have that…
A: Oh, my God.
C: You know, what's funny is that the first time we went through it, I was talking to my 80-year-old parents. They go, I remember seeing that movie. I loved it. We saw it in the theater. I think on, like, on a date or something. And I, I just love that 50 years later, this is still, like, it, it's still fresh, man. It still bites. It's great. Good, good call.
A: It's so good. I'm so grateful that you picked that one.
B: Glad I could introduce it to you. So it used to be… see, we don't have that thing where TV stations would air old crappy movies on, at 11:30 at night or at 4 in the afternoon anymore. That's where I saw this movie for the first forty times, the first 15 of the 40 times I've seen it, because it used to air like that. And there were lots of other movies like that. Like, Don’t Make Waves is another one I remember. That was my fourth choice for this… for this grouping, which is another one I saw infinite number of times on The Late Late Late Show. But that's, you know, that's why these movies are, are not as well-known as they used to be. Because in 1980, I think a lot of people saw Cold Turkey because it was on TV all the time, and now it's vanished because it's just one of two bazillion movies that one can stream. But I think this, like, it stood the test of time for sure.
D: Well, and even there, it doesn't stream very often. It's a movie that is not in constant circulation, and I think that’s… it's a real shame. I, you know, when Bob Newhart passed recently, God bless him, you wanted people to be able to go look at this immediately. And it was… I repeatedly was saying, I think one of his finest hours on film is Cold Turkey. I think it's one of the places people used him best as an actor, but there's really no place to go point people to go see it. It'll show up on Tubi sometimes or some….
B: It’s on Amazon Prime. All three of these movies… I mean, regardless of your opinion of Amazon being the giant evil entity, it is… all three of these movies are on Amazon Prime.
D: Yes. And Amazon… Amazon tends to sometimes be the the one place where some of these things will land. I think they have the MGM library now, which is great.
B: Yeah.
D: But, yeah, it's been harder to see. So I think for a lot of people, it was not a thing that was in constant circulation. You're right. That’s, that's another reason that I wanna do this, and I want people to really dig deep and pick things that they love, that they remember and maybe other people don’t, because I think there's younger people that will listen to this who all four of these will be brand-new.
So, thank you again, Bill. Where can people find you, see you, follow you? What's going on with Mission Hill and the tour and all those things?
B: Alright. Three things. Yes. Follow, follow me at ThatBillOakley on all social media places. You will get an equal division of food content, which is my main… which is my hobby… and content about what I'm doing for work.
Two… I have two things that I do for work. One is Mission Hill. It's the 25th anniversary of our show, Mission Hill. Josh and I are on tour. Around the country, we've been to about 30 cities this year. More coming next year. Detroit, New Orleans. Man, I can't even keep track of them all.
And then the other thing that I do is… my main writing job for the past four years has been my own series, my own creation that is on Audible. It's an audio series that stars Natasha Lyonne, and the first chapter of it is called Space 1969, and it is a comedy very much in the vein of what we've been discussing. Some people have likened it to Futurama, but in the past. Space 1969 takes place in a universe where an America where John F Kennedy did not die from his, his wounds in Dallas, but instead had this epiphany that we needed to leave Vietnam and colonize space as quickly as possible. So in 1969, it's his firs… it's his third inauguration day. Natasha Lyonne is a nurse on an American space station, and it's loaded with cultural jokes of… from that era… and, but it's also a pretty entertaining comedy and sci-fi mystery story. And much to my delight, it became a bestseller for Audible, and they commissioned a sequel, which I just finished writing, 683 pages of scripts. Space 19…
D: Bill! Wow!
B: … Space 1972. It's a 10-episode thing. Oh, yeah. Space 1972, and we are just about to start recording this what essentially is a second season of this audio show. So that's my main job. Obviously, on both of my social… my… both of my main socials… you can… I'll update you constantly about its progress. And in the meantime, you can watch me do my food stuff, which is also something I'm gonna be doing on tour. It's funny food talks, a funny food thing, you know, kind of a Jim Gaffiganesque ex… ex… the exegesis is the word, maybe, on American food and how funny it is. So that's my other… that's my new third career.
D: Well, I'm excited because we're almost at the end of the year. You always blow it out at the end of the year on the Instagram. I, I love…
B: The, The annual Steamy Awards.
D: Yes. I love the Steamys.
C: So I like the miniature food stuff. I've been really digging that.
B: Oh, thank you. That was really, that was a really fun one to do. Yep.
D: All right. Well, thank you so much, Bill, and we will… until next time, we'll see you here on The Hip Pocket.
B: Awesome.
[transition music plays]
D: Each week, I'm gonna add a film here to the Hip Pocket Hall of Fame.
These are movies that are gonna go into the canon right alongside the picks that we make here on the show and the films that our guests pick. So, this week, I wanted to pick a movie that feels like a… like it will fit on the shelf right next to Cold Turkey. It is another savage, brilliant satire from the ‘70s. Let's talk about Monty Python's Life of Brian.
[you can read this edition of The Hip Pocket right here]
D: Alright! Well, there we go, guys. Thank you. Oh my gosh! We have one whole episode done. We're, we're… that's it. I feel like taking a nap now. We did an episode.
A: I heard that.
C: We did it. What a, what a, what a strange journey… wild journey this has been. I'm so glad we're here.
A: It's a real… yeah.
D: I feel like this is the… for those of you who have listened to the warm-up season and who are now listening to this episode, thank you, because we are really just getting our legs under us, and I'm very excited about the season we have ahead. We have some great guests coming up. We have some terrific movies that they picked. I'm really excited about the way the format feels like it's starting to work. I feel like people are enjoying the assignment. When we give a guest this, this thing… you go pick your three movies, then you come back to us… I thought it would be fairly routine. Like, people would go, okay, cool. And then a few days later, they'd email back. I get a lot of emails before they land on them. A lot of, like, soul searching and hand wringing, and it’s, it's really interesting to see how much people torment themselves once you've given them this task. Find three movies that kind of sum you up.
C: I love it.
A: I was gonna say, they'll just have to come back for another episode if they're having that hard of a time determining three.
D: I think that'll be the fun. If we do this for a while, if we get a group of people that really enjoy doing this, it will be fun to have them back and see other sides of them and really get to know more about them. And, you know, 10 episodes, 11 episodes deep at this point, I know a lot more about both of you than I did when we began, and I feel like that's the point. Like, if we're not gonna learn about each other, you know, why are we talking about these movies, And why are we picking these movies for each other and try and provoke each other? And, you know, looking at the, the four films that we watched this week, is there a performance that stands out for the two of you? Is there one person or one thing that really is the star of this week?
A: Alright. I'm going to go with Tom Poston. Tom Plaston?
D: Tom Poston. Yeah.
A: Tom Poston. He's hilarious. He's wonderful. He reminds me of my grandpa. I mean, what more do you need from a… not that my grandpa's a drunk. Wow. But he's, like, just sad sack. He's alcoholic. Doesn't wanna quit smoking, can't quit smoking because he's such a drinker. He's so good in Cold Turkey, and I really… I really want people to watch Cold Turkey. I do. I think it's so special. So Tom Poston, for sure.
D: How about you, Craig?
C: You know, I, I remember in the first go-round that I gave Oscar such a hard time, but I know that I'm very cliched, but Marissa Tomei…
D: Yeah.
C: … in this really saves that. If, if you get nothing out of that bit of a train wreck, just enjoy how she brings the… to, to, to see the start of a career and to see that it's still going, but see that's kind of where it started and she had the goods out of the gate, was a joy to watch.
D: She, she not only understands what movie she's in, she is determined to make the rest of the movie play to her. Like, she owns that film when she shows up.
C: Mhmm.
D: I’m gonna, I'm gonna give it to… I think it's a different performance than I picked the first time, but I'm gonna give it to Dick Van Dyke in Cold Turkey. Watching his work again, I, I know we think of Dick Van Dyke now as kind of our jolly avuncular grandfather who is the ultimate kind of just a good dude when he shows up. He's always good vibes. Dick Van Dyke always seems like he's smiling, and he's in a great mood. And he… you know? There's something about Dick Van Dyke now, that he's very warm and affable. I love that he's kind of a… he’s, he's having constant sex with his wife in this film. That whole runner is so amazing as a substitute for smoking. Like, he's like, I'm gonna put this energy somewhere. And his poor wife, her reaction…
C: He pulls up and she starts taking her clothes off. Yeah.
D: Yeah. Alright. That's a Dick Van Dyke I don't think we ever seen. And there's an edge to him in that movie that I don't know that I've seen in many films he did, and I love it. I think it's a really great lived-in, well-rounded performance, and I love what a people pleaser he is, what a gladhander, and how he kinda works that whole town. And he thinks he's great at it. And by the end of that movie, the cracks are really showing in his charm. So it's, yeah, just a great performance. Yeah. I, I agree. I think Cold Turkey is the real takeaway from this episode. If you, if you haven't heard of it or you haven't seen it, there's a reason Bill loves it so much. There's a reason that it's so deeply ingrained in in all those comedy writers' DNA.
C: Yeah. If you're a comedy aspiring comedy writer just trying to, like, really learn as much as you can, you can't get better than Bill Oakley and finding out what makes him so funny by these three picks that he well, the two picks, I will say, that he picked. But Cold Turkey is definitely a master thesis on how to do it right.
D: Yep. Well, listen. Our next episode, I can't tell you anything about because you guys are gonna have to guess who's here.
C: Who is it?
A: Who is it?
C: Just tell us who it is.
D: Who is it? Oh, it’s… no! I'm not gonna tell you that.
A: He’ll fall sometime. Keep trying, Craig.
D: You're trying.
C: I’m gonna keep trying. I'm gonna do it the entire season. The entire season, I'm gonna do it.
D: And I'll probably answer you at some point.
C: I know. What's up? I'm gonna get it once. I'm gonna get it once.
D: Well, I will see you guys next time. And until then, keep it in the hip pocket.
[the Hip Pocket theme plays]
NEXT TIME
Our next guest is a performer and a writer, and she’s picked a great line-up for us.
We’ve got a Christopher Guest ensemble comedy, one of the best indie films of the 1990s, and an acid satire of one of the sunniest film genres. Aundria picked a perfect response film, too, so if you want to be ready for the episode, check out A Mighty Wind, Big Night, They Came Together, and Sleeping With Other People.
All that in just seven days! See you then!
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