I'll be using your chlorpyrifos and pyrrhythm. In a high pressure
injection system. I've also got the rsu. What's that?
Roach sucking unit. It's just a backup.
Whoa. Get up. Get up.
They're coming in from next door. Oh,
shit. Whoa. Reinforcement.
Holy shit. Albert.
They probably camped out in the other apartment. Out of
them over there would have a better chance of containment. What if we can get
a whole. Bunch of little tiny leashes and pretend they're pets?
It's two Dads One Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged
dads sit around and shoot the about the movies of the 80s and 90s.
Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nick Briana.
Hey. Hello everybody out there in movie watching Land.
It's 2Dads 1 movie. I'm Steve. I'm Nick. And today
we're going to be talking about Pacific Heights. And Nick,
I'm excited about this one. I had not seen this before. This was your pick.
It was my pick and I had seen it maybe two,
three years ago and that was the first time I'd seen it. And it was
just one of those movies that I didn't necessarily love and didn't feel
like it was an all time classic. But there's a lot of stuff that makes
it a fun one to talk about. Yeah, that's fair. I had never seen it
before until early this last week and I didn't
really know what to expect going in. This movie stars Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine
and Michael Keaton. And I'll be
totally honest with you, Michael Keaton drags the shambling corpse of this movie around like
its Weekend at Bernie's. Like he does everything he can to make this
not suck. Yeah, he definitely. He kept this
thing from being a direct to video release probably. Yeah,
there's. There's not a whole lot. Not a whole lot to it, so. But that's
okay. We're here to talk about it. It was released on September 28, 1990.
We have a running time of 102 minutes. The film was directed
by John Schlesinger and written by Daniel Pine, who this was his first
feature film screenplay. Okay. He himself was a
landlord with a tenant he couldn't evict, which inspired him to write the screenplay.
Oh, is it dripping with that obvious sort that's
where it came from kind of thing. He went on to do lots of other
stuff though. He wrote the story for Any Given Sunday. He wrote the
screenplay for Doc Hollywood. Like the dude's done stuff, but this. Was his first stuff.
His was his first move from TV into film.
He had spent quite a bit of time, apparently, with, like, Miami Vice, working on
their writing staff. And he used that Miami Vice money to
buy a 4 Plex and then had a bad tenant. And that sparked this genius.
And that's what gave us this movie supposedly starring
Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Michael Keaton. The scores on this one,
55% of rotten tomatoes. That's not fresh. That's a. That's a
little squishy tomato. But it's also not terrible.
You know, there. There are worse. Right. It actually did well at the box office.
I was kind of surprised. Yeah. I was shocked to see that on. An $18
million budget, which I think, obviously the majority of that must have gone to the
cast because there were no real practical effects or
special effects to speak of, except for near the very end. Right.
But at the box office, it pulled in $55 million, which is, you know,
that makes it, like, a clear success, if not like a blockbuster hit. It's a
clear success. So was this pre. Pre Batman Returns?
Yeah. So it was between the two Batmans. Absolutely.
Yep. So, yeah, Maybe we had a little Keaton fever. I was surprised
to see how much money that made, because back then, that was like. That was
a big box office. Yeah. Yes. To make $50 million was,
you know, was something back then. Yeah. Maybe A lot of disgruntled landlords
out there who finally felt heard. Oh, boy. Yeah.
Especially watching this for the first time in 2025, it's like, boy, how do you
root for landlords who are, you know, I mean, obviously they're being taken advantage of
by a con man, don't get me wrong. But they're not the most sympathetic protagonists.
No. And it's set up that way. You know, it establishes. It establishes at the
beginning, when the couple is first considering we want to buy this house,
they're like, oh, we know we're going to be weighing over our head. Everything needs
to go perfectly in order for us to even make it two months in.
And. And maybe we should lie out our application to make sure
we get approved and all that stuff. Oh, my God. It's an interesting thing because
you kind of have to make Keaton such a ridiculous bad
guy in the end to be bad enough to contrast Matthew
Modine and Melanie Griffith, because you're just like, they kind of suck. There's not a
whole lot that I'm rooting for with these people here. Yeah, let's. I Want
to back it up just a minute? So at the very beginning of the movie,
we have this sort of very hot, cold open and
we get Beverly d' Angelo and Michael Keaton, you know,
in coitus in this crappy place.
It's not clear why he's like, got a mattress on the floor and there's these
guys coming, driving out in the desert to come get him. I think it says
they're in Palm Desert or something like that in Southern California. Classic Mal.
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, so they're making love and we
get nudity in the first two minutes of the movie and then never again.
Which I feel like a little. Kind of like I
was conned, really is the problem. This reminds me a
little bit of the way that our movie for episode two,
Toy Soldiers, went, where it was very front loaded with the R rated stuff,
right? That's true, yes, very much so, yeah. And I
felt like in this first, it was about a five minute sequence where Michael Keaton
is sort of, you know, these two guys come and they find Michael
Keaton in bed with Beverly Angelo and they beat him with a baseball bat.
And they beat him, beat him up and, you know, oh, that'll take care of
that. And he makes some sort of cryptic remarks about, oh, you love my family,
or whatever. And they do come back. Like, these comments are paid
off eventually. But the problem is this was clearly meant to be like a
grabber, you know, first five minutes, whatever. And I just
was so confused. Like, none of it made any sense. I'm like, why am I.
Who. Who are these people? Why, like, outside of the fact that I went in,
know, oh, Michael Keaton plays like, basically a con man who's like a terrible tenant
and, you know, whatever. I kind of knew he was like the bad guy in
a sense. Other than that. Who are these people? Why do I. Am I supposed
to sympathize with Keaton for getting his ass beat? Like, what is this exactly?
It's just. It's really tough to follow from the beginning. And this is why,
even when I was texting you when you had watched it for the first time
and I just had my vague remembrance and I was just like, I don't know
if we ever understand what his motivations are. And watching it again, where I'm
paying attention, I'm like, okay, I guess I get it, but it's not really.
Yeah, it's not clear. And it is kind of a bad guy getting
beat up by worse bad guys and then not great people who are the heroes
Right. Confusing from the beginning. I don't even get the sense that the guys beating
him up are bad guys. Because when we later just briefly
jump ahead later, Beverly d' Angelo sort of tells Melanie Griffith a little bit about
the scheme and Nate makes a comment that Carter Hayes is the idiot
who owned this place. I almost wonder if one of those two guys. Is that
supposed to be Carter Hayes? The identity that Michael Keaton steals for most
of the movie. Like, I don't know if that's the case, but it kind of
seems like maybe he also. And he has this later. But a
lot of phone books. Yeah. Carter Hayes, Michael Keaton character is
just loaded up on phone books. And I don't know if it's trying to demonstrate
to us this is how hard working of a scammer this guy
is. He's going through every page in the phone book and he'll find you if
you're in there. I guess he has all the white pages, the yellow pages.
He had all of them, you know, which is obviously, it's a great. I do
love seeing stuff like that because it's a great throwback to the era. And it's
like, yeah, we didn't have. You couldn't just like Yelp a business or Google
a person or whatever, obviously in 1990. So it's kind of a fun throwback
to the era. But it never really. Another thing that never really paid off.
It was. It was almost a red herring of yellow
pages. Yeah. And it just didn't make a lot of sense or. I mean,
it fits, I guess, with the general paranoia of this movie. And it would go
along the lines of people who were like, I have an unlisted number. I don't
want people to be able to find. Okay. So it's a little bit of a
nod to those. I could see that. I could see that. Yeah. So we start
off with Carter Hayes. We'll get into the other names, but we'll just
refer to Michael Keaton's character as Carter Hayes from now on.
And he's getting beaten up. And then we go to our,
quote, heroes. Right. Our protagonists. And we've got
Matty Modine and Melanie Griffith. And they're discussing. We're going
to buy this house as a part investment part somewhere for us
to live. Yeah. It looked so dilapidated.
Oh, my God, what a shithole. And I think I read that they really,
like, you know, they did some cosmetic things to the outside of the place to
make it look worse or whatever. Before they started, it looked dirty.
Like it Didn't. That was the thing about it. It was like all over the
side. Of the building and. And they're the only people who have the genius to
envision that maybe with a little cleaning and some paint, this turns into a house
that's worth twice as much as we bought it for. But not to mention what
a place like that would be worth today. Victoria. I looked it up. Oh.
So, okay, so the house in this movie was
listed at $749,000. Right. And the address was
shown as 170 Pacific street, which is not a real address, but I found
some other website for another person who've done the research for us and they
linked to this house on Zillow. 3.4 million.
Yeah. Is the current estimate. And I think that the house in the movie was
represented maybe as bigger than the actual houses because I was looking at the number
of bedrooms and who knows, there might be like four dens that they don't count
as bedrooms or some shit like that. But yeah, 3.4 million. So if they
just held on to it, they had just been able to, you know, manage their
tenant a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah. Rolling in it. It did seem like they
were living in like, almost an attic space that had, that had, had a kitchen
added to it. Like, it really did seem like the downstairs was like the living
of the home, even though they treated it like two apartments. Yeah. You know,
I mean, it's not that hard. You just put a lock on, on the door,
I guess, make sure they have a bathroom. But the upstairs where Modine and Griffith
actually live seemed very attic y. Like it wasn't
like a real space. It seemed like. Yeah, it was kind of a cross between
the, the traditional cool
person loft that people would live in. Like a. Right. So I married an axe
murderer type loft crossed with the attic that they have to live in in Arrested
Development. In the attic of the. Yeah, so it's somewhere in between those
two. Nice. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. They're talking about, oh, we're going to,
we're going to, we're going to buy this place, but we're going to need to
rent these apartments out. A one bedroom and a studio. I mean, that's a lot
of tenants to have in the place you're living for your home.
And they're. I don't know if this guy's their lawyer, their financial advisor,
whoever the friend is, you know, that's kind of advising them at the beginning.
And he says, you know, well, you know, you guys, you'll struggle to
make this work, whatever. And Melanie Griffith goes, well, we'll fudge the numbers a little.
Everybody does. All I thought in that moment was like, thanks for 2008,
Melanie Griffith. I wrote propaganda for 08 right
here on my notes. And it's funny that establishing the
stakes of the movie after we already see this is
a good example of the unevenness of this movie. So we start off with the
establishing scene and we've got Carter Hayes getting the crap beat out of him for
some reason, but that's a pretty extreme thing to happen. And then we meet
the protagonists and we're establishing what the stakes of the movie are. And the stakes
are 3,700 bucks a month. Right. We get to come up with
37 Honda a month. Otherwise, I mean, it doesn't really explain the fact that if
you default on a mortgage, it's not like you have to. You can give the
house back. Right. So worst case, we're starting over from the nothing that it
seemed like they had to begin with. By definition, a mortgage is a secured loan.
Yeah. So like go back to renting if you have. That's in the worst case
scenario. These two people who clearly have some. Well, at Matthew
Odin clearly has a job that pays. Melanie Griffith apparently trains kids
to ride horses. I want to talk about their job jobs. Yeah, it shows Melanie
Griffith's job, which is a perfect, fantastical movie job where she's some
type of equestrian trainer, which, you know, that's always something you're rolling
in it. It's a job that a lot of really poor people have. It's never
the nieces and nephews of the people that own the stables and the horses and
everything. Matthew Modine's character's job, I think is
he was some kind of a foreman at a factory that makes kites.
He makes a comment about kites are forever or something. Whatever. I don't remember.
That is the most insane job. I feel like the writer
asked two five year olds what they wanted to be when they grew
up. And he said, no matter what they say, I'm putting it in the movie.
And I want to work at a kite factory and I want to train horses.
It's really. Yeah. Matthew Modine's job
in this felt very similar to me. And a movie that I'm sure I will
pick for our. For our series here someday. If you've ever seen Father of the
Bride starring Steve Martin, it's the remake of a much older movie.
But he owns and operates a athletic
shoe company that is wholly operated within Like Los Angeles
or like a suburban. Like. Like Pasadena. Yeah. And he. And they
manufacture shoes right there. And this is. It's like by the 90s, that had never
existed. Not in America, not anymore. And, you know, he literally is
like supposed to be competing with Nike. And it's like the most ridiculous job.
This. This was in that line. Yeah, the kite,
I think. What is it? A sweatshop? Like, it was. So it did look like
he was some kind of a sweatshop foreman. So again, even though there
are richer people than. I mean, he's somebody whose place in the whole ladder of
things is with his foot on the neck of somebody else who's worse off than
him. He's like Frank Reynolds, sort of. And the
other thing is as if I'm giving the tips to the filmmaker for
any future director's cut or remakes or anything. If we're trying to
show his financial distress in the midst of
this big home purchase and having to come up with $3,700 a month,
then show him working at the kite factory. Then show him reading a newspaper
that says wind expected to be slow this entire year. And he's like,
ah, son of a bitch. I'll never sell another kite.
It's San Francisco, man. I don't think they could get away with that. It is
always windy in San Francisco. Just such a funny job. I. It's.
It's to the point where it's distracting because it's such an absurd thing. It didn't
show him at work much, so. Yeah, that's true. Just a few scenes. I will
say there's a coup. Combination. We're getting a picture of Matthew Modine in this movie
of Drake Goodman. What's the stupidest name. Yeah.
Really. But anyway, we're getting this picture of him, right. And psycho. So he works.
He's the manager at the kite factory. He's getting in over his head in.
In this real estate deal. As movie goes on, we understand, you know,
he really does not know how to deal with the law or anything else.
But I think the example that I would give that most outlines
his ridiculousness as a human being is that he drives a Volkswagen thing.
Like, it's a. It's a neat looking vehicle, but like the least
practical possible thing in a hilly, you know, town like San Francisco.
It just. You want a super heavy stick shift with a 80 horsepower
engine. Yeah. That weighs 6,000 pounds. So dumb. The Volkswagen
thing and then the Keds that he was wearing. It's just.
They do a good job of aesthetically making
this character a true weenie. Oh, God, he's good.
So I guess I skipped ahead a bit. We got. We got a little bit
beyond. They. They bought this house and now they have
to find tenants for it. Yes. And this is a process. I mean, it should.
They could have fit in a Doubtfire
style model or montage that would have been very entertaining. But they
just kind of immediately took the first person that came for the
one place and then the other one was a black guy who said that he
needed a little time for the paperwork. He seemed like the perfect tenant
otherwise, and they liked him. And. And he dropped off the paperwork the next day,
as we see. Dropped it off the next day. Unfortunately, the Japanese
couple that was living downstairs had their movers coming in.
His paperwork got discarded.
That was something. The first time I watched this movie, I completely missed it.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. So I was just like. I don't know. I think they just
forgot about this forever. So I. Do they. They definitely showed us a
few, you know, where it's sort of just there on the stoop and then the
one guy, you know, takes it off his foot and shoves it in one of
the Watanabe's boxes or something. And it seems like, well, maybe they could
have, like, found it later and there could have been a moment of realization for
either Griffith or Modine about, oh, my God, he did turn it in, or whatever.
They didn't bother with anything like that. Yeah. I will say the
Watanabes are the most reasonable people in this entire film. They're. They're downstairs.
Japanese tenants are logical,
reasonable people who seem like good tenants and get out when the getting's good.
Which was like, yeah, amazing. Because everyone in this movie makes horrifyingly bad decisions.
Really do. Except for Mr. And Mrs. Watanabe. Thank God for them. I mean,
other than. Other than nailing a nail directly into the wires.
But that's. That's not really on him. I don't know how cheap stud finders
were back then. Probably. Probably not exp. Or not cheap. Probably expensive.
So. So this black gentleman shows up and he's looking to rent the unit.
And they say, okay, we need your paperwork. Right.
Okay. An honest black man with good intentions. Missing a
little bit of paperwork is always going to lose in this scenario to a very
slimy, very obviously lying about everything from the beginning white
guy. But look, he's got a Porsche. I mean, how do you explain the
Porsche if he's not rich? Can't explain the Porsche clearly. I'm rich. Yeah,
yeah. Saying this to the guy in the $80,000 Porsche. Come on.
It was. It was really kind of. Look, I do think, as I said at
the very beginning of the podcast, Keaton carries this movie for what it's worth,
as far as it can be carried. It's on his back. But I think
even he kind of overplayed the, like, sliminess with
which Carter Hayes has an answer to everything. Right. Like, really, when he's talking to
Matthew Modine about, like, you know, I talked to your girlfriend, your wife or your
girlfriend, whatever, you know, this, that. It was just very much like, oh,
I'll have my banker call you, or you can call this. Or, you know,
here's the reference for that. And, oh, yeah, I've only got this much money on
me, and I'll give this water. It's like he had an answer for everything.
It's like, you have to know at some point in your life. And maybe Matthew
Modine was just too naive and too young at this point. The character, of course
I'm talking about Drake Goodman, was just too young. He was probably in his,
like, early to mid-30s. Is that kind of what we're both. I think that's about
right. Yeah. You know, maybe it's just as a learned man in my 40s,
looking back and going, anytime anybody's got all the answers for me, I'm just pointing
at them and yelling, scam. Because it just never works out right. But Carter
to. To Drake is maybe
the guy that he wants to become. Oh, true. I didn't know that. He's the
cool rich guy. I want to be a cool rich guy. Hey, I'm an investor
now. I'm getting out of this kite factory, right? And, you know, I'm going to
start. I'm going to start being a real estate mogul.
I'm going to get my own pied terre as a little. One little studio
apartment in Pacific Kites somewhere or whatever in some other town. Two things about
that scene. The excuses that Carter had reminded me a lot of the excuses
that in the office when Michael Scott is with his improv group
and they're leaving after the class and none of them want him to join them,
and they say, oh, we're all going to meet a private friend that
each of us knows from different ways to try to get him away. It sounded
about as believable as that, pretty much. One thing I was thinking, when Carter Hayes
pulls up in this black Porsche, this kind of stuff is always fascinating to me.
There has to have been at some point, a discussion about how Batmobile.
Ish of a car is he allowed to drive in other movies. Kind of like
the Pierce Brosnan can't be in a tuxedo while he's
enrolled as being James Bond. So I saw the black
portion. I thought, is this a little nod to the Batmobile, or was it,
you. Know, could have been. But he's very slick,
very obviously lying. But I don't think we're supposed to expect that.
Drake Goodman is a genius who's got
all the answers. And frankly, we know that he's an
idiot, and we learn pretty quickly that he's. He's kind of racist,
too, because while he and Melanie Griffith are discussing, you know, these two tenants.
Right. Oh, well, we're waiting for. I think it was Mr. Baker, I think,
is the other gentleman, you know, waiting for his paperwork. Oh, he doesn't put his
paperwork in. Well, he will. Well, whatever this guy's already got, you know, they're going
back and forth, and literally, Drake Goodman utters, well, you got
to watch out for these minority scam artists. And he uses the term these
people. And I'm just like, wow, that does not. That does not hold up.
That is ugly. Yeah, that is some ugly from Matthew Martine's character right there.
He definitely. But, I mean, the good thing is to watch this movie that took
place more than 30 years ago and to realize that now your average homeowner
who lives in San Francisco is totally cool with every kind of race of
people and every type of person we have solved. We've come a long way.
Yeah. God. Yeah. They're not hurdling homeless folks like they're in
the Olympics. So, yeah, he's. I mean, you can
tell they're setting themselves up to be foiled by their own. Their own
faults. Right. The first thing that Carter does when he shows up,
he's not officially admitted to be the tenant yet. He just kind of has a
very slick agreement with Drake that, oh, the money's on his way
anyway. And then he lets himself in. Yep. And he's hammering.
And then she comes down to check on him, and he's just like, nobody's hammering
in here. Wasn't happening here. Which, like, sure, buddy. Which was wonderful.
Yeah. And this is actually. I want to stop real quick because there was definitely
this moment in that scene where Melanie Griffith first comes in and kind of meets
him for the first time, even though he had told. Right, Drake, oh, I met
your wife, girlfriend, whatever. But this is the first time she's actually Meeting him and
he compliments the light fixtures. And it was so funny because I had thought
at the time, oh, what a great way to just ingratiate yourself to
this person that you're going, that's your con target. Right. But it's like, as we
learned later on, he had a much bigger interest in those light fixtures as
he ends up stripping the entire apartment of anything of any value.
But I was kind of like, at first thought, oh, that's just nice. But they
did kind of come back and make those light fixtures sort of a part of
the plot again later on. Yeah. So he's in there unauthorized.
They're trying to knock on the door and get his attention. Nobody's coming to the
door. There's a great scene where Drake's knocking on
his door. Hey, I haven't got my money yet. He's not here. So he goes
to walk outside, and then you see the blinds peep open and you see Carter
staring at him just to show that he's a real bad dude. Looking like the
evil queen atop the Snow White ride at Disneyland. Yes.
And then he has a friend there who is never really explained. He has a
friend named Greg who starts answering the door for him. It's interesting,
I guess, the powerlessness that Melanie Griffith and Matthew
Modine have over this situation, but they don't really deal with
it in the best way. Yeah, I have a note here that as
this all starts happening, as the ball, basically the ball starts rolling where we can
tell something's wrong. Like, you know, he got in there. I think Matthew discovers that
he changed the locks. That may have been a little later, but, like, there's a
point where that happens. And Modine is continuingly calling his
references, trying to, I guess, get the money,
but, like, also just trying to, like, confirm that he. That Carter Hayes is a
good dude or whatever. Of course, he calls Beverly d' Angelo's character, who's kind of
been in with him, so knows just to sort of say anything good about.
About him. But I got thought to myself immediately at that point. I'm like,
why hasn't he called the cops? This is a guy who has not. Not paid
any rent. I know that there's a lease, and so there's going to be some
legal sort of, like, you know, kerfuffle about that. And it's not. You can just
kick somebody out. But, like, why hasn't he involved the police, like, from the beginning?
Like, that's the thing is I would have, like, left out, like, I would have
put A call in, and it's been like, hey, this has happened. You know,
putting it on the record, I guess, in a sense. Or like. Or I don't
call your lawyer. Somebody get somebody who's not just you involved.
Because he clearly does not know what he's doing. Right, right. And he gets himself
in a lot of trouble by saying, okay, well, you're not going to answer the
door. I never let you in. I don't think they had any kind of signed
documentation, but they were saying that because you gave
him possession of the place, which they didn't really do.
I mean, it's an extreme depiction of that situation.
And then he decides, okay, I'm going to shut the power off. And he does
a little dance, which is really goofy. So dumb. It just makes him. Again,
you know, he's in a situation, he's definitely being taken
advantage of. But it's hard to root for the guy who's like, hell, yeah,
I just shut the power. Yeah. Because like I said, I. To this point,
kind of the movie. I'd been thinking, you know, from. Because I think. Because just
being trained by movies, you know, to root for the clear protagonist
in the story is kind of a thing that you just do kind of by
default, maybe, until you're given a reason not to. And so I'm thinking,
you know, up to this point, I'm like, yeah, Matthew Modin, you got to do
this, you got to do that. You know, the landlord should. And then when he
shuts off the Heat and the power, my first thought was, I've been a
renter In California, not 1990, but in 2000, 10 years
later, I know you can't do that. Like, you can't just shut off people's heat
and power like that. You're gonna get in trouble, buddy. Yeah, like. And it was
just like. And sure enough, of course, that. That is kind of what happens next.
He does get in trouble, but. But it was like, that makes him far less
sympathetic and easy to root for. It's like, oh, you're willing to just cut the
heat and power to the guy. Like, you know, you don't
know what you're doing is really the key. Well, and he expects that everything should
go perfectly for him, and when it doesn't, he's kind of throwing a fit and
isn't doing a good job of dealing with this as if it's a new business
for him, which it is. Right. He's still treating it like, I let this guy
come live in my house. Like, well, once you make it a business. You have
to follow a certain set of procedures to make this work. Yeah.
So, yeah, they. The cops
do show up after he shuts the power off, and they basically say,
sir, this is America. You're allowed to stay forever once you
set foot inside of a house. And he believes everything that
Carter has to say to him and doesn't believe anything that Drake
has to say. Are we supposed to believe from. Because I wrote down in my
notes here, like, no way the cops would so quickly side with the tenant.
And I stand. There's no way they would. No way are we to believe in
any way that these are not actually cops or there's somebody working with Carter.
Because I'm not saying the movie gives us that indication, but, like, why were they
so. I think maybe there were. What I'm wondering is,
were they just so pro tenant? Because that's what the screenwriter needed for the
movie to work. Because it doesn't really work. I think it's really trying to hammer
home A, how bad? How bad Drake
fucked up by not following the law and this thing. But B, just that
the cops aren't protecting us, the business owners, the job creators.
The cops are protecting these pieces of shit who don't have 20% to put.
Down on a house. Right. Which, you know, Melanie Griffith and Matthew Dean didn't have
20% down either. There's no way but getting their subprime.
So, so far to this point, though, this. I was making notes as
to what Carter had done that was bad. Okay. Because just the
stakes of this movie are very interesting to me. Like, I mentioned earlier that it
started off with this beating, and then it's like, hey, a couple thousand bucks a
month. So he. He let himself into the apartment.
Yeah, that's not cool. He lied about hammering and he hammered on the
walls. He allowed his friend Greg with the goggles to live in there.
He was just sitting in his Porsche in their garage.
Creepy. And he was just smoking and looking at Melanie Griffith.
I think we've come a long way as a society in
the sense that if someone was smoking 10ft
away from me, I'd probably notice the smell. Honestly. I know, right? I know this
is back in the day where you could smoke at a Denny's or whatever,
but I always think that's funny where someone's trying to be discreet,
but they're being movie discreet. So they're still smoking a cigarette, right. The little ember
at the end is lighting their face up with every drag. It's like, yeah,
there's A person there. In the car, and then he just pulls out of there.
Yeah. Also, why are you gonna
give the one garage parking spot? I don't know if he just took it or
what, but it seemed like. I'm sure that wasn't in the lease. Whether a lease
was signed or not. It seems like Drake would also be. Would say,
oh, that car is so cool. Oh, no way you're parking that baby on
the street. And then he shows his friends when they come to visit. Oh,
check out my tenants. Porsche. He changed the locks in
the apartment. That's bad. And then the next thing that he did as we're building
is he would not take the documents from the process server that showed up to
his apartment. Yeah. For the eviction notice. Right. So fine.
So far, not that good. He's twirling
a razor blade in a few scenes. Yeah. What's that about? It doesn't.
It's Chekhov's razor blade.
It doesn't make any sense. Unless there's some scene where he shaves at the end
that got cut out. But no, there are at least two or three times.
Yeah. Where he just is twirling that thing in his fingers, but it doesn't seem
to matter. Yeah. It's kind of like the scene in Toy Soldiers where the bad
guy was washing his fist rather than his hand in the sink. It's just a
little extra oomph to show how bad he is. It was menacing. Guessing. I felt.
I felt like, oh, this is a. This is a dangerous person. I mean,
I. So yeah, but then. Is that. So then at this point, you just got
the razor. This is when a couple bugs start showing up. Right. Isn't that kind
of this point in the movie? Yep. Couple bugs start showing up. And we have
also found out that Melanie Griffith is pregnant.
Oh, that's right. That's right. Okay, so, yeah, so we have
some roaches showing right into the wannabes. That's such a.
Such an 80s movie name of a Japanese. It would be like a Morimoto
or like, what a great name. And they
start getting bugs there they call the Exterminator.
I don't know if you recognize the Orkin guy. I'm so glad you mentioned it
because I wanted to talk about the Batman connections in this movie. And obvious.
The most obvious one, obviously, is Michael Keaton, who played Batman in two of the
films. But of course, Matthew Modine in the Dark Knight Rises was Deputy Commissioner
Foley and fought against Bane in that movie. But yes, the Orkin man
was Bob the Joker's. Right hand man,
Tracy Walter. He's a good, he's a good. That guy
in this era. And he shows up in a lot of movies. There's this terrible
Burt Reynolds movie that we got obsessed with in college called Malone.
And it's one of those, you know, the rich
guys trying to buy out all the good citizens of this small town and we
get to stop. Anyway. I love that guy's work. He's very funny. He's in Aaron
Brockovich. Oh my gosh. Okay. He's in a lot of things where he plays this
kind of of scummy looking dude. There's a certain look to him
and his scene was really funny. So he goes in and he's spraying
for the roaches and he's explaining all the attachments that he
has to his roach sprayer just in case and all this stuff and
realizes that they're not, they're not going to be
able to kill them. Well, because that's not the source. Right. He discovers this hole,
it's going to the next apartment. I also thought that scene was very, very reminiscent
of a movie that would come out later. So maybe, you know, vice versa.
I don't know how inspired John Goodman was when he did Arachnophobia and
his exterminator character in that movie. I don't know if you've seen that one,
but. But he has very similar kind of like where this is the
high end stuff, like kind of whatever when he's going to kill all these mutant
spiders in this little town. So very much a similar kind of feel to the
characters. I felt like that's a good film character that I don't think you see
in real life. I feel like the average guy who's working for Orkin
is maybe not super psyched about it or maybe used to work
delivering water for Arrowhead and maybe worked some somewhere else.
And it's just one of those kind of blue collar jobs. He's been a rooter,
rooter guy. Yeah. But the guys in the film is always someone who's like,
my life is bugs. And let me tell you about this. And I know more
than any entomologist or. Yeah, so yeah, that was
great. So Carter once again being bad, probably breeding cockroaches and
somehow funneling them into next door. I don't know how he's doing it so quick,
quickly. I'm guessing he just brought them in. I mean, at San Francisco, like you,
you could go to basically any building that has both, you know,
apartments and restaurants in it and you'd find roaches. Right. So he probably has collected
them, I guess. But. Yeah, I don't. I don't know how you would breed roaches.
I'm not sure how that works. Yeah, thankfully.
Yeah. So at that. About that time in the movie, shortly after the.
The Orkin scene, Beverly d' Angelo shows up, right. Because she was the reference
that Matthew Modine had to call. And she. This was, I thought, funny. She asked
him where. Where did Carter end up? What's the address? I don't know why he
would give that address, his own home address, to this random person,
but he does. She shows up. Carter, you know, Keaton is not there.
Greg is there, but. And Greg and Beverly d' Angelo
seem to know each other, or at least there's a familiarity or whatever. And I
wrote down this note because, like, I was flabbergasted by the reaction of Melanie Griffith
in the scene. She lets Beverly d' Angelo in. She goes into the apartment,
talk to Greg, and they are talking so loudly that you can clearly hear
their conversation from the hallway. And given everything they were dealing with,
with these people, I cannot believe she wouldn't just stand there and listen.
Yeah. Maybe she would have learned something. She just leaves.
What do you got? You got. You got a horse lesson? Where the hell are
you going? Get back there and listen. Like, what the. Oh, my God, that was
so infuriating. Like, I wrote. I wrote the words I'm sorry in the largest font
I could in my notebook. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like, how would you not
eavesdrop over that conversation and try to figure out what the hell is going on?
Yeah, that's very important. And I think they really. Yeah. Their lack of
curiosity and lack of follow through dug their hole after
the. The roaches. And around this time, they were looking for maybe a
quick injection of cash and went to a high interest
loan shark type place. And I don't know if you noticed the guy.
I can't remember his name, but it definitely recognized the actual. I just thought of
it. I wrote. Wrote a note of who he was, but I thought of his
name. I think it's Dan Hadiah. Oh, that sounds right. Yeah. And he was in.
He was the bad guy in Arnold Schwarzenegger's Commando. Okay. He was Steve and
Doug Batabi's dad in Night at the Roxbury, probably in a lot of things in
between. He was also Cher's dad in Clueless. Okay. Oh,
right, right, right. Yeah. Great actor. Good character actor. And he tells.
He tells Drake, I'm a sleazy loan
guy. I'm not a miracle worker. You're not getting anything from me. So he's.
He's. He's out of luck there. Yeah.
So the roach problem is just gonna continue to be a problem.
And Drake decides I'm gonna go in the crawl space of the
house and I need to investigate. Cause I can hear to their apartment, but something's
going on. And he's looking up through a little hole in the floor
and seeing this hijinks going down.
And he's realizing, oh, I don't know why he needs to
keep reconfirming the most obvious thing in the world. I would just be like,
actually bad dudes. I'm getting out of here. Yeah.
And then they drop a jar, a glass jar,
which is full of roaches. And then the glass and the roaches just go all
over his face while he has to remain quiet in a crawl space. And leading
up to a question that I have for you, the next scene,
it shows him just kind of sulking in their apartment.
And he's obviously drinking a bunch of beers. I think there was, like, seven beer
bottles around on how many beers would you need to drink if you got hit
in the face or. I mean, that's something you really have to erase.
Yeah, that's. I would be shaking for a while. The bigger question I would
have is that after I've clearly gone to the emergency room to get all the
lacerations on my face, you know, stitched up because of the fact that a glass
jar just broke and fell on my face. You know, how safe would it be
to douse myself in whiskey with all the pain meds I'd be on? That really
would be my first concern. You know, that thins the blood a little and whatnot.
So I would be concerned with that. The fact that he had no markings on
him whatsoever. Yeah. When, like, a glass jar of roach roaches just, like,
exploded in front of him and rained down on his face, it's like, come on.
This is worse than, you know, this is worse than the kid getting hit in
the knee and never limping in toy soldiers. Like, it's. It's just like. There's got
to be some continuity here. But yes. No. A face full of roaches. I mean,
that's an easy 12 pack. There's. There's no way. I think that's right. Less than
that, he. I think he discontinued his health insurance because
he had to make sure he had enough money for two cans of paint to
completely remodel this house.
So. So the Watanabes have had it.
And as they should. 100%. They. They've put up with enough. And honestly,
I think during this time period they should have been like, hey, we're gonna.
We're going to the Homestead Suites for a few nights until you guys figure this
out. Courtyard by Marriott. So they're leaving and they're breaking the lease. They're not suing
them for anything. They're just saying, we're out of here. Yeah. And Melanie Griffith is
just beside herself that they're not honoring the
lease that they signed as if there are no clauses about the
condition. And your experience with it. Brooches everywhere. And like,
yeah, I got a landlord willing to just shut off people's heat on a whim.
So it's another example of just their cluelessness and
how kind of whiny and entitled they are that everything is like, but this isn't
going my way. Right. So her lack of understanding towards them
really took her down another path. Yeah. In my book,
they come home to the garage and they open
it where the Porsche normally is. And the Porsche is just fully disassembled.
Assembled. Yeah. It's like all pulled apart, like for like it's been stripped or whatever.
Right? Yeah. The ability of a bad guy to just fully disassemble a car
is incredible. I wouldn't even know the first screw to undo. Oh my God.
I would try to take off a door, I guess. I don't know. That part
moves. It's got to have a hinge. You could take hinges apart, I guess.
Like, I don't know. Yeah. Wouldn't even know where to start. Yeah. So they're kind
of starting to go mad. And this is
where the stakes are raised in this movie because we've got.
He caught a face full of roach glass. And now Matthew
Modine's character is having this crazy dream sequence.
He's hallucinating. Caused completely
by self induced financial ruin, which is a
hell of a drug. And it leads to Melanie
Griffith's character losing her pregnancy. She has a
miscarriage, which is terrible for them to deal with. It's also
the only successful eviction in this movie.
And it's terrible. And they're dealing with this. And then
Carter really steps up his nastiness.
Timeout. So a couple things. First off, this is the second movie we've done in
a row that features a miscarriage as a plot point. We need to break that
streak. For one thing. Apologize to everyone in the world world about
that. However, this was so crazy to me.
Right? So she. She has this miscarriage. Awful. She ends up coming home and Carter,
Yeah, first of all, he pre. Calls the police, which should have not worked,
and then goes and tries to give, like, condolences, but really he's baiting Matthew.
I'm guessing this is why we have HIPAA now, because he
apparently was able to just call the hospital, go, yeah, this is a woman,
you know, she came in there. What was that about? I saw a stretcher.
Oh, yeah, she had a miscarriage. She's gone home now. Like, why would anyone give
that information out? It's insane. And then now there's laws against it. But, like,
I can see why we needed the. The oft, you know,
maligned and misappropriated HIPAA laws to stop hospitals from
handing out this information. It's ludicrous. Yeah. His evil really
could have been cut off by many people with some kind. Of authority or any
common sense at all. Yeah, really bad. Really bad. By the
way. Wait, actually, this is the point where I wrote the notes. In my notes,
literally, I wrote, jesus, this movie is only half over because
the pacing to this point was really bad. It's zigzagging all
over the place. It truly is an insane movie. Yeah.
Drake is gonna beat up Carter. I mean, that's such a.
It's a despicable thing to do. He knows exactly what he's doing. But also,
Drake, you need to be smarter because you already have,
you know, legal trouble relating to this guy.
The cops show up, do not ask a single question immediately.
Just throw Drake into the police car. Normally, at least they're cuffing people.
They're sitting them down on a curb and finding out what happened. And there's neighbors
and there's witnesses, but it's just trying to show, man, if you're a landlord,
it is hard. You're probably the single most discriminated against group
by the police in the country. Absolutely. And history backs that up. Landlords have
never had it worse. No more persecuted group in society than landlords.
I do think, like, why, like, the cops are so dumb and that's maybe not
surprising, whatever. But like, it's, you know, he calls and then. And he calls
them, I guess, to say, there's these guys, there's a fight happening
or whatever, you know, he has to say something to draw them there, right?
This guy's beaten somebody's. But whatever. And then it's like they, you know,
they have to be there, like 15 minutes later, and there's the fight happening.
It's like, that didn't raise a single eyebrow at sfpd. Like, what is
going on? Like, why would that be not questioned at all? Terrible. It's terrible.
So Drake has been beat up, and he
needs to stay away from the house because Carter has a restraining order against Drake.
Yes, he does. So the most logical thing is definitely,
leave my wife there. Leave my wife, who recently had a
girlfriend, who recently had a really bad trauma and is
still in the house with this guy who's trying to slowly drive us insane.
I'm gonna leave her there, and I'm gonna go have bro time with my friend
sleeping on the pullout couch. And I love that scene again, because it did not
fit with anything. Drake is having the time of his fucking life. He's making
Bananas Foster with his friend. They're, like, lighting things on fire. And, oh,
my God. And she's there with their door getting
knocked on with this creep who knows that she's vulnerable and
alone. And Drake is not thinking twice about it. He's just. Oh. And then
it occurs to him when he's on the phone, oh, you should come here.
Oh, you should. This safe house that I'm at, you should come be safe here
with me. I can't disagree with your framing that this is his bad, but I
originally watched this going, why isn't Melanie Griffith with him? Why wouldn't she just go?
Yeah, why did she even go back to the house at all? Like, they're both
being complete idiots. Like, this doesn't make any sense. This guy is like. I guess
to this point, maybe they haven't thought that he's dangerous, per se.
He's just been, you know, obviously squatting and not paying
them and, like, all this stuff. But, like, maybe to that point, because he didn't
start the fight with. With Drake, right? He basically got his ass
beat. I mean, really, you know, Drake got hurt more from the fall down the
stairs than anything Michael Keaton did specifically to him. So maybe they just
weren't thinking he was that dangerous, which I think is insane. They wouldn't think he's
dangerous. But it doesn't make any sense that she would be back at that house
at all. Not at all. And it immediately proves to be the wrong decision.
And she's being harassed there. So Drake
comes back to the house, breaks the tro, doesn't let anybody
know in advance. I mean, the move would have been, hey, this guy's crazy.
He has a restraining. Restraining order against me. I think my wife is in danger.
Can somebody go check on her? Or can she meet you and you can escort
her away? Something. But he shows up stupidly.
Carter catches him breaking in. He shoots him twice and
plants a crowbar in his hand so it looks like he broke in.
Smart guy. Great, Great move. Once again. And they go to
the police. And they're talking to the police about what happened, and the cop
says, oh, well, let me get my supervisor. Let's get the big boss. Get the
lieutenant. And the lieutenant is the original. The original potential
tenant. Our African American gentleman, Mr. Baker. Mr.
Baker. And he was nicer to them than he
should have been, probably. Well, he didn't. But he did say he didn't let his
disappointment go unnoticed. But he was very professional to his gratitude.
Yeah. And good. Good for him. Although the way that they're depicting SFPD
in this movie, I don't know if they would have loved having an SFPD
as a tenant, because the SFPD has been failing them at every turn
throughout this. Maybe this is the only good SFPD guy, too.
Props to this guy, by the way. Not using his position as a police
officer to try to muscle his way into getting that apartment. He didn't even mention
it at all. That's true. It's like Teen Wolf playing as
Scotty and not the wolf. He's like, yeah, I'm not gonna be the cop applying
for this apartment. I'm just gonna be me and see what happens. See, when you
frame it that way, though, it sounds like a really dumb move. He should have
used his power that way. I mean, Scotty can't play.
Yeah. He probably ended up in a. In a better place. Yeah,
we're assuming, you know, he clearly found somewhere to live, so. So now the movie
doesn't know what to do. No, nor did I. It didn't make any sense.
For a little while. The whole time, yeah, we're thinking, okay, so somebody
has been shot. Right. And it's not over. Right. Which logic
would lead you to believe that somebody has to get shot worse. Right.
And some. Something worse than that has to happen. You gotta raise it. You gotta
build. Right? So they. They go on a search, and they're
trying to find out who's this. Well, not just. Just Melanie Griffith.
And I wrote down here, like, I didn't. I didn't understand why she was following
him. I didn't understand why she didn't just let him go. I didn't understand what
her motive was. None of that made sense until she talks.
She finds and talks to Beverly d'. Angelo. And when she talks to her and
gets a sense of like, there's. There's this identity theft sort of element
behind all this. Yeah, that was the first time when. Oh. Like,
that's. That's when it ended up seeming
more like this guy's actually dangerous versus
just being an. Yeah, right. And it's like, okay, so he's not just there to,
like, you know, strip mine your apartment for the. The, you know, freaking baseboards
and light fixtures, you know, and make your life hell for no good reason.
He's trying to steal your identity and your finances. So.
Okay, now we've got. But I don't know why the movie took us. Took so
long to tell us that. It would have made him a much more compelling
villain and then much more sympathetic protagonists. If I knew the whole time he
was trying to become Drake Goodman and steal his life. Yes. And I feel
like they could have made Keaton's character.
They could have made the protagonist, like,
20% better, and then he would have seemed bad enough. They're just.
He just needs to be so bad for them to suck so bad. And if
they had just revealed that at the beginning, it would have made a lot more
sense rather than, oh, he's just some guy who's getting away with stuff. The way
that she confirmed that Carter was in this hotel
is she went up to the desk and said that she was
returning a lost wallet. Right. But then she was waiting there in the
lobby anyway. And she knows what he looks like. I don't understand what the purpose
of that entire scene was. Well, I guess it was she was checking
the hotel, confirming his presence, but needed an excuse to do
that so that she didn't seem like she was doing something wrong, so that the.
The concierge or whatever at the front desk hotel wouldn't ask his own
questions about. Why is this woman asking. Maybe something like that. I mean, it's flimsy,
but I must be something along those lines. So then he was
trying to steal. Obviously trying to steal Drake's identity. Well, he kind
of had. Right? I mean, he was there as Drake was checked in, as Drake
Goodman moved on. He was. He was draking it up. Yeah.
And she was following him. It was funny for her to watch him go from
this mansion straight into a limo, straight to a yacht. I loved him. Just showing
he's living the life as. I don't understand how much time has passed,
though, because it seems like a day or two. Yeah.
Because I think Modine is still like. Has like a sling and.
Yeah, yeah, he's got. He's bandaged up and he's out of the hospital after a
gunshot. So that's okay. A few days. Less than a week though. Yeah. You know,
and. And he's already moved on to a new grift to such an extent that
he's making out with this like widow or whoever she is or this. This heiress.
You know. And you know, it's just kind of like how.
Like why. Why am I supposed to believe that this is something. Was he prepared?
I guess maybe he was preparing this. The fact when he was gone all the
time. Yeah. Down in la Juggling a few Griffs at once. Again. Something that
movie just doesn't bother to make clear to us. Just doesn't care enough. Not at
all. It would have been funny if she followed him all the way to where
he's checked into this Marriott and everything to see what he's up to.
And then he's just drilling holes in the wall doing the same shit. Bringing roaches.
He's a one trick pony. He has no other plans. I'm going to do this
to the JW Marriott family of hotels. Now in
her research about his back history
and realizing that James Danforth, I guess that's Carter's real
name. He was an heir to a very big fortune
but was cut out of it for some reason. We're all waiting for the sequel
because he's a psycho. I guess. But she finds this newspaper
article about him being left out of the family fortune.
And I know don't when's that getting written? Like who's on Will
Watch? And they're just writing all these things about which people are being excluded from
their fortunes. It feels like a page six. The society pages.
Which I've never seen in real life but have heard in movies and TV
shows. There are things like that. I don't know if it's like the New York
Times or maybe it's like tabloidy kind of. That would be in the New York
Daily News or something. Right? It's true. It was just the article cut out.
We didn't see the publication. I don't think it was the old Gray Lady.
I don't think it was like. Yeah. And there was a
suitcase with the false bottom and the envelope full of cash. I love to see
this. She gets out of his hotel room just in time.
And she's in Carter's hotel room. She's snooping around. And he
keeps just a series of convenient newspaper clippings that
fully explain his life to this point. Which I always keep handy
of course, yeah. And he sees her leaving. He's not quite
sure, so he's running away. And then she gets in a taxi and does
the just drive thing, which I love. And somehow Carter runs after that
taxi like the liquid metal Terminator.
I literally thought that. I'm like, man, he's just not as fast as Jason Patrick.
He's just busting ass after this taxi.
So I enjoyed that. Just how extreme he's become. I loved.
Before she left the hotel room, though, she took the chocolate off the pillow after
the turndown service. That was such a great little moment of like. Like, I got
you. Like, you know, I just thought, yeah, take the chocolate, babe. Take it like
it's your chocolate. Now, this is not plot related,
but this is a good Bay Area thing that I'm sure you noticed in the
movie. It showed a scene of the classic coffee kofy TV
commercial. Remember that channel TV 20, right?
Yeah, I do remember. And it would have one of the pets. It would always
be a pet that's up for adoption. Looking at the screen and then it says,
KO fy. And then the pet turns its head and it showed one of those.
I was like, oh, man, I was right. When I looked out here. Yeah,
I think I might have looked away when that happened. I don't remember that.
But, yeah, that was a good bait. There wasn't. For a San Francisco
movie, there was almost no San Francisco. Very little. Yeah,
even there's so many opportunities with chase scenes and such that you
just. They didn't have the classic San Francisco Haley
chase scene or anything like that. Yeah, there was. There was. You know, if you
have a movie set in SF entitled After the neighborhood in San Francisco that
is supposedly taking place in. And we don't once see the Golden Gate Bridge,
Alcatraz, Coit Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid. I mean, anything,
Right. That's like a standard sort of SF architectural beacon.
What's the point? Why set it there? Set it in any other town but make
it in la. Every movie is like default in la, right? Exactly. Go from there.
But no, they really didn't take advantage of the suit at all. Not at all.
They could call the movie Non Specific Heights, Atlantic Depths.
So we're getting close to the end here. Yes, thank God. And.
And here's Carter. And Carter has. Has gotten back into
their place because. Why. Why are they
there? They're. They have to be there for the plot.
And he beats up Matthew Modine
with a golf club, which is pretty sweet. I dig it. Good to see him
get Beaten up. And I love a good golf club beating. In any movie,
that's always a good classic. Better than a baseball bat. It moves so much faster.
Yep. And the place is under. The place is completely stripped.
Right. Like you said, he came in, he pulled the copper pipes out and everything.
It's just completely destroyed. So it's a construction
zone of his own doing. And in the final fight,
Matthew Modine, despite having the crap beaten out of him with the golf club,
is able to muster a little bit of strength. And we push Carter
backwards, and he falls onto two very convenient pieces of rebar.
Yeah, rebar or copper piping or something. I don't know if they were plumbing or
what they were, but they were. Something sticking up in the middle of the floor.
There was nothing. That was plumb too. No, I think
it was just one of those perfect Jim kata style situations where it's like,
oh, there's a pommel horse. Yeah. It didn't.
It didn't quite work, but it also didn't need to because at that point,
that movie could have. We were ready for it to be done. He could have
spontaneously combusted, and I just would have been like, yeah, okay, that fits this movie.
Sure. And before it got to this part, so Carter had gotten arrested
earlier, and it seemed like this is the lamest way for this movie
to end because we've already been to these heights of the stakes and they've lost
a pregnancy and. And someone's gotten shot and all this.
So it was satisfying to see the impale.
The impalement. Impalement. Yeah, that sounds right. Impalation.
I don't know, man. We'll have to fact check that one.
But that's always a great bad guy death. It's just
a little extra cruel, little extra gruesome to show that this guy really got
what was coming to him. Reminded me of Ghost, the bad guy. Of Ghost falling
onto the Lopez. Yeah. Yeah. So that's
the end of the saga as far as Carter goes. Yeah.
And Carter's. Carter's gone. And a little bit of
time passes and we're in this. It doesn't. I don't know if it even says,
but it's a. Four months later. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And the house is fixed up.
Yep. Looks great. And here they are, Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith leading
people around. Oh, and this is great. You know, this is all original. I started.
We restored this and that. Yeah, yeah. Telling people about the house. And they're
showing another young couple around the house and then leave them Alone
in the room. And they go elsewhere. And the last scene in the
movie is the young couple talking to each other. Right. And it's the same conversation
that we had at the beginning. I don't know if we can afford this place.
Well, that's okay. You know, you don't have to worry. We don't have to put
the real numbers down on the application. And the cycle continues.
They also owned that place, it seems like for something in the neighborhood
of six months. Months. I'm not sure exactly how long the movie takes place for,
but it feels like less than a year. Yeah. And they're asking 900 grand for
a house they bought for. So I didn't see the. I didn't see the price.
It was like over 900,000 was the list price. I think I missed that.
Okay, that's. That's good. My last thought on the movie as I was. As the
credits began to roll was like, do they have to declare the death? It is
for sale by owner. They're not involving a real estate agent. I don't know what.
You know, a man died in that dancer's apartment. We just saw it.
I don't know what their declaration requirements are at that point. But it did.
It did make it. Because the boy. Will the circumstances around that kind of.
You deaden the interest in the sale? Like. Yeah,
and we killed a guy, but it was self defense and he was squatting.
But don't you want to buy the house? Right. Yeah. There's a lot of baggage
with that house. And. And they should also be made aware of the lack of
police protection in that neighborhood towards anybody who owns. Exactly. Are the Porsche
pieces still in the garage? They have to have cleared those out. Are there phone
books everywhere still? What's going on with. All part of the restoration process.
So very, very weird movie. I think this was a fun conversation though. I think
that this type of movie I am really
drawn to for some reason. It's something that I don't really have
to pay attention to the details when. I'm watching it because there are none.
It has. It's hilarious in
things that it's trying to be serious with in its earnest ear
and how hard it's trying in a certain way. That's the kind of thing that
I find funniest out of anything when it comes to movies. So I really.
I really laughed a lot. One improvement I would give to this movie,
I think if you take the base of the Michael Keaton character
and make him kind of a hero type thing where he's
moving on to destroy different properties who have established reasons
that they've, you know, screwed people over or this place
is full of asbestos. And the only way to get that taken out is to
get the full building condemned. So I'm going to move in here and help this
housing project. So turn him into a hero type character, like a Robin
Hood of squatters. The tenant avenger or something.
Yeah, that could be fun. Just because his
charisma, you could do a lot with him. And he did drag
this entire movie. I don't know what Matthew Modine's
character traits were other than being kind of a rube and a weenie.
And then Melanie Griffith. I feel bad. I've just been saying Melanie Griffith
this whole time. I don't know what her character's name was. I think it was
Patty, I think, remember either at this point. Yeah, Patty Palmer or something like that.
Yeah. And she's been good in things, but this movie, it's just,
I don't know, like they didn't give her a lot to do. I don't,
I don't feel like she was used to the advantage of the script. I've never
been a big Melanie Griffith fan. Not that she's like bad or anything,
you know, it's just she never really. Maybe it's just the kinds of movies that
she has been in and at what era, you know, when I was watching movies
and the kind of stuff she did that wasn't really movies I would have been
interested in that much at the time that she was doing them. But like,
you know, this was, this was not good. And I don't think it was her.
I think it was the character in the script and, and all that. Like,
like you said, they gave her nothing to work with. Matthew Modine's character at least
had some, some interesting kind of plot related
action. Only until the third act does Melanie Griffith
do anything. Yeah, like literally through the entirety of the movie.
She's just there to either be a sounding
board for Matthew Modine's ideas or, you know, give him an alternate idea maybe.
But like, you know, she's just kind of there until the miscarriage. And so that's
like a plot point, but really only a plot point in that it is an
opportunity for Michael Keaton to make Matthew Modine mad and get him to attack him.
That's really the only reason that exists. Right. As far as the plot goes.
Only at the end when she's the one hunting him down,
you know, exacting revenge on Michael Keaton does she get interest.
Interesting. And so we're going to get into the rating I gave this movie
and I'll tell you how I thought about it on its merits.
Initially. Kind of the baseline for me for this movie is literally
a zero out of five. I'm going to give it a one star.
And the one star comes in two parts. It gets half a star from Michael
Keaton being Michael Keaton and being great. And when he's on screen, I'm interested and
I like the character and everything. The other half a star goes to Melanie Griffith's
revenge subplot. It was interesting. I said, I love the chocolate getting pulled off the
pillow. Great little moments like that, passing each other the. On the elevator.
There's great little sort of almost Hitchcockian kind of elements to it.
Then I really felt like that was the strongest part of the movie. And it
was still not strong enough, you know, to make me really care. But, yeah,
I'm a one out of five on this movie. I thought it was terrible.
One out of five. Okay. So I enjoyed
this more than you, but, you know, I have different standards for enjoyment
for films. And I think you make. You make valid points here.
If we got a different ending that involved
flying one of the kites that was fresh off the assembly line. If we got
a sequel where Matthew Modine's character just went to his buddy's
house and slept on the couch and made crepe Suzettes, I feel
like that would just be more enjoyable. They're just such goofy stuff in this movie.
This checks a lot of boxes for me. It has ridiculous
bad guy scenes, like Weenie, good guy stuff
and just good 90s things. The Keds.
I enjoy seeing the Keds and everything. The phone book, books. And Beverly d'
Angelo naked, like not long after her kind
of peak, as. As. What's her name? Ellen Griswold.
Ellen Griswold, Yeah. I am giving this movie
a surprising three and a half out of five. You're insane.
I would definitely watch this movie again. I don't know how soon,
but it's one of those movies that has enough parts that really tickle
me in a certain way. And I think I would watch it again. I would
probably not recommend it to other people. I would say that this is my three
and a half. Fair enough. If I'm telling other people, I would say, yeah,
it's probably a two out of five. But for me and for people who like.
Who were like me, I'm going to say three and a half out of five.
So that goes four and a half then out of ten as our overall score,
which I'm okay with. To me, to me that that sends the proper signal that,
like, this is not a good movie. Neither of us are saying this is a
good movie. And we're close to the. What were the IMDb and rotten tomatoes?
It was 55% rotten tomatoes. 55% of rotten tomatoes. And I think it was a
6.7. Actually fairly high 6.4 on. On IMDb,
which is. It's the Keaton army, the online Keaton heads, you know,
the Modin Gripers, and all these people that are out there just,
just standing for their favorite actors. So that was
Pacific Heights. Fun one. Cool. All right, well,
I have the honor of announcing the next movie that we're going to take a
look at. Oh, can't wait. Oh yeah, this was a good one. So this is
a movie that came out in 1987. I actually saw this movie
in the theater. My brother and I were taken to this movie by our parents.
It's a PG movie, but for all kinds of fun reasons we'll get into when
we actually talk about it, we'll discuss why that really shouldn't be the case.
The movie stars Bill Pullman, John Candy
and Rick Moranis alongside a whole cast of other sort of cameos
and character actors and great stuff. It is the one and the only Mel
Brooks's best movie, in my opinion, from the 80s.
So he had lots of, lots of great movies in the 70s, from the 80s.
It's Mel Brooks's best movie. It's Spaceballs. We're gonna see Spaceballs next time. Nick,
any history with Spaceballs? You want to hear something crazy? I've never seen Spaceballs.
Absolutely insane. I have seen this movie 40 to 50 times. Not joking. I'm excited.
This is one of those movies that many people who I like
a lot of the same things and I respect their taste in comedy and they
love it and I have no reason to think that I won't enjoy it.
I'm excited to have a reason to sit down and pay attention to it and
to talk about it with an expert. So this will be a good one.
Yeah, gonna be a lot of fun. So stick around. Next time a couple weeks,
we will come to you all with Spaceballs from mel Brooks from 1987. And if
you enjoyed this episode, you can go ahead and follow us on Apple Podcasts,
Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from and leave us a five
star review if you wouldn't mind. It helps people find the show. You can also
send us an email to discuss the episode or give us an idea, whatever you
want to do. You can reach us at the show@2dads1movie.com.
That's 2dads1movie.com. That's a number two and a number one. In the
meantime, this has been 2dads1movie. I'm Steve. I'm Nick. Thank you all so
much for listening. Take care. Thanks,