Transcript

Ed (Raising Arizona)

Give me that baby. I want that baby.

Ed (Raising Arizona)

Give me that baby, you warthog from hell.

Steve

It's two Dads one Movie. It's the podcast where two middle aged dads sit around and shoot the shit about the movies of the 80s and 90s. Here are your hosts, Steve Paulo and Nic Briana. Hello, everybody. It's another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie.

Steve

I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nick.

Steve

And. And today we are continuing down the pathway of cagevember, which is super exciting, and we have got a whole new, amazing Nicolas Cage centered film to talk to you all about from an earlier part of his career. Actually, absolutely not from the mid-90s that we spent the last couple weeks at with the Rock and before that, Con Air.

Steve

But this time we're going to look at Raising Arizona, starring Cage and Holly Hunter. And it's the second feature film from the Coen brothers, who would go on.

Nic

To do amazing stuff.

Steve

A number of ridiculously good things over the years. Personally from the Coens, I was never as into this movie, and I'll get into why in a second as some of the other ones.

Steve

I love Big Lebowski.

Nic

Yeah, that was huge for our age range too.

Steve

And oh, Brother, Where Art Thou? Was fantastic, but this was also really good. So, Nick, you picked Raising Arizona for us.

Steve

Tell us a little bit about your history with it.

Nic

Yeah, so I have actually only seen this once, and I think I'm kind of the same as you. I enjoy the Coen Brothers work. This movie. People rave about this movie.

Nic

This isn't uncovering a undiscovered gem or anything. This is thought of as a great film, and I thought it would be fun to kind of juxtapose along with our other Nicolas Cage cagevember selections. And kind of is a little bit of a change of pace from the last two with Con Air and the Rock, where we had Nicolas Cage being in some sort of a prison at some point, and in this movie, he.

Steve

Darn, so many prisons.

Nic

More Cage in a cage.

Nic

No. So I just thought it would be fun to go to a different kind of phase of his career and see if maybe we're seeing the same things about him.

Steve

Nice.

Nic

Because the other movies were one year after another or like the same year or something. So, yeah, I thought it would be interesting.

Nic

And the cast is killer, and the pedigree of this film speaks for itself. So I'm looking forward to chat about it, but I'm not super familiar with it, so I'm kind of coming in as a semi new person here.

Steve

That's cool. Yeah. When you recommended this movie for us, I was like, oh, cool.

Steve

Raising Arizona. Like, awesome Coen Brothers. This will be so much fun. Boy, I haven't seen it in a long time. And then as I'm watching it, I go, oh, no, I've never actually seen this movie all the way through.

Steve

So I watched it like three or four days ago, and that was actually the first time I'd ever watched it all the way through. So this will be an interesting, you know, sort of conversation, I think both of us coming in with more maybe experience around Cage and around the Cohen's than this film in particular. It was really interesting even just coming into it and thinking through comparing this to other Coen brothers movies and other Nicholas Cage performances and seeing, you know, where things line up and where they're different. And I think that's going to make for. For a really interesting conversation.

Steve

Cool. All right, let's jump into the facts. Yeah, let's look at some facts on Raising Arizona. So Raising Arizona was released on March 13, 1987 with a PG13 rating. It has a running time of 94 minutes.

Steve

Directed by, I think in the credits we said it was just Joel Cohen listed and then Ethan Cohen is a producer.

Nic

Yes, I believe so.

Steve

But on IMDb they do list both Joel and Ethan as directors. So they both directed, maybe sort of written by. Flip the names around.

Steve

Ethan Coen and Joel Cohen.

Nic

Nice work.

Steve

It's kind of how the Coen brothers always operated, at least until recently.

Nic

Good for them.

Steve

Yeah.

Steve

Starring Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter and John Goodman. I was actually surprised. I did not remember how much John Goodman is in this, which is great because Goodman in Coen brothers movies is like peak height of Goodman's work.

Nic

Yeah, the perfect fit for him.

Steve

Absolutely.

Steve

Rotten tomatoes. 91% fresh on rotten tomatoes. Critics love this in general. IMDb gave it a 7.3 over time. That's a very respectable score from IMDb.

Steve

Our buddies Siskel and Ebert, we got a thumbs up from Gene Siskel and a thumbs down from Roger Ebert. What is going on, Rog?

Nic

Yeah, so I actually looked at Roger's review because I was surprised to see that. And he. And I think they rate them out of five on his website or whatever.

Steve

Out of four.

Nic

Okay, so it was one and a half out of four that he gave. And his big beef with it was the dialogue. He felt like it was unrealistic that all the characters have such, you know, extensive vocabularies and everything. But it's like.

Nic

Yeah, but you didn't know the Coen Brothers yet because that's kind of what they do in a lot of situations.

Steve

And I've never seen Blood simple, which is the first Coen Brothers feature. So I don't know if the same vibe kind of plays through that movie in the same sort of. Yeah, like, cadence to the characters and the kind of cartoonishness of them, if that's in Blood simple as well. But it certainly is prevalent in every Coen Brothers movie after this one, for sure.

Steve

You know, that's. It's very much their style. But care not. Not for Raj, apparently. The film did not win any awards and didn't get any major nominations that I was aware of, so there's that.

Steve

On a $6 million budget, however, it pulled in $29 million at the box office, which is, you know, small potatoes, but almost five times what it costs. So congratulations. Cohen's not surprising why they continued to get booked and got to make movies that they wanted to make. That's. That's good stuff.

Steve

So. All right, man, you want to kick us off?

Nic

Yeah, let's get into it. And I was delighted throughout the first 10 minutes of this movie with the voiceover narration kind of getting us up to speed with who our characters are and how they end up in the situation they begin in. And we have this great montage where, Hai, who's Nicolas Cage's character, and he's a petty criminal, kind of a doofus who keeps, you know, doing dumb stick ups and getting caught for whatever goes into jail.

Nic

He's getting his mugshot taken by a very serious woman police officer and turned to the right, you know, and he's immediately smitten by her. You could tell he's really flirty with her and everything. And she's all business. It's kind of funny. He asked what her name is.

Nic

She goes, ed. And he's like, well, Ed. That's a strange name for a woman. She's like, short for Ed. We need to turn to the right.

Nic

All business and everything. So we have this scene of kind of his life, you know, going in and out of prison. So he gets his mug shot, then he's in prison, and then he's in the prison counseling session, which is a really entertaining thing to see.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

And then he'd be in front of the parole board, and then it would show him kind of how he gets back into prison getting his mug shot again.

Nic

So this goes on for about, you know, five minutes here at the beginning, and it's really delightful.

Steve

Absolutely. And I think a few things to point out. One, clearly I don't know about current state of Arizona criminal law, but apparently no three strikes laws in Arizona in the 80s. Yeah.

Steve

Because these were. Sheriff Joe Arpaio came in because these are clearly felonies. Although we do get high does mention specifically that the gun that he uses, has always used in his stick up robberies of convenience stores is never loaded. That way he can't actually get busted for armed robbery or at least not for, you know, the, the kind of additions to sentencing you would get from using a weapon in crime. Right, so, so there's that which is.

Steve

I don't know if that's, I'm not a lawyer, I don't know if that's legit or was back then, but it certainly is true in the story.

Nic

Good enough for this film, right?

Steve

Yeah, exactly. So. So, yeah, so he is a bit of a recidivist, which for the parole board tells us specifically that as he keeps going in and out.

Steve

One thing I'll note as well, just having watched Con Air, this accent by Nicholas Cage, far superior and much more pleasant and it's still got a bit of that southern, you know, and it is a little more southwestern, a little closer to Texas, you know, kind of style, but it's, it's, but it's a good job. Yeah, exactly. So why couldn't he just do his, his high voice in Con Air? I don't know, but it would have.

Nic

Been funny if he was just, if high.

Nic

Just like if Cameron Poe and Con Air was just an older version of high.

Steve

Like he got, he like went straight by going to the Rangers or.

Nic

Yeah, it exists in the same universe. Yeah. A couple things to point out here.

Nic

So in the prison counseling session, we're introduced to a couple of other fellow prisoners who were kind of his buddies in jail.

Steve

Right.

Nic

And it's William Forsyth and John Goodman.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And they're.

Nic

I forget the names, I'm just going to call them the jailbirds, whatever. His buddies, the brothers. There's a really funny line where the counselor's asking, telling them that if you want a life and a family, jail should not be an acceptable option for you. And John Goodman says something like, well, some of us just have to sometimes put career ahead of family.

Steve

So.

Nic

Yeah, I mean, the way this kind of self awareness that even the supposedly dumbest characters have is very fun in this film.

Steve

Absolutely. And we should point out we saw William Forsyth last week in the Rock. That's a very different role.

Steve

Ten years after this or nine years after this or whatever like that. But it's just so funny to think of the characters in these two movies. They were so different from each other.

Nic

Oh, absolutely.

Steve

And played so differently in such range.

Steve

Very interesting. But, yeah, so. Yeah. So one of the times that that High goes back into jail, poor Ed is bawling. She's clearly been crying.

Steve

You know, she's trying to hold it back because she's trying to be professional, but she's crying. He asks, you know, what happened, you know, whatever. And she goes, my finance left me.

Nic

I love the way she says, it's fantastic. Really good.

Steve

So. But. But this, you know, clearly the High sees this as an in. Right? Like, and he.

Steve

And he tells her, like, tell me who he is. I'll tell him what an idiot he is.

Nic

Deal.

Steve

And she kind of, like, goes, oh, maybe this guy's not so bad. And he's obviously is a handsome dude.

Steve

You know, he's got a full head of hair. You know, I'm sure the standards couldn't have been that high in Arizona in the late 80s, so.

Nic

Sure.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

What the heck?

Nic

I mean, he. A little bit of the bad boy stuff, you know? Yeah, yeah. So he ends up, you know, he goes into jail again. And it also shows a scene of him, like, laying on the bottom bunk while his bunk mate on the top bunk is just rattling off all this nonsense, which is kind of a precursor to Bubba in Forrest Gump, Baby O in Con Air.

Nic

I think these movies exist in the same universe.

Steve

Oh, man. So connected.

Nic

So. But he kind of makes a decision, like, kind of based on, I'm in love with this woman and this guy's boring the shit out of me.

Nic

I'm not coming back to jail. And he finally gets paroled again, and he goes straight to the booking right to the police station there.

Steve

The intake. Yeah, exactly.

Nic

And immediately proposes to Ed.

Nic

And then while he's doing that, he turns to the guy who's currently getting his mugshot taken and being like, oh, hey, Greg. Like, just so casually, really funny.

Steve

Oh, man. So, yeah, so he gets a real job. Hi and Ed get together, they get married, and hi has to, you know, he's not going to knock up convenience stores anymore.

Steve

So he's got a real job working at. Looks like maybe like a metal sheet. Metal sheet. Metal plane. Right.

Steve

That's something like that. And I love it because he's chit chatting with this guy, the thing and that. We saw him in another 2Dads episode. He was the doctor in Fletch that's right.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Who gave the. The anal exam? Rectal exam, I guess, to. To Mr. Babar. But yeah, so that's good.

Steve

And then. And then I believe it's shortly after that point we actually get a title card.

Nic

Well, so leading up to this, two things I want to point out. One is the wedding scene is very funny because it's just like three straight, like very brief one second shots. And it's just, I do.

Nic

And then Nick Cage says, you bet I do. And then the priest just says, okay, then.

Steve

Okay then.

Nic

And so he says, hai says having a critter was the next logical step. And he's talking about how they're trying to have a kid and they're unsuccessful with that.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

She comes home from work, she's crying, and he's like, what's wrong? She said, I'm barren. So it shows the doctors pointing to this diagram of the reproductive system. And this is the quote that I love from high so much.

Nic

He says, the doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.

Steve

Like, God damn, such Coen brothers. Would you look, you stop for a second. And you know, like I said, I was watching this going, I think I'd seen this opening before, but like, generally speaking, I'm not super familiar with the movie, so I was like, enjoying it as like a fresh watch. But lots of context from future Coen brothers stuff and like the similarities in just the way these people are talking to Big Lebowski and Fargo.

Steve

And I felt especially, oh, brother, where art thou? Right. Which even though that was deliberately set back in like the twenties or the thirties of the Great Depression. Right. Like, you know, much, much further in the past of this movie.

Steve

There's just so many hints at what's to come kind of from the Coen brothers imagination in this movie. And certainly the purple prose of these characters is a big part of that. Yeah. But. Yeah, so after they find out they can't have kids, that's when we get the title card, which is 11 minutes into the movie.

Steve

I had to go back and look because we've had a lot of like, cold opens. Like, I realized we've a ton of movies that have had cold opens. Right. The Fugitive had a cold open. You know, Con Air had a cold open.

Steve

You know, Demolition man has a cold open.

Nic

Right.

Steve

This was an 11 minute long cold open. Crazy.

Nic

It's almost like a short film leading up to this film.

Steve

It's like the prequel. They just put it at the beginning of the Movie to get us all set up. But. Yeah, but basically that brings us to, you know, the, the existence of these two. They have this like kind of double wide trailer they live in.

Nic

And they're drifting apart, you know, throughout this, you know, lack of success and trying to conceive and everything.

Steve

Wanting to have kids was huge for both of them. And so, yeah, it really puts a strain on their relationship and. Yeah. And that's when we find out about the Arizona Quints.

Nic

Yes. So Ed and hi are just kind of like slumped on the couch eating off a TV tray. It's just the classic relationship that's not going well. View. And on the TV comes this big news story that there were quintuplets born to the Arizona family.

Nic

And it's a big deal and they get the idea.

Steve

And the Arizonas are rich people, basically. Nathan Arizona and his wife, whose name I forget now, but whatever. Nathan Arizona owns and runs the Unpainted Arizona, which is like the state's largest retail store specifically for unpainted wood furniture. I believe it's very specific.

Steve

But he's got this saying where he always says on his commercials, you know, like, you get the best price here or my name isn't Nathan Arizona.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And of course the funny part we find out later is he changed his name to Nathan Arizona. Really good. But yeah, very funny, Very funny guy.

Steve

But they kind of see this and they go, man, that's not fun. Like, why should they have five babies and we can't even have one?

Nic

Right? And then we're shown the Arizonas sitting there and it's set up, you know, just like a stage play, basically like an unmoving scene where they're both on their chairs. It's settled in for the night.

Nic

She's sitting there reading Dr. Spock's like baby care book. And he's just yelling at people on the phone like businessmen do. There's one really funny thing because it gives us the location.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then he's talking to somebody on the phone and then it says 8:45pm and right as he's saying, oh, what time is it?

Nic

It's 8:45. Like he says it right after. It's really just a funny. A funny way to do that. Yeah.

Nic

And they're hearing noises upstairs because, well, somebody's there.

Steve

Yeah. Right. And. And so there's a lot of bouncing and banging and we cut up to the top before the Arizona's make any real reaction.

Steve

But we got up to the top and it's high, high is up in the nursery, there's this enormous. Looks like something out of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, like, huge bed for like five wide crib, you know, Five wide crib. And it's got the baby's names on it. And for whatever reason, their names are Harry, Barry, Gary, Larry and Nathan Junior. Why they needed to rhyme everybody but the Junior, who knows.

Nic

Really nice touch, though.

Steve

But it's so funny. Hai is treating this like going to, like the pound to get a dog. Right. He's, like, trying to play with different ones.

Steve

He's trying to keep them quiet, but he's also sort of trying to see, you know, does this one like me? Does this one react well? What if I pick this one up? You know, he's almost like kind of like trying to figure, like, which one do I take? Because, you know, we.

Steve

We understand how he's climbed up through the window. Right. Because the last time we saw High and Ed, they were driving away from their trailer with a ladder on the roof of the car. So this is what. Is what they decided.

Steve

Arizona's have enough babies. They need a baby. And so they're going to go take them. But, you know, they're making a lot of noise. The babies are making noise.

Steve

High stumbling around. Yeah. Finally, Nathan Arizona tells his wife, you know, why don't you go look at him? Want to go check on them, see what they need? Yeah.

Nic

And this is great comedy by Nick Gage. I mean, again, he is really, really funny, really good in this scene. And it's slightly surreal. It's almost like 30% the Pee Wee universe.

Steve

Almost.

Nic

There's some bit of surreality to it, but, yeah, he's testing the babies and everything. And Mrs. Arizona is coming upstairs to check on him. And then looks in the crib and sees the babies are all just sitting there.

Steve

They're fine. They're fine.

Steve

He has left, gone back to the car to Ed and say, I didn't get any of them. Like, I couldn't tell which one to take. Like, whatever. I don't know about this. And she is not having it.

Steve

Ed is like, she won't let him in the car. Yeah. She, like, locks the door, rolls the window up. You get back in there, you get me a baby, you know? Yeah.

Nic

When he comes back, he says, it didn't. It just didn't work out.

Steve

It didn't work out. So.

Nic

So, so he goes in and, you know.

Steve

Yeah, the. So Mrs. Arizona has gone back downstairs. Nathan or High goes up, grabs a baby, comes back out. He says, she goes, which one did you get? He goes, I think it's Nathan Junior.

Steve

I also love, like, I know it was the 80s, so it's like. But I've been thinking about it from the perspective of someone who had kids in like the mid 20 teens. That house is not baby proofed at all. Like, there's. There's no, there's no gate at the top of the stairs.

Steve

There's nothing. Like that is like not a safe house.

Nic

I mean, even the crawl babies. Yeah. Like if the babies can crawl on top of each other, you make like a World War Z kind of like zombie stack to get out of there.

Nic

Like, also definitely do that.

Steve

How long has it been? Because we just saw the news report, we assume like that day or the day before. Right. Like not a lot of time has passed.

Steve

These are clearly like six month old babies. Like maybe 40 or four to six months old or something at least. Like, these are not. These are not newborns in the Arizona household for sure.

Nic

But High is very proud of the baby that he got because he was kind of making faces to them as the mom was checking on them before she left the room.

Nic

Went back downstairs and he gets in the car and she's. Ed is now clutching this baby. She's in love with this High saying, he's awful damn good. I think I got the best one.

Steve

Yeah.

Steve

And because he said damn, Ed has to tell him, don't you. Don't you cuss around him? I love. He says, oh, he don't know a cuss word from Shinola. Because I love don't know shit from Shinola as a saying.

Steve

So that was fun.

Nic

So. So they bring him back to their trailer and they have it prepared with this kind of welcome homestead.

Steve

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nic

They had already planned on it.

Nic

Hai runs inside, goes to the bedroom really quickly and realizes he has a Playboy hidden or sitting out. So he goes to put it under the bed and then he's like, huh. Pulls it out, takes one last look and then puts it under the bed. It's so bizarre.

Steve

There is so much like cartoonishness about this.

Steve

I think the comparison to Pee Wee is very apt. I think that there's a fair amount. I think if you really look at the entire catalogs of the Coen brothers as filmmakers and Tim Burton and maybe Wes Anderson, there's a ton of stylistic overlap. Not. Not that any of them took from each other, but just like the approaching a live action movie as if it is at least partly animated.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And is inspired by like Mel Blanc, you know, And Jack Kirby, like, a little bit. Right. You know, both Looney Tunes and maybe, like, comic books. Right.

Steve

Really, really cool stuff.

Nic

And the set design in this, too, like, the. The baby nursery set is beautiful looking. It's really well composed. I mean, there's so much thought put into that whole thing.

Nic

Even earlier, when they were doing the montage, he was talking about how Ed had become kind of. Because of not being able to have a baby, had become too depressed to do the laundry or whatever, and she's sitting there on the bed and all this dirty laundry is scattered, but in such a beautiful way. So this really has, like, the hunger of kind of young filmmakers all over.

Steve

Yes, absolutely. So I think it's around here that we get a cutaway to a different scene outside of the prison.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sorry.

Nic

So he's holding the baby, and she says, the baby's very tired.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And he goes and puts him on the couch and he says, hey, pop those dogs up and take a load off.

Nic

And they're doing a. She wants to get a photo or he wants to get a photo.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And bust out this camera on a tripod. And she's very concerned.

Nic

She's trying to talk to him. She's trying to look at the baby. And he's just holding his smile for the longest time. He's so nervous about missing the opportunity of the photo. He's like, we're set to pop here.

Steve

Yeah, we're set to pop your honey. He says it a couple times really good. Oh, my God.

Nic

And they ended up with a very funny pose. So, yeah, now we're.

Nic

Now we're.

Steve

So we cut elsewhere. We cut to, I mean, a prison, but we can assume it's the prison that High has spent time in. And sure enough, the brothers William Forsyth and John Goodman, they start climbing up through the ground, right. As if they were buried alive and in graves.

Steve

But really they're pulling kind of a Shawshank several years before, where they had to. Where they tunneled out of the prison and got into, like, the sewage system and come up just covered in human waste. But they are able to pull out. I love John Goodmass. Reach down and grab William Forsyth by the leg and sort of pull him upside down.

Steve

Like, it is like, how do you get upside down? How'd you get backwards in the first place?

Nic

It's like a cross between. Yeah. The breech birth through the.

Nic

Through the prison hole. It's like a cross between Shawshank and the rhino birth from Ace Ventura.

Steve

Oh, my God. Yes. Yes.

Nic

They really, they really nailed it.

Steve

Which, which also then reminds me of. Of Frank Reynolds in the couch and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Nic

That was some Frank Reynolds looking stuff. Absolutely.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So.

Steve

So they go to kind of clean themselves up. The brothers do in like probably. It must be like a gas station bathroom or something like that.

Steve

And they have the just mind boggling amount of pomade that they are putting in their hair. Like, absolutely gobs.

Nic

And just the only way it's like.

Steve

They use the whole tin between the two of them, which is like, that tin should last you like a couple of months.

Nic

Right, Right.

Steve

Doing your hair. So they are just loading themselves up with pomade, which probably smells better than the shit they're covered in.

Nic

Yeah. You know, and it's raining, so maybe you're waterproofing yourself to some degree.

Steve

Yes.

Steve

Really?

Nic

Yeah, Very funny with that. And they, they end up showing up.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

There's a, there's a knock at the door at High and Ed's place when they're enjoying their brand new baby at like 2:00am, right.

Nic

And their friends very hilariously are saying, it's the police. Open up.

Steve

But so, yeah, so the brothers come in and High's happy to see them, you know, and, oh, honey, these are the boys from the joint. You know, they just got out. And of course it comes through because they're covered in shit. And John Goodman mentions like, oh, well, you know, when we're on our way out, we got into the sewer system. Which is when Ed realizes, oh, you boys broke out of jail.

Steve

Oh, okay, you're not, you weren't like, released, like, you know. Yeah. And from Jump Street. I feel like John Goodman's character is absolutely suspicious of this whole situation with the baby and stuff. Like, immediately he's got a lie asking questions about why does it say welcome home, son?

Steve

And they have to like, you know, they do that classic thing where they both try to tell a lie at the same time, but they haven't talked to each other. So they're different lies about where the baby was and why. Like, why would a baby be anywhere not with his parents.

Nic

Right.

Steve

This doesn't make any sense.

Steve

But he's immediately suspicious of what's going on. But also, hai agrees to let him stay for a little bit. Got nowhere else to go right now, so it's kind of like, all right, cool.

Nic

But Ed, Ed is suspicious of these guys, right?

Steve

Well, she's a cop.

Steve

I mean, you just retired. Yeah, she, she, she knows she's a cop. So she's like, this is not. I don't want these people around my baby kind of thing.

Nic

And they say she's asking them about, you know, what are they doing here.

Nic

And I think William Forsyth says, we released ourselves on our own recognizance.

Steve

Recognizance. It's like, that's not how that works, buddy.

Nic

So, so funny. So she basically goes to the bedroom.

Nic

She's like, you guys got to get out of here. I'm going in the bedroom with the. With the baby, and at Nick Cage, and they're like, you know, I think she's got you on a pretty tight leash. And then he looks and gives the funniest wink to them.

Steve

Yeah, Like, I've got.

Nic

Don't worry, I've got a genius plan. And his genius plan is that he just says, hey, they're gonna stay for a couple.

Steve

Yeah, just for a couple nights. Just for, like, two nights. Not for long.

Steve

I also love this interesting thing here where. Where so High tells. In the. In the intro segment, he says his name is hi. Right.

Steve

But call me High. And William Forsyth's character always does call him High. John Goodman's character always calls him hi. And I don't know if there's, like, something really ingrained there we're supposed to understand about his relationship, or maybe he doesn't actually like High as much as he pretends to. I don't know.

Steve

But there's an interesting thing where Goodman's character always calls him H. I never calls him High. Forsyth's character always calls him High. Ed always calls him High. I don't think John Goodman ever called him High.

Nic

You know what's funny now that you bring that up?

Nic

When they introduce the baby to these guys, they say, this is Junior.

Steve

Right, Right.

Nic

And William Forsyth's character says, J.R. like the TV show.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nic

So, like, he's doing the initials now instead of pronouncing it.

Steve

It's so funny.

Nic

And now we are back talking to Mr. Arizona.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

The authorities are talking to Mr. Arizona. And this is funny.

Nic

They say, Mr. Arizona, which tot. Was abducted. And he goes, Nathan Junior. I think.

Steve

Well, they're all, you know, they're looks like they're identicals.

Steve

So, yeah, that's rough.

Nic

And he's going on a rant about how these cops don't have any leads. And I think we have some of the same kind of interagency drama we talked about during Con Air with, you know, the FBI versus the cops or.

Steve

Whoever he had look at The. It's like the local sheriff.

Steve

Yeah, it's like the local sheriff is there. They're the ones more uniformed. And then there's the two guys in the suits. I think they introduce themselves as FBI.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Kidnapping and whatever else. And I guess that's an FBI kind of thing. But, yeah, they. They are not. They are not happy with each other.

Steve

They're both trying to ask questions of Mr. Arizona at the same time and kind of talking over each other. So those two law enforcement agencies are not operating well. And that pisses Mr. Arizona off even more. And he's kind of. That's when he kind of goes on his rant.

Steve

Yeah. You know, and everything. But he basically is like, you guys need to find this baby.

Nic

Like, so he's like, you're leaving microbes everywhere. And he's, like, picking up this.

Nic

And the cops have left this, like, super disrespectful mess. He's like, you're all hanging out in the one house in this world that we know my kid is not at.

Steve

Good point.

Nic

Which is a very good point.

Steve

Good point.

Steve

Oh, and he does say that his wife and the other four babies have left. Gone to, like, her mom's house or something. So they're not there anymore.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Just as a thing.

Steve

So. Yeah, but. So Mr. Arizona alone at home. Cut back to Ed and high. And the whole thing is like, the boys can't hang out.

Steve

The jailbird boys can't hang out in the day because some of their friends are coming over.

Nic

Some of their proper friends.

Steve

Proper.

Nic

Whatever.

Steve

Yeah, exactly.

Nic

Proper friends.

Steve

So it's Frances McDormand, and I can never remember the actress.

Nic

Lance McMurray. One of the best.

Steve

So great.

Nic

And he's in, I mean, so much stuff. We'll see him. We've seen him.

Steve

Yeah. I mean, from 80.

Steve

Yeah. We're covering 80 to 99. That guy was probably in 150 movies from 80 to 99.

Nic

Great actor. He.

Nic

He's a good best friend to the main guy. And that's his position in a lot of situations.

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

But, yeah, he adds a ton to it. So they show up and they're this family that have five, six kids.

Nic

They got a whole bunch of kids, right?

Steve

Demon children. Absolute demon children.

Nic

Every archetype of the worst kind of kid. Like, every different type of bad kid they have.

Steve

They're writing on the walls. They're throwing things around, wrestling and screaming and getting into whatever kind of trouble. And of course, the parents are just oblivious, essentially, to this. They don't care either. They don't notice or they don't care.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And Frances McDormand, like, all she wants to do is see the baby. She wants to see the new baby. But she's, you know, like that classic, like Coen Brothers. And this is so great, too.

Steve

Again, like, just to take a step back a second to watch these actors who would later go on to be in many more Coen Brothers movies, and to see I. Again, I don't. I haven't seen Blood simple, so I'm assuming, at least for a few of these, is their first encounter with the Coens as filmmakers. And it's just they fit so well. Goodman and McDormand in particular, fit so well into these roles and the style, because the overacting is such a part of it, you know?

Steve

And to get the right Coen Brothers vibe, there's gotta be overacting. You know, if you think about the big Lebowski, Goodman overacts huge in that. As. So as Walter Sobchak and Jeff Bridges even does a little bit by kind of underacting in that movie. Right.

Steve

But everybody. The Cohen seem to require from their actors either ridiculously big or almost inexplicably small performances in order to get the right vibe. And it's so great. And Frances McDormand literally bursts onto the screen and into the trailer and is just immediately captivating.

Nic

She's so great, and she doesn't get a ton of screen time in this film.

Nic

Yeah, she's incredible. I mean, that's why she's a legend, right?

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

And then Glenn Lance McMurray at. Glenn is such a typical, like, shithead.

Nic

He wants to tell, like, racist jokes to you. He wants to. He's ignoring his kids. He's. And then he's bragging about how his one kid.

Nic

Oh, Buford over there, already learned his ABCs. And then it shows him writing fart on the wall.

Steve

Oh, my God. Yeah. He tells a Polish joke, which is like.

Steve

When I heard it, I was like, God, that's. It's so wrong in such an archaic way now. Like, nobody has done that. I feel like for 35 years. Like, nobody has told a Polish joke anywhere in the world for 35 years.

Steve

And here we are.

Nic

Well, in these jokes, it's not like, oh, you have to really understand Polish culture to get this. It's just like, all right, this is a joke about whoever we're going to say is the dumb class of. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I remember those really flying around.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

And especially guys like that. I Mean, he would be like the asshole uncle by marriage that shows up. And you're just like, oh, this guy.

Steve

He is Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite meets the boss you hate.

Steve

Like, that's like, oh, yeah.

Nic

So that's the other thing is that he is hired.

Steve

Oh, that's right.

Nic

You should mention a supervisor at work. You have to kind of put up with his bullshit jokes.

Nic

And we've all been through that before where you have to sit there. I used to have this boss who would tell the worst jokes in the world. And if I didn't give him a reaction, he would tell me like, I don't get jokes. And he would have me call his clients. This is my first job out of college, and this guy was a monster.

Nic

But he would have me call his clients for whatever business reason, and then he would also say and tell them this joke. And he would give me an exact joke to tell them. And sometimes I wouldn't tell him. He'd be like, oh, he didn't. He said, you didn't tell a joke.

Nic

I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, seriously torture, dude.

Steve

Wow.

Nic

So. So, yeah, shout out to Mark.

Nic

I hope he's no longer in charge of anybody.

Steve

Hey, one of my first bosses I hated was named Mark. Isn't that funny? It's crazy. Anyway.

Nic

Oh, okay, hold on a second. I have to bring up this line here. When they're at the house and the jailbirds are there and they're kind of watching as Ed is feeding the baby with the bottle.

Steve

Oh, right.

Nic

And John Goodman, I think, says, why aren't you breastfeeding?

Nic

You appear to be capable.

Steve

Yeah.

Steve

And then they go on and talk about how they were not breastfed by their mother and look at, you know, and that's why they're the way they are. Why they're. They're jailbirds, supposedly.

Nic

So. And I got a little hint that maybe they just wanted a little exhibition in front of them.

Steve

Certainly seemed like it. But yeah, I don't. I don't think they're actually out there giving good pediatric advice. They're probably going to see a nipple or two.

Nic

Yeah, sorry.

Nic

Okay, back to Glenn and daughter there at the house. And. And Dot is really concerning Ed and asking her, well, have you done this? Have you done this? Do you have this set up?

Nic

Do you have a college fund? Do you have a pediatrician? All this stuff. Do you have these shots and all? And she gets kind of like, I just found out about that.

Steve

Right. Well, because she's holding a six month old.

Nic

Yeah, exactly.

Steve

And so, you know, from Dot's perspective, it's like, what the hell have you been doing? How do you not have a pediatrician yet you were pregnant for nine months.

Steve

Going to your ob gyn, then having a bit like. Of course you have a. You don't. What. It actually.

Steve

Dot's not being unreasonable, right? The expectations we like. It's funny, because I was watching this think to myself, oh, man, she is really going hard on them on the second day they have a baby. And then I thought to myself, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, she doesn't.

Steve

If she knew it was the second day they had a baby, she'd have called the cops. Like, it'd be clear that they kidnapped this child.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

That's the thing I love about this movie. Just like, for a second here, let's just appreciate the fact that the Coen brothers have given us a film where in our heroes and the people that we are so clearly rooting for the entire time are kidnappers.

Steve

Like, it takes me a minute to, like, recognize that, but it's really true.

Nic

But I think it works because, I mean, the Arizon doesn't appear to be, like, appropriately tormented by what's happened to them.

Steve

They seem more offended that someone would take something from them. But I feel like he'd be just as pissed if his car got stolen.

Nic

Exactly.

Nic

It seemed like that.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So Glenn is telling hi. He casually suggests, hey, we're swingers. He brings this up, what about some wife swapping? And I don't know if he was trying to propose it as a solution to his own problem. Because the other thing that he has mentioned multiple times is that there's something.

Nic

Something ain't right with my semen.

Steve

Right. That's right. He says it several times because Dot wants a sixth, seventh, or whatever.

Nic

So they have a crazy amount of kids.

Nic

And he's basically suggesting wife swapping. I don't know if it's a solution so that High could maybe impregnate his wife, but either way, it's inappropriate. Hai is not interested in it.

Steve

Yeah, because he says, like, Dot thinks you're pretty handsome. And I certainly think, you know, I mean, Ed's quite the looker.

Steve

Whatever he's trying to say. And Hyde does not get it at first. And he goes, you know, what are you talking about? And he goes, oh, we're swingers. I'm talking about wife swapping.

Steve

Yeah. And he just. And he knocks him out high. Just gives him one right to the. Right to the nose and just punches the hell out of him.

Steve

And Glenn runs off and.

Nic

Right into a tree.

Steve

Right into it.

Nic

He hurts himself way worse. Like, what are those?

Steve

Saguaro. Yeah. The ones that wave goodbye to you. Yeah. So he runs right into a cactus.

Steve

Like, all bad for them. But I think that's. I think that's the last we see of Glenn and Dot for a little bit. Yeah.

Nic

And he's screaming high screaming, keep your goddamn hands off my wife.

Nic

Which is very Will Smithy.

Steve

Yeah. But much more desert. Glenn deserves it more than Chris Rock did, that's for sure. So they decide that they don't have enough.

Steve

They have not prepared enough for this journey of parenthood. And among the things they need is diapers. Like, they don't have enough diapers. I don't have any diapers at the house. But they definitely have enough.

Steve

They need to go get more diapers. And so they pull up to convenience store, they park and, you know, hi gets out. And the first thing we see him pick up when he's in the convenience store is some pantyhose.

Nic

Yep.

Steve

Because he's going to pull that over his face and stick the place up.

Steve

And sure enough, he does.

Nic

The clerk in there is. He's kind of like the donut shop kid from Boogie Nights. And he's sitting there reading a jugs magazine.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

As he comes up to him. Yeah. So he says, I'm going to take these diapers and whatever cash you have in that drawer.

Steve

At which point Ed looks up and notices what hai is doing and is mad and starts, that son of a bitch. That son of a bitch.

Steve

And she drives off, and she drives off and. Oh, and the clerk had a little alarm button to the cops. He was able to push when the gun came out. So she. That's, I think, why Ed looks up, she hears the sirens off in the distance and then realizes what hai's doing.

Steve

And she drives away because she's like, I got the baby in the car. Like, I'm not gonna just do this.

Nic

We're not going down for this.

Steve

He starts running after her. Like, he runs out, runs after her.

Steve

And the coolest. I swear to God, this is the coolest chase scene ever. In movie history. In movie history. First of all, it is over 8 minutes long, which is amazing.

Steve

19 minutes of this movie is the cold open and this chase. Yeah. And the whole movie is only 94 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve

But it's a great. So he. And there's the pieces. Some of the pieces of this I love. The cops start shooting at him immediately.

Steve

They don't yell, freeze.

Nic

No regard for anything.

Steve

They're shooting at houses, they're shooting everywhere. It's just ridiculous. He gets into a backyard and there is the second, a primary attack dog of the 80s, the Rottweiler.

Nic

That's right.

Steve

Not a.

Nic

Not a Doberman, not a Doberman, but one step down.

Steve

But a Rottweiler comes in and of course, it's on those staked chains, right? That's just long or just short enough that it doesn't get him and he's able to get away.

Steve

But, like, that little moment is one that I love. But yeah, it's like all this up until finally, I guess Ed decides that she's going to try to find him and pick him up and sure enough is able to, like, drive and see and find. Oh, no, he go to the grocery store first. He runs into the grocery store and.

Nic

They'Re shooting up the grocery store in the grocery store.

Steve

So insane.

Nic

And he's. He's throwing diapers at the cop and stuff, like the things that he's doing. And then the grocery store worker pulls out a shotgun shooting. So everyone is just blasting at it.

Nic

I mean, this is a Western, but it's set in the kind of the way that they talk and everything. It's kind of deadwoodish a little bit. The vocabulary that they use.

Steve

Like a modern western. Yeah, yeah, 100%, yeah.

Nic

And the soundtrack to this whole scene worked so well. And it's music I would never listen to in real life, but in this scenario, this yodeling country music, kind of pre Hank Williams style of country music that we knew in this is just, oh, my God, it works so well. And it stops for a bit and then it comes back on when the dog gets off the chain. Really, really well done, but, yeah, super, super enjoyable. And he's being chased by a mob of other dogs, too, because they all join the Rottweiler.

Nic

So he's going through a house and everything. We're getting a chase similar to the Point Break chase.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

Where Johnny Utah is, you know, running through the apartment and the sliding door and stuff. Really, really great.

Nic

And it ends with, he's in the car, she's yelling at him, she slaps him immediately.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

And he does a classic face when you get slapped and it turns your entire head. And she's yelling at him and he's like, turn right here, sweetie. Turn left here, sweetie.

Nic

While he's absorbing everything she's saying. And he ends up scooping the diapers up off the road.

Steve

A foreshadow to a future scene where someone has to scoop something off the road as well. But we'll get to that when we get to it.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

From going into the store to picking up the diapers off the street. I timed it as eight minutes, which is, like, so insane, but so much fun. Oh, my God. Like, just a great scene. Absolutely great.

Nic

Oh, he had the nylon on. And he tried to get into another guy's truck at one point.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

He gets in there and the guy looks at him, he goes, son, you got a panty on your head.

Steve

Oh, man.

Nic

Oh, man. So fantastic stuff.

Steve

Yes. So we get back to the trailer, I believe, and the brothers are there.

Steve

And I've got a note here that basically says one of them, Cohen, I think it's William Forthsize to go. What? He need his dip tet. Like, he knows what the shot is. But I can't remember the context of what happened there, but it was very funny.

Nic

That was really what dipted.

Steve

It was.

Nic

And they're just surrounded by empty beer cans and stuff. And Ed basically takes the baby into the bedroom. She's like, I'm.

Nic

You know, we'll fight about this tomorrow, but I gotta go to bed.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And they're trying to convince High that, you know, hey, you're a criminal, right?

Steve

Yeah. This is not for you.

Nic

You shouldn't be a dad. But you can at least send money to this family, Right. You know, that's the plan. And we have this plan to heist this bank, right?

Steve

There's a bank.

Steve

It's like all farmers and hillbillies and hayseeds, they say. But it's like on the whatever day of the month, every month there's more money in the bank because people come in and check their farm cash, their farm subsidies, checks. So the bank has to have more cash on hand at the time. And that's when they're going to rob it is the idea is they'll go knock it over when it's extra flush with cash, which makes a lot of sense. One thing I did notice, while they were chatting with Hai in the front seat, we kept cutting to ostensibly Ed and the baby sleeping in the next room.

Steve

But that baby is never asleep. Not once. Are any of the babies in this movie actually shown sleeping. I don't know if it was a thing about not being able to get one to fall asleep with cameras and lights around or what, but they're definitely never asleep. They did shoot it from behind, and it doesn't move Around a whole lot, so you kind of get the feel.

Steve

But it's like, if you look closely, it's like, oh, no, no. That little bugger still moving around.

Nic

Yeah. So at this point, when John Goodman's telling them, you know, how they found out about this bank, he has kind of a funny anecdote about some guy that we met in prison who used to be Richard Nixon's secretary of Agriculture or whatever. And he says, ordinarily, we don't associate with that type.

Steve

Yeah, right. That's so much worse than the pet criminals they are.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So high.

Nic

Basically writes a, you know, goodbye letter.

Nic

Hey, I. I'm a criminal. I'm out. Like, I'd rather have you resent me while I'm sending you money than me fail to be, you know, what I need to be when I'll. When I'm around here.

Steve

I mean, they know, you know, he's basically, at this point, he hasn't talked to Glenn yet, but he's figuring he's.

Steve

He's lost his job. Right. He punched his supervisor in the nose, so that's done. And he wondering, how is he even gonna, you know, support the family and, like. And, like, make money for them to buy food and stuff?

Steve

So right in his mind, this is like the next right move. And I think that's when Glenn shows.

Nic

Up at the door, I believe so. First we have a flash to another character that we haven't brought up yet.

Steve

Oh, yeah.

Nic

Who just showed up a little bit earlier. And we're kind of unsure if this is just a figment of hai's imagination or if this is a real guy. But hai said that kind of when I did a bad thing, then it's almost like he summoned this biker of the apocalypse is what he referred to him as.

Steve

Like he dreamed him into existence, almost. Yeah.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And it's this great, great character actor from the time, Randall Texcoff, who is this big. I guess he used to be a boxer or something like that. Ended up being an actor. Very good at being, like, a goofy, intimidating guy.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And he's on his motorcycle, he's filthy. He's smoking the worst looking cigars I've ever seen in my life. He's got shotguns, grenades, all this stuff. And he's just, like, killing small animals as he travels the travels across the country.

Nic

So at this point, we see that he has arrived now at Arizona's office.

Steve

That's right, at the unpainted Arizona offices. And he's basically there like Nathan Arizona's secretary Somebody says, oh, sir, I don't know why he's here. Like, he didn't. He just came right in kind of thing.

Steve

And this character, and his name is Leonard Smalls, he tells Arizona, like, you know, basically, there's a reward out for your baby. I know how to find it. That's what I do. I find things. But here's the thing.

Steve

That price is not enough. Nathan Arizona has offered $25,000 for the return of his baby, and he basically says, healthy, white baby. I can get a lot than that from somebody else. So if you're not willing to pay 50,000, somebody else will.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And I'm going to find the baby either way. Like, I'm going to get the baby either way.

Nic

I don't see that in many. I mean, I like this. This device of being like, well, I'm.

Nic

I'm stealing the baby no matter what, either for you or it's gone.

Steve

So happy to return the baby to their rightful place, but only if you give me what I want.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

It's like second kidnapping.

Nic

And the way he.

Nic

The way he talks is very funny as well.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So he says to Mr. Arizona's, like, the rewards. $25,000. He says, the price is not what you say it is.

Nic

It's what the market will bear. All these different, like, it very Lebowski ish, the way that randomly a character will have some very prescient thought.

Steve

We just got a very brief lesson on Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market. Right.

Nic

Exactly.

Nic

So. So now Glenn. Now we're back at the trailer.

Steve

Right. So Glenn has showed up basically to first to tell.

Steve

Hi. That he's fired. Yep. Right. You're fired.

Steve

There's that. But then they realize he's got a newspaper, and it shows, like, that, you know, Nathan Jr. Or Nathan Arizona Jr. Has been kidnapped. And Glenn said, I know. Like, we dot and I know that who that baby is. That's not your baby.

Steve

That's the Arizona baby. And here's the thing. We're not going to turn you in because you're going to give that baby to us, and we're going to raise that baby because Doc wants a baby. And so they're basically like, same idea, but it's basically like, if you. You've got.

Steve

I think he says two days. You've got two days, like, hand over the baby, or we're going to go to the cops and turn you in.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Which is like, there's not a whole lot of ways out of that. It seems like.

Steve

Right. Initially, at least.

Nic

No, no. Yeah. Really, really brutal.

Nic

So Glenn takes off, and I think this is the last we see of Glenn. So in the meantime.

Steve

Not quite. There's a little bit. There's a little scene with Glenn later.

Steve

He gets himself in some trouble, but that's okay.

Nic

Oh, okay. So. So this is funny here. So now.

Nic

Now High is back in there, and we've got the jailbirds there, and they seem to have changed their plan and they're kind of like.

Steve

Because they heard Glenn say who this.

Nic

Baby is, so they know this baby is valuable as hell. So we're doing our crime spree still, but we're taking this baby with us, and we don't need High as any part of this.

Steve

Well, I think it's mainly they're.

Steve

They're. I think initially they're like, we can still knock that bank over, but, like, we'll return this baby and get the $25,000 reward. I mean, that's what they're thinking, which is like, guys, you are fugitive, so you need to be careful about trying to collect on a legitimate reward. Seriously, they're gonna put you back in jail, guys. But they basically.

Steve

So they. There's this huge fight that happens mostly between Goodman and High while Forsyth holds the baby.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And one of my favorite moments in it is that they're both such big guys. Cage and Goodman are both very tall.

Steve

Yeah, they scrape. I think it's Kate scrapes his knuckles on, like, the popcorn ceiling dude. And he goes for like a double.

Nic

Ax handle attack and scrapes his knuckles. And he's screaming like crazy.

Nic

And I wrote down at this point point that up till this point, because there's been a lot of it. Some of the best man screaming I've ever seen in a movie. And we haven't even scratched the surface yet. But, yeah, I love that Popcorn ceilings came into play. That's a.

Nic

It's a very nice detail. Very classic.

Steve

Very classic. And so basically, they beat the hell out of High and they leave with, you know, whatever car that they stole to show up in.

Nic

Right.

Steve

But they leave with the baby, and it's like almost immediately they're falling in love with the baby, too. They talk about the baby and wanting to keep it. And, like, look at him. He's so great and he looks so perfect. Whatever.

Steve

So these guys are now. They've now changed their plan again. They're not going to turn the baby in. Yeah. The 25,000 reward, they're going to go rob the bank, but that baby's going to be in our crew.

Steve

He's in the crew now. You know, maybe in a couple of years, he'll be able to, like, you know, he'll. He'll be the River Phoenix sneakers character. He'll go through.

Nic

Yeah, right.

Steve

You know, that kind of thing. But yeah, so they go. And they go. This is when they go to get some baby stuff, I think, at a convenience store, and then stick it up instead of paying for it. But they're asking the old timer behind the counter advice on what to get.

Steve

And he gives them advice. Then they pull the gun. Okay, thanks very much. We're gonna go now. And I love it because this is something.

Steve

We haven't mentioned this earlier in the episode, but several characters, especially in the very beginning segment, said okay then. But they all said it, okay then. I think the parole board does it. I think that's what the priest or the minister for the wedding says it that way. And this old timer is like, all right, you get down now, this William Forsythe.

Steve

You get down and you count to 500, and then you count back down for 500, and I'm going to come back in five minutes and make sure you're counting, if not, blow you away. Yeah. And he goes, okay, then. And, like, gets down on the ground. One, two, three.

Steve

And it's like, so.

Nic

So the things that they get from the store, he gets the diapers. And he asked the clerk, you know, how do you attach the diapers? The thing that I loved is there's this bag of balloons. And he sees this bag of balloons and he goes.

Nic

He goes, these blow up into funny shapes. And then the guy. And then the clerk goes, not lest you think round is funny.

Steve

But he takes the balloons and he takes the diapers and whatever. And so then. So they go. And they. You know, I think.

Steve

I think even Goodman's filling up the car with gas or whatever. They're ready to go rob this banks, get in the car and they head off, and not too far, but, like, actually apparently pretty far away. They realized that car seat is not in the back of the car. They left the baby, as it turns out, in the middle of the damn street, which is, like, pretty wild.

Nic

Well, they left him on the roof of the car when they drove.

Steve

That's what it was, right?

Nic

And somehow he fell.

Steve

They're freaking, didn't get hurt, which is great. But, like.

Nic

And they are losing their minds.

Nic

Both of them screaming.

Steve

It's very funny, the male screaming.

Nic

Just absolutely losing their minds. And they end up getting back and they. They have the Baby.

Nic

Yeah, and they, you know, and then they go towards the bank. And at the same time, now Ed and High are looking. Looking to retrieve the baby.

Steve

Yeah, they've also.

Nic

And they're on the road.

Steve

Ed came home, found High, whatever, and they're out looking for the other. They. They know, obviously, the twin, you know, the brothers took the baby, so they're out looking for it. At which point, I believe this is where Leonard shows up at the double wide and sees the chaos and all of the, like, you know, mess and everything with the fight that happened. But he knows now, okay?

Steve

Now the baby. Baby's not here. He's got to go looking for the baby. But he's a tracker, right? You got to figure he probably can follow a couple sets of car tracks.

Nic

Well, earlier, when he first encountered the pomade in the bathroom, he sniffed like he was picking up the actual scent of it. Interesting thing, that bathroom where they put the pomade on their hair had graffiti on the door, and it said Poe was the top thing that it said. And then it said eop. It said it in, like, a different thing, but it says po. So once again, Con Air prequel.

Steve

See, I'm such a nerd. I heard Poe. I immediately thought power over Ethernet. I was like, I don't think that existed in 87. But anyway, yeah, so now.

Steve

So now Leonard is on the trail. So everybody is heading, and the brothers have gone to this hayseed bank, this farmers and mechanics bank or something like that that they're going to go stick up. And I love their outfits. They got the big trench coats on. They look very much the part.

Steve

They still have. Their hair is still ridiculously green, greasy and everything. And they go in, and they bring the baby in with them, right?

Nic

They have a discussion before they go in. They say, well, if we leave him in the car and something happens to us, it might be hours before somebody finds him.

Nic

That's too dangerous. So let's just bring him into our gunfight. Potential gunfight.

Steve

You know, I mean, I got to give him respect for, like, kind of recognizing that, like, a baby left alone in a car for hours could be very dangerous. Like, maybe not.

Steve

You know, that could be all bad. But the alternative being bring him into the bank robbers does not seem like the right call at all. But that's okay. So they go in and they put the baby down.

Nic

And this scene is excellent.

Steve

It's really amazing. And they start off with John Goodman yells, all right, everybody freeze. Get down on the floor. And, like, nobody moves. And finally, this, like, old Guy closes and goes, well, son, which is it?

Steve

You want me to freeze or you want me to hit the ground? Because if I hit the ground, I'll have stopped freezing. If I freeze, ain't no way I'm reaching the ground. Just like, so explanatory. And then they're like, where'd the tellers go?

Steve

And then they're like, we're down here. They dropped like you told them to, buddy.

Nic

Like, yeah, really good. And they call each other by their real name. And then he's kind of like, oh, why did you use my real name?

Nic

He's like, code name.

Steve

You mean your code name? Oh, that's right.

Nic

Code name.

Steve

That's right.

Steve

We're using code names.

Nic

Such an excellent scene, though. And they end up getting their bag filled with money, and then the teller puts one of those, like, exploding dye canisters in there.

Steve

Yeah. So the dye packs, they've gotten much smaller.

Steve

They used to be. Yeah, it was like a whole canister. Enormous. It would have been easier to ditch, you think. If you look for half a second.

Nic

You know, that's like a. A Coors Light pint can, you know.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So they're driving away and they're like, oh, we got the money.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Like, we're good. Yeah. How much is this split? Three ways. Kind of like because.

Steve

Because they're going to give the baby. Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And they turn back and then they realize. We did it again. Right.

Steve

That baby's not there.

Nic

And pretty much at the same time, they realize that the dye explodes and it's just blue that they can't wipe.

Steve

Off the windows and stuff inside the windshield. They can't see anywhere. So they crash.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Like, and. Yeah.

Nic

And they encounter Ed and. Hi.

Steve

Oh, that's right. That's right.

Nic

Who are like, where's the baby? What'd you do back at the bank? So then they take off after him, and William Forsyth is like, I'm worried.

Steve

That sick about him. It's our baby, too.

Nic

So good.

Steve

So. So they go back to the bank, and now, of course, they didn't leave the baby inside the bank. They kind of, once again, either put it on the roof and then drove off, or they left it. So it's in the street. So High and Ed are racing in their car towards the baby, and I got a little nervous at this point, just thinking, like, they might want to slow down at some point here because you don't want to run the baby over or whatever.

Steve

Yeah. But they go and. But before they can reach the baby, they See off in the distance, coming from the other direction, this motorcycle. And it's Leonard Smalls. And he actually is able to swipe the baby up just like high, grabbing the diapers off the road and kind of stick the car seat on the handlebars, I guess.

Nic

Yeah, just sort of the bikes have that built in baby seat. And like, it's like he was prepared.

Steve

We had those when our kids were little. We had the little like a carrying thing that, yeah, like clicked into the base, would stay in the car. You click it in and out.

Steve

It's like. But that was pretty advanced. They don't have that 87, I don't think. But yeah. So now Leonard's got the baby and.

Nic

Basically they're driving the car at him. He pulls out a shotgun. Excellent blast out of the windshield. One of my favorites that I've seen in a film. Really good windshield blast.

Nic

They kind of crash their car. So he has the baby and Ed just kind of marches up to him like, no weapon. Just like, fuck you, buddy. That is my baby. I'm taking it.

Steve

That's when she delivers the famous line, right? Like, it's not just. It's, I want that baby. Give me that baby. You give me that baby, you warthog from hell.

Steve

He does look like a warthog. He's all furry.

Nic

He does. And then he has a couple like, knives ready. That's right.

Nic

Basically, High is able to shoot him directly in the hand, which really good accuracy. And then with his other hand, he throws the knife and knocks the gun out of his hand.

Steve

Perfect shot. So lots of accurate action.

Nic

Yeah, really nice.

Steve

Yeah. Dead eyes.

Nic

Even with all like the bad cigar smoke and dirt in his eyes, he really does it in the sun and everything. So Hai and the biker end up in this great fistfight. And this is again, Nic Cage's faces while he's getting beat up are just this amount of overacting that make it so perfect and it's really, really funny.

Nic

So his physical comedy chops are excellent. In this movie. As he's getting beat up, it turns out that the biker is able to get him in some sort of a bear hug. And he's just crushing it, Right. And he has this vest on with all these grenades.

Steve

He's like a bandolier across his chest.

Nic

And Hai is able to pull the pin from one of those grenades before he gets away a little bit. Yeah. I would recommend separate grenade storage. Maybe not on your person.

Nic

Maybe have a grenade duffel bag in a blast proof trunk or something like that.

Steve

It really should be in a box with a biometric scanner to make sure. And the kids can't get a hold of the grenade.

Nic

And that's really important. You don't want the kids in your grenade stash.

Steve

Before Leonard Smalls blows up, we do. See, on his chest is the same tattoo that High has on his arm.

Nic

Right?

Steve

That looks vaguely like the Looney Tunes Roadrunner character, but not exactly. I can't quite tell what that image is supposed to be or why they have the same tattoo.

Nic

Yeah, I don't know if it's like a car thing, like a. We'll have to look at. We'll add a correction next. Next year when we do this again, Right?

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

So he notices the tattoo. And I thought for a second, like, oh, maybe that they'll come to some sort of affiliation buddies. Look, you and I, we're not so different.

Steve

Nope. He just pulls the pin, blows Leonard up.

Nic

And before he blows up High looks at him and he's just like, I'm sorry. Blows his ass up.

Steve

I'm sorry. So Leonard's gone. The brothers are Sol and High and Ed have got Nathan Jr back.

Steve

And they decide to do the right thing. So they drive to the Arizona house and climb up the ladder into the nursery and go put the baby back in the thing. But I think that's when.

Nic

With the burnt out copy of the Dr. Spock's book, which is really funny how that travels with the baby wherever he goes.

Steve

When hai first took the baby, he grabbed that and he said, oh, look here, hon, I got the instruction manual.

Steve

But yeah, so. So they are bringing them back and there's this really great sort of conversation between. Because basically, hi. And Ed. Ed's so mad that hai got the baby re.

Steve

Kidnapped by the. By the jailbird brothers, that. That she's basically telling them, like, we're not sticking together. You know, we're done. And.

Steve

And so there's this really great scene between. Between hai and Ed and. And Nathan Arizona about, like, what it takes to keep people together. And I'm so sorry you can't have babies. But, like, maybe there's something else, you know, that will keep you two together.

Steve

You gotta, like, talk to each other. It was a very interesting kind of nice thing. And yeah, and we did. I did leave. We know.

Steve

Obviously, with the sense. I think that High and Ed are fine. You know, we get a little bit of an epilogue that kind of just, you know, talks about them still being together. And that's a good thing.

Nic

Yeah.

Nic

And the epilogue, I mean, the speech by Nathan Arizona. Because the tone of this movie, it's still. Even though it's like outlaws on the run, it's a very sweetly intentioned movie in a lot of ways, you know, if misguided. But it's like, at its heart, it's like somebody who's doing what they think the right thing is in a stupid way.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And. And the Nathan Arizona conversation really kind of ties it together. And he even empathizes with them when they say, we can't have kids of our own. And he kind of alludes to fertility treatment, it seems like, because he's like, oh, my wife and I couldn't. And now look at this shit.

Steve

Yeah. Although they mentioned that they did some kind of fertility, even at the beginning of the movie when they first announced that. That the quintuplets were born, there was some comments about. About they were trying. And they used to like this new fertility drug.

Steve

And suddenly, boom, five kids. So that is part of it.

Nic

So I thought this was kind of funny. So after this conversation, and Nathan's like. He lets them say goodbye, and he's like, well, why don't you go out.

Steve

The way you came?

Nic

And then he goes. Just leaves the room with them with the baby that they just kidnapped, just unsupervised.

Steve

I can't co sign that. Action.

Steve

Mr. Arizona. You should have at least waited for them to leave and then lock the window behind them or something. Yeah.

Nic

So. Yeah.

Nic

So the movie ends with a voiceover.

Steve

By, like, it started.

Nic

Yeah, just like it began. And he's talking about a dream that he had, which is like, kind of a theme that's come through a couple times in this film. And part of the dream is that his jailbird buddies, like, went back to prison through the hole that they escaped.

Steve

Climbed back in, put themselves back where they belong.

Nic

And he's thinking about other people in his life. He's thinking about his friend Glenn. And he says, yeah, maybe people finally got tired of hearing his jokes. And it shows him too many Polish jokes.

Nic

And it shows him being pulled over by an officer who has a badge that says Officer Kowalski.

Steve

Kowalski. Sergeant, I believe.

Nic

And then he goes to this scene of the Arizona family on Christmas morning. He's like, well, maybe Nathan Junior opens a gift from a couple he's never met before.

Nic

And it shows him getting a football. And maybe this football inspires him in some way later in life, he's star. And he's dreaming and talking about how, I've never dreamed this far into the future. And it wasn't super clear to me, but it was an old couple who I thought was me and Ed and Dude, I mean, really kind of a tearjerker. That last scene, it was very, very sweet.

Nic

Talking about how I envision kind of no matter what, we're still okay. We're still together. We have all this happiness in our lives. We have a family who's okay. We have grandkids who are okay.

Nic

Kind of everything's gonna be okay. I can't see for sure that that's what this is, but that's what this feels like to me. And that's kind of like how it wraps.

Steve

And it certainly looks like the intimation or what he's dreaming ahead, whatever, is that they do end up having. Through adoption or something else.

Steve

I don't know. I mean, they do try adoption early in the movie, but because of High's criminal past.

Nic

Right.

Steve

It's denied. But it looks like two kids because there's like two adult couples at their Thanksgiving table.

Steve

And then like they've each got five kids. So, you know, so even if Hai and Ed can't have a ton of kids, they end up with a couple and then 10 grandkids or something like that. So, you know, it's a very much like that. That is as happy an ending as two kidnappers could possibly ask for, frankly. Like, that is.

Steve

But. But that's. That's Raising Arizona. Very, very fun movie. Really great to.

Steve

To look back at a very, very early Coen Brothers film. This also marked, by the way, one, this was the last year pretty much until Leaving Las Vegas, where Cage was in really good movies. Because in 87, both this movie and Moonstruck came out okay. And then there was like, he had.

Nic

Like the guarding test era, like all that kind of stuff.

Steve

Something someone like you in Vegas.

Nic

Was that before leaving?

Steve

That was before, yeah. But it's like there, there's this. He did this stretch of like kind of romcoms and just kind of crap until Leaving Las Vegas, which, you know, regenerated his career.

Steve

But this was sort of the, the end of. Of kind of an era of Cage's career. Yeah. And he really got sucked into kind of really just crappy mainstream rom com stuff that weren't even all that good for the most part, for at least the next five, I think seven or eight years. Right.

Steve

Until. Until leaving Las Vegas in 95. So. But, you know, a lot of fun and a very different look at Nicholas Cage, which I think is. It's great for our cagevember episodes.

Nic

Absolutely. Yeah, well, this was my pick. Should I go ahead and rate this first?

Steve

Go for it.

Nic

All right.

Nic

So, yeah. I mean, and such a fun case. What a great look, by the way. Yes, this is a fun. Like, I'd like to.

Nic

I don't know if I talked about it on the pod, but I like to do. I like to paint. And a lot of the stuff that I've done is just kind of like, you know, fan art type stuff, like a painting of a scene from a movie or a character or whatever. And I think this character is definitely on my list as someone that would be really fun to paint. I just love the look.

Nic

I love the way this movie looks and feels in general. It's almost 40 years old. It doesn't feel super out of place. I mean, it obviously doesn't take place now, but you're not like, oh, this doesn't hold up. There's a couple lines where you're like, okay, maybe you tweak that a little now, but a lot of time has passed.

Nic

All the performances were bangers. And this really helped hopefully launch, like, part of the long and successful careers of some of the people that we love so much that are in this movie as a Cage. I mean, this isn't the Cage. Iest Cage has ever been, but it was early in his career, and you definitely see glimpses of his range and, like, his ability. I don't know.

Nic

His face is really magical. Jim Carrey gets credit for being rubber face. Cage is, like, secondary rubber face, I feel.

Steve

Absolutely. Yeah.

Nic

So, yeah, I enjoyed the shit out of this movie. There's a lot of laughs in here. I'm going to go ahead and give the Coen brothers and Nick Cage a four and a half out of five.

Steve

Wow.

Nic

For Raising Arizona.

Steve

Fantastic. Yeah. I also really enjoyed it. I thought it was really great to watch. Like I said kind of earlier in Nicholas Cage's career, not.

Steve

Not earliest. I mean, he definitely. He started in the 70s, but, like, you know, very, very early part of the Coen brothers filmmaking career. And it was a really interesting way to look at this. Holly Hunter is a delight.

Steve

She's an absolute delight.

Nic

Didn't even talk about her. I mean, like, she's. Yes. So good.

Nic

So good in this.

Steve

It's really, really a lot of fun. And. And. And looks great.

Steve

She's gorgeous, too. And. And the whole thing that all the character actors that are in it, you know, from Glenn and Dot to the jailbird brothers to. To Nathan Arizona, like, and Leonard Smalls, like, all the whole cast is just A really great group, really great ensemble. Had a lot of fun with it.

Steve

Didn't, like, was not head over heels for it. Definitely wasn't, like, oh, my God, that's amazing. Like, if I don't watch it again for a while, it's not going to, like, bother me kind of thing. But I really enjoyed it. And I'm going to give it a three and a half out of five.

Steve

So that makes us an eight out of ten. The two dads are an eight out of ten on Raising Arizona. Yeah. Which is, I think, pretty fair.

Nic

Yeah, totally.

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

Yeah. If you haven't seen this, I mean, this is really worth putting on your list. And again, it's only an hour and a half long, so it's a breeze. It's really fun.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And it looks good and sounds good and everything. And, man, I'm kind of sad, Steve, that we're already, like, three quarters of the way through cagevember.

Steve

We are. We are.

Steve

We have one more cagevember movie to do. And I am going to take us back away from the 80s cage.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And we're going back to the mid-90s, and we're going to go a little full circle. And I've got a whole timeline of a theoretical kind of, how did we get to this point that we'll go into in the episode, but basically we're going back to 1997, the same year Con Air came out.

Steve

In fact, 21 days after Con Air came out, this movie came out. Nicholas Cage in yet another. Hey, we got to put two big stars in an action movie together. Hey, we got to have a great action director do this. We put together John Woo, the director, with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage, and we are going to do some acting like each other in Face Off.

Steve

And Face off, to me, is the culmination of this era of Nicolas Cage. And it's. It's going to be so much fun. It's. You know, John Woo is a fantastic action director.

Steve

The premise is insane, just absolutely ludicrously bonkers. And, you know, this is right after Travolta had his career resurrected. This is still just a couple years after actually one year after Nicolas Cage won the Oscar for leaving Las Vegas. And here they are doing just the most absolute, batshit crazy thing either of them would ever be in until Battlefield.

Nic

So, yeah, I realize now I need to react audibly to what you're saying because I just have this huge grin on my face and the listeners cannot see this.

Nic

I cannot wait.

Steve

Dude, I love Face off.

Nic

I loved it so much when it came out and oh yes, this is going to be a fun one.

Steve

So next week we will wrap up Case Agevember with Face Off. That about wraps it up.

Steve

So if you like what you hear and we hope you do, please consider heading over to Apple or Spotify and leaving us a five star review. It really helps new folks find the show. If you want to drop us a line, share your thoughts on an episode, tell us what we got wrong or suggest a movie we should do next, you can do so@theshowdadsonmovie.com that's the number two and the number one. You can also follow us on Instagram @2dads1movie. Once again, this has been raising your hand, Arizona.

Steve

Another episode of 2Dads1movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nick.

Steve

Thank you so much for listening and we'll catch you next week.

Nic

Thanks everyone.