Transcript

Intro Clip

This is all happening too fast. I've been hurt before. I'm sorry. I've known her for years. We used to go to all the police functions together. Oh. Oh, I loved her. But she had her music. I think she had her music. She'd hung out with the Chicago Mail Chorus and Symphony. I don't recall her playing an instrument or being able to carry a tune, yet she was on the road 300 days out of the year. In fact, I bought her a harp for Christmas. She asked me what it was. It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl. Girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange bowl on New Year's Day. Good year? No, the worst.

Steve

It's 2 Dads 1 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 Nic Briana. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

And today we're Talking about the 1988 slapstick comedy classic the Naked Gun from the files of Police Squad.

Nic

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Steve

Good stuff. Nic, this was your pick. Why don't you give us the intro, tell us why you chose it for us.

Nic

Yeah. So this is one that we kind of decided on timing in accordance with the release of a sequel or remake.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

Which I'm actually kind of excited about. And we can get into that later as to why you and I are both maybe a little hopeful about the upcoming remake here. But this is. Is just that classic style of comedy. Airplane. The other Naked Gun movies, later, I think we had some hot shots, National Lampoons, loaded weapon one, this kind of goofball, absurdist comedy style, which you said from the files of Police Squad. So as a kid, one of the times that we. That we got videos, I remember getting the Police Squad tapes, maybe late 80s. It was before I'd seen this.

Steve

Yeah, yeah.

Nic

And it was, it blew my mind. And I really like, I thought it was so funny. And then I remember seeing it years later when I was in my teens and really being able to understand it and just, oh my God, this is the funniest thing in the world. Rex Hamilton as Abraham Lincoln and the Siren and all this stuff. So I love Leslie Nielsen's deadpan sensibilities. He's just the perfect lead for this. And it's just such a fun story. And you don't need to Invest a lot in it to enjoy it. It's just. It's a good time. And I really. I love this sense of humor as a kid.

Steve

Yeah, I completely agree with you. I think it's too. It's interesting that, you know, this is a movie based off of a TV series, but it's got to be the movie based off the shortest TV series of all time, right?

Nic

It was like five or six episodes.

Steve

Six episodes. It got canceled after six episodes. The only person outside of the creative team, obviously, which we'll get into. Like, they created Police Squad, but, like, as far as the actors go, only Leslie Nielsen, as far as I could tell, came over from the TV show into the Naked Gun movie series. So it really is a kind of thing where it's like, yeah, the Naked Gun is based off of a series, but it became far more of a success of sort of a cultural impact than the Police Squad series ever did. But, yeah, so my experience with Naked Gun, I definitely saw this. I don't know that I saw it when it came out, because I think we were like eight. So at a PG13 movie, I probably didn't get, like, taken to this by my parents. Although I'll say the Zucker Brothers and Abrahamson, or Abrahams, rather. They did airplane in 80. I'm pretty sure I saw that when I was like, three, because my parents have stories that they tell of me at a very young age with Company over saying something like, what a pisser. Right. Which is from that movie. So obviously I saw it young enough where it was still embarrassing to them that I was repeating it.

Nic

Talk some jive for him, little Steve.

Steve

Exactly. Right. So, yeah, so this is a thing where it hit all the right notes when I. You know, I was probably 10 or 11 right when I first saw it. And. And, you know, there are plenty of jokes went over my head at that time, for sure. I had no idea what was going on with the whole body condom scene. That was like, not something that really made sense to me at 10 years old, which is good. But. But, yeah, like, it's a fun movie and. And. And really just indicative of the style of. Of the Zuckers and. And Abrahams. And so we're going to get into the facts. Yes, The Naked Gun from the files of Police Squad. It came out on December 2, 1988. This is actually just a few days before my ninth birthday, as it turns out. Rated PG13. Running time of 85 minutes. Directed by David Zucker and written by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker, also known professionally as the Kentucky Fried Theater. They did this and Top Secret and Kentucky Fried Movie. You know, I mean, so many.

Nic

I forgot to mention. Yeah. Other great ones in the genre, for sure.

Steve

Absolutely. Starring Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley and Ricardo Montalban. Scores. Incredibly high scores for what really is kind of a silly picture. But yeah, 86% on rotten tomatoes. So very critically well accepted when it came out. A 7.6 on IMDb. This is a fan favorite. This is a favorite of lots of people. Did not win any awards, but it didn't need to because on a budget of $12 million, which is actually reasonably not high. But that's not nothing in 1988.

Nic

That's a decent, real studio movie.

Steve

It's a real studio movie for sure. It grossed $152 million at the box office, 12.7 times what it cost to make, which is, you know.

Nic

Is that our best multiple?

Steve

That is absolutely the highest of the movies we've done. That is the highest. Like multiplier over budget. The other other one that was close was Coming to America, which cost a little more, made quite a bit more, but, like, the ratio wasn't quite on for it. I will say too, Nic, I don't think we mentioned this at the top of the episode, but this is our 20th episode.

Nic

Good for us.

Steve

This is pretty cool.

Nic

Happy 20th episode. Yeah. And thanks for everyone listening for helping us get along this far. We've gotten some really good feedback from people and it's been a lot of fun chatting about your thoughts on what we're saying and ideas for movies you want to see us do and everything. So that's been really cool.

Steve

Absolutely. I feel like one of the most fun kinds of emails we get is people sort of like joining in on the analysis with us. Hey, did you think about this when you saw. It's so much fun to get those kinds of emails from folks and we do try to respond to everything we get. And so please, if you ever want to throw us a line, the show@2dads1movie.com. That's the number two. The number one. We're happy to hear it. But yeah, it was just real quick. Like I looked up as best I could to do some little research with the chat GPT asking about, hey, in the film review, sort of TV and film niche. Yeah. You know how many podcasts make it to 10 episodes? How many make it to 20? How many? So this is the numbers for you. About 40 to 50% of podcasts like Our Style make it to 10 episodes.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

About 18 to 22% make it here to 20, which is, like, pretty awesome.

Nic

All right.

Steve

And then it's only about. I think it said 8 to 12. Make it to 50. So really, you know, right around 10% make it to 50. So we got a ways to go to get there, but absolutely, we're going for it. We've got some theme months coming up. We've got some ideas at the start of our second season even. We're starting to plan some things, really, for our second year. Yeah, it's going to be great. So please, stick around. Follow us on Spotify or Apple and you will never miss an episode. But, hey, let's dive in, man. That's. This is the Naked Gun. Start us off. Where do we start, Nic?

Nic

So our open is in Beirut, Lebanon.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

And we're kind of shown a conference table which just has all of the various costumed bad guys of the 80s. Right. World leaders, but with their very distinct garb on. You could tell who was who, even though they weren't necessarily naming them all right away. It was like, there's idi, Ame, there's Arafat, you know, so we had. And we talked about this before. It's funny that you wrote it down, too. We had IDI Amin, Ayatollah. The Ayatollah. We had Gaddafi, Gorbachev, Castro, some IRA guy that we couldn't identify. So they're planning their evil plans and everything, and somebody who's kind of completely cloaked is coming around, filling cups.

Steve

Yeah. Doing like a tea service or something. Yeah, right.

Nic

Who maybe we're led to believe is a female in that scenario. But then they pull off their cloak and it's Sergeant Frank Drevin, Detective Lieutenant, Police Squad.

Steve

Don't bust him down. He's Lieutenant.

Nic

Sorry, that's for the next movie.

Steve

That's right. No, but he. But it's great. He, like, slams the hot, like, tea kettle or whatever on the Ayatollah's hand. Sort of, like, reveals that. Because the Ayatollah is talking about how, oh, America's so dumb and Americans are so lazy and whatever. And he's literally driven, as we don't see that's him yet. But he's literally, like, shaking. He's, like, hulking up.

Nic

You hear that about America?

Steve

Oh, heck, no.

Nic

Very funny scene. One of them, you know, Mikhail Gorbachev very famously had that birthmark on his foreh. So he wipes it off with a rag, which is just a good guy. So, I don't know. I Mean hitting with the topical stuff, it's good to set it up as this over the top. One guy versus every bad guy in the world right now.

Steve

Right. But it was funny because I remember. I actually didn't remember this scene specifically when I rewatched it this past week. And it was something that I thought to myself at the time. I was like, why is he in Beirut? He's a police officer. He's not CIA or, you know, Special Forces or. What the hell is he doing in Beirut? We find out a little later. He was just on vacation. Yeah, that's that's own hilarious joke, right? To be on vacation in Beirut in 1988. But, yeah, so basically, Frank Drebin, our hero of the story, beats up all these guys, just punches them, throws them through stuff, you know, using the furniture and everything, until he finally, like, you know, goes to jump out the window. Like, I don't know what he says. It's something about like, you know, like, you can't talk about America like that or something. Yeah. Just so silly. But there's a fun cold open.

Nic

Yeah. So he saves the day. And then we get the intro, which is from the point of view of the siren on the police car, which is from the Police Squad show. This is how the Police Squad show started. It was a very funny gag because it would just be a standard siren point of view, going down a city street, and then it might turn and go up a pedestrian staircase and do all this crazy stuff. So it was a really funny gag. So at the beginning, it's going through the streets, it goes through somebody's house. It ends up in a women's locker room, which is really funny. And then it's on a roller coaster for a while.

Steve

I like the roller coaster a lot.

Nic

It was really cool. And then it comes to stop in front of a donut shop.

Steve

Yeah. $1.99 for a dozen donuts. Man, the times have changed. That's good stuff. Although it did say only from noon to midnight, so not if you're there for breakfast donuts, then.

Nic

They're more expensive, so you don't get the fresh ones.

Steve

But anything that's left after noon, buck or two bucks for a dozen. That's great.

Nic

Not bad. Not bad. Yeah. So that was. That was our intro. And now we kind of come into the action of the film and we see a familiar face here.

Steve

Yeah. O.J. simpson is on screen and. Yeah.

Nic

And look, I don't a. I do not want to speak ill of the dead, but, you know, he is Convicted for burglary. He did steal all that memorabilia. And we can't just gloss over this.

Steve

Is that what we're focused on?

Nic

He spent time. It's the only thing he was ever convicted of. He spent time in jail for stealing memorabilia and. And kind of like intimidating somebody. And I don't think that's right. I mean, that's just me. So I'm a little wishy washy on OJ but, you know, he is deceased, so I don't really want to talk too badly about him.

Steve

I'm on the team or the side of all this that says, you know, it really wasn't in the grand scheme of things that OJ did. Stealing back his own Heisman just wasn't. Didn't really rate. It really wasn't the worst thing he did. That's the stance. That's the brave stance I'm taking on.

Nic

Well, I just believe in the United States legal system. So maybe we could talk off the pod about. No, I mean, it is so weird to see somebody like this who most of us would just consider to be a very lucky murderer who ended up not getting convicted for something that seemed pretty clear apparent that he did despite various miniseries. But I will say this, he is a funny actor. Give Ms. Flowers here. He was very, very funny in the bits of this movie he's in.

Steve

So he's on the docks, basically, and he's listening. He's got one of those sort of audio satellite dish kind of looking things, but it's picking up audio from far away. And so he's hearing people talk about basically doing a heroin deal, talking about, like, millions of dollars and this day and bring it here and this many kilos and whatever. And he's like, cool, I got him. And I'm thinking to myself, the first thing I'm thinking is, like, why wouldn't he, like, call for backup? Like, he's a single guy. There's clearly at least two people talking. Yeah, right. Like, I mean, bare minimum, you're outnumbered two to one. But, you know, he tries to kick in the door to get into where he believes this deal is happening, and he just kicks right through the door.

Nic

That is such a funny way to start it off. You're just expecting this great scene of the door flying open and his foot goes through it. And then he awkwardly is pulling his leg out of the door hole and reaches in and has to undo it with his hand.

Steve

And of course, inside are a dozen, almost eight or ten bad guys. Nondescript thugs. Right. But they're all able to get their guns out and get them cocked and ready and sort of all prepared to shoot him when he comes in. I mean, it gives them so much time to just, you know, prepare for his entry. There's no more element of surprise. He probably should have just turned around and jumped off the boat at that point.

Nic

Oh, yeah, he should have. And then when he gets in, he says, police, drop your weapons. And then one guy's weapon down, and.

Steve

All the thugs like, what are you doing? Oh, man.

Nic

This sequence, I think, is just. It sets us up for what to expect through the movie, because we see the OJ Character, Nordberg. He gets shot, like, a hundred times.

Steve

Oh, man, so many times. And he.

Nic

He hits his head. He puts his hand down on, like, a hot stone and burns it.

Steve

It's like a pellet stove. And he's, like, bouncing around the room.

Nic

Stumbling into all these obstacles. He leans into a door and then looks and sees a sign that says wet paint. And his reaction to it, where he's like, oh, no. After he's, you know, he's been shot.

Steve

500 times, bleeding out, but he got paint on his clothes.

Nic

And then he gets his finger slammed in a window, he puts his hand through a cake, he steps into a bear trap, and then falls off the boat. Just so good. So I was watching this with my wife last night. She had a similar reaction to all of us when she saw OJ on screen. So when all that happened, she said, that should have been his punishment.

Steve

He did lose the civil trial.

Nic

So that's true. That happened to his wallet.

Steve

That's right. Exactly. Yeah. So then, you know, we. We go and we cut to an airfield, an airport tarmac, as there's, like, gathering news, reporters, and, oh, he's here, he's coming. You know, whatever. And. And our hero from Beirut, Frank Drebin, comes out of the, you know, airplane and sort of waves everybody as he comes down the steps. And he's met with by his partner or his captain or who is Ed. I'm exactly to him. But he's met with by Ed, who's another member of Police Squad. You know, they work together. And, you know, hey, you know, we heard about what you did. Beirut, you know, great work, whatever. And. And, you know, Frank walks up to the. You know, there's like, a dais with, like, a bunch of microphones, like a. For a news, you know, gaggle. And he's, like, telling people, like, oh, you're a bunch of, like, you know, you're here to just gawk at me and all this stuff. They're like. It's like, frank, Frank. They're not here for you, Frank. Weird Al's on the plane.

Nic

I love that. And it's a. It's a theme, I know. At least in this and the third Naked Gun, Weird Al makes an appearance. And it's kind of this thing about he's the biggest celebrity in the world, because in Naked Gun 33 and a third, they're going to, like, the Oscars, and it's Weird Al. Yankovic and Vanna White are, like, the biggest stars. Right. It's just so funny.

Steve

So, yeah.

Nic

And Kudo. Weird Al. This is early Weird Al Ish. I mean, it's post. It's post fat.

Steve

Post UHF, I think, as well. That was like 86, I think so 88.

Nic

I mean, he's like a universally beloved guy now, but he's put in, like, 40 years of work. At that point. He was still a pretty new guy that a lot of people didn't know.

Steve

I feel like this was the Zuckers and Abraham's or whatever, like, kind of poking fun at Weird Al a little bit, and him being very willing to do so, which very much tracks with, like, Weird Al's personality of being willing to, like, sort of laugh at himself and be like, yeah, I'm a silly satire song guy. But also just their senses of humor are obviously so similar. Right. If you are someone who loves Police Squad, the Naked Gun, Top Secret, Airplane, et cetera, you probably are also pretty into Weird Al's music. Like, they're very similar styles comedically.

Nic

Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So this is funny. Drebin's getting off the plane. No questions. And we're here for Weird Al. Now we're in the hospital and Ed is telling Frank about Nordberg's. He got really beat up. He's got a 50, 50 chance of living, and there's only a 10% chance of that. These little lines in this that are just. It could go anywhere. It's still funny to this day. They fit jokes everywhere they can in this movie.

Steve

How inspired do you feel like Adam McKay was when he wrote essentially the same line in Anchorman when it was 60% of the time. It works every.

Nic

Right, right, right.

Steve

Very similar concept. And he's only a few years older than we are, so he probably was way into this movie, too.

Nic

Yeah. A couple of things from this scene. So they're visiting Nordberg, O.J.

Steve

Right.

Nic

I'm just going to interchange those, I guess. One thing is that his wife refers to him as Nordberg, which makes me laugh so hard.

Steve

It's because they didn't want to give the character first name. He didn't have one in Police Squad either.

Nic

He just was Norberg In a really excellent Steven Seagal movie, Hard to Kill, where he goes into a coma and stuff. He has a partner named o' Malley and they never give him a first name. But there's a point where he's trying to reach this guy at his mom's house and he's talking to this guy's mom, he's like, tell o' Malley that I'll meet him. It's like, she's an omalley. What are you doing, man? I gotta stop you real quick because.

Steve

There are no good Steven Seagal movies. So what are you talking about?

Nic

We'll get into that when Steve Temper hits.

Steve

Oh, boy.

Nic

And then the other thing that I love, the gag that just any hospital scene always cracks me up. And when we were looking for a bed, we bought one of those sleep number beds that adjust. And I asked the people at the store, can you get folded up in half in this bed? Because it's very important for me to know that. And him getting fully folded in half in the hospital bed, it just, it gets me every time.

Steve

The feet all the way up by the head and everything. And I love the doctor at one point, kind of early in, very almost under, under the other action happening goes up to Nordberg's wife and is like, well, we think we can save your husband's arm. Where would you like it sent?

Nic

Yes, and actually I just thought of this, but this is kind of a foreshadow to the rest of OJ's life and notoriety. So when they're leaving the hospital, they're assuring Nordberg's wife we're on the case. Not one man will rest until we find out who did this.

Steve

That's right.

Nic

Now let's go grab a bite to eat. And it reminds me of jokes that, like, Norm MacDonald was making about O.J. not resting until he found the real killers, but then he's golfing and gambling and all this stuff.

Steve

Oh, I miss Norm MacDonald. Yeah. So. All right, so moving forward from the scene, we get to an announcement from the mayor of Los Angeles. And Frank is on the dais at this announcement about the Queen of England coming to visit la. She's apparently doing a US tour. And Los Angeles is one of like three cities she's chosen to visit. It would make sense to me if she was coming to visit, like New York Chicago and la. That sort of gives you a cross section of major American cities, so. Makes sense. And of course, then the mayor is also announcing that Police squad, led by Lt. Frank Drebin will be personally responsible for the security of the Queen when she's here. And it's, you know, we don't really get a lot of understanding of what is Police Squad. It seems like it's a, you know, special unit within the lapd. They don't wear uniforms like beat cops, you know, they're like detectives. They're wearing. They wear suits, you know, so. Yeah, but it also doesn't seem like they are any particular kind of detective unit. They're not like a homicide unit or, you know, specifically anything. I, I've seen plenty of police procedurals where they'll refer to some group as like Major Crimes. This is a big thing, like Brooklyn Nine Nine, right. Where the vulture from Major Crimes would always come in and steal their cases away from them right before they got the. Captured the bad guy. So maybe that's what Police Squad is, is sort of a Major Crimes thing. Regardless, Frank struggles with his lavalier mic and has to ask for, you know, like, basically somebody else, like, offers him it and he gives a little speech and just like, yeah, hey, we're super proud that the Queen is coming. We're honored to be. Be part of our protection unit, whatever.

Nic

And before this, he's drank like 3 water. Like there's downing water water out there. And this is late 80s. It was not normal to drink water in public. Nobody drank water. Bottled water didn't exist. We didn't even know the formula for water back then. So it was weird for him to drink.

Steve

They only found that second hydrogen atom in 1993. No. So, yeah, so he gets to get up then and excuse himself after he talks. And I, I don't know for sure, but do we think this is the first miked up peeing joke in a movie? Like, it might have been the earliest, but I'm not sure.

Nic

Yeah, it's the first I remember seeing. And it became a trope.

Steve

It's a thing that like happens TV movies all the time now. But it really felt like this might have been the original.

Nic

Yeah, the first hot mic joke, I think. Yeah. And he really lets it rip. I mean, and this again, predates Austin Powers. One of the, one of the better cinematic P's we've, we've heard it's true.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then, you know, he's cleared his throat, farting and all this. It was just very fun.

Steve

Singing a song. There's a point where clearly the way the sound changes. He's clearly peeing on the floor, possibly on his own shoes. It's bad. It's real bad. And it goes on for a good. I didn't time it, but I should have. It goes on for a good 30, 40 seconds of just solid stream. That's a lot of pee.

Nic

Yes, yes. So great scene there. And at the same time now Drevin is trying to find some information on Nordberg. And I think because I don't know if they say this now or a little bit later, but because of their duty to kind of do security for the Queen, they can't really spare a lot of police to go investigate the Norberg thing. So Ed and Frank are kind of looking into it.

Steve

Yeah, and you know, Norberg was undercover working on the docks, basically. So in order to sort of, like, figure out what's going on with him, they have to go down to the docks and talk about him or whatever. And he. And he does end up telling one guy, you know, yeah, he's a cop, he got beat out, he got shot, and now we gotta figure out what happened to him. Really funny exchange with this guy about like, you know, oh, hey, I don't remember. And he though. Shows him a 20. Remember now? Maybe. Maybe I'll remember. Shows him another 20. How about now? And he gives him the answer. And then the guy asks him a question.

Nic

He's like, why do you want to know? And he's like, I can't tell you. And the guy's like, maybe this. Refresh your memory.

Steve

Passing the 20s back and forth. At one point, he was like $40.

Nic

Down for being an informant.

Steve

But he also, yeah, he like, owes Frank 40. Can you spot me 20? And then he bribes him with the 20. It's just like, very funny, good stuff. But he basically discovers that, like, this guy thinks Nordberg was dealing H. And so he's like, well, you know, he knows that's not true, or at least Frank doesn't believe that's true. And so he gonna go talk to the guy who owns the shipping company that Norberg was basically, like, embedded with or undercover with or something. I'm not sure exactly. I don't think they made super crystal clear the connection between Ludwig, the sort of big bad guy, and Nordberg in particular. But Ludwig runs shipping out of these same wharf that Nordberg got shot at. So that's the main kind of reason that Frank needs to go talk to him. Of course, we also find out this man, Ludwig, who. Weird last name for a character played by Ricardo Montalban. But regardless, he is in charge of the welcome committee basically for the queen.

Nic

Right.

Steve

So he's very much involved in, you.

Nic

Know, super connected, like socialite philanthropist type guy, like ultra classy, the rich guy everyone wants to know and, and everything.

Steve

Reminds me very much of like the Reverend Worley in Dragnet where you know, he's both. I don't know if you've ever seen that one. No. Oh my God, we're gonna do that later. But basically like he's both like this religious leader that everyone respects and also the bad guy. Yeah. You know, then you later find out. So same kind of thing here with Ludwig, with Ricardo Montalban. So Frank has to go visit in his office, at which point we get what is, I think, going to become one of the two dads sort of tropes that we follow. Like, you know, assholes watch boxing on tv, which we know evil men have crazy ass fish in their fish tank.

Nic

Dangerous pets. Yeah.

Steve

So just like Cosmo and Sneakers with the sharks and his fish tank, this guy has Japanese fighting fish.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Which he is feeding little goldfish feeder fish to. And every time he drops one in, there's actually like a gulping noise, a little sound effect for the fighting fish gulping the little feeder. But it's. Yeah.

Nic

And he's kind of describing the various things that he has. Shows Frank this samurai pen that he has, which was a gift from the Emperor Japan or something like that. And it's completely indestructible, impervious to anything but water. And of course we see Frank just goofily trying to break it and then it flies out of his hand and goes into the fish tank.

Steve

Yeah. It's like the cap slips off or something as he's applying tension and so it just flips out. His hand lands in the fish tank and now he has to sort of try to get it out while still.

Nic

Like having a conversation with his face looking up and down.

Steve

Ludwig's telling him about stuff, about sort of the shipping and Nordberg and everything that happened. Because he's aware, of course, that something happened the night before. But he's playing coy and Frank is trying to not make it obvious that he's basically got his hand in the fish tank the whole time. And I know that at one point he's holding the fish and the pen.

Nic

Yeah. So the fish bites his hand and he. And then he reaches in and grabs the pen and so he has the fish in the pen. And then the guy looks up at him and he quickly puts his hands behind his back. And I think in the process of that, he basically impaled the fish, the priceless fish, with the priceless pen, which is now destroyed now that it's touched water. So Frank. Frank gonna.

Steve

Frank. Yeah. And so he just drops the impaled fish and pen back into the fish tank because he's gonna get going. And really, it's funny because Ludwig just does not recognize anything that's happening at all until the very end when Frank goes to shake his hand with the hand that's been dunked into the fish tank.

Nic

So just wet.

Steve

It's as if he was holding a cup of water and dumped it out as he went to shake his hand. It's so much water. Very, very funny scene.

Nic

And Ludwig, much like this character in most movies, is pretending to be extremely helpful. Whatever you need, Mr. My assistant, Ms. Spencer. Jane Spencer, who's played by Priscilla Presley. I don't know what her acting background was going into this point, but I think she's very funny in this. She's kind of the perfect type of actor to be in this role.

Steve

Well, especially given the age difference between she and Leslie Nielsen. She's very used to age differences, having met her husband Elvis when she was 14.

Nic

So Seinfeldian.

Steve

Yeah, real bad. But, yeah, I don't know. Like, you go on, I'll look and see what else she was doing.

Nic

Yeah, so. So there's a very funny scene where she's, I think, looking for something for Frank. She's up on an attic ladder, so you can kind of see her from the knees down. And she's up there in a business professional outfit, but it's a dress.

Steve

Skirt.

Nic

Yeah, a dress. Anyway, so she's up there, and Frank looks up and he says, nice beaver. And then there's a beat, and then, Thanks, I just had it stuffed. And she hands a stuffed beaver down. I will say, the first few times I saw this, that went right over my head. I was not familiar with that terminology. So, yeah, that's one of those things where as a kid, oh, I still thought this movie was funny, even though one of the main jokes just whiffed right by me.

Steve

So I love, too, because there's two jokes here, Right. So it's like, nice beaver as he's looking up, ostensibly upper skirt. That's the sort of more obvious one thinks, I just had it stuffed. Which is another sex joke before she brings down this taxidermied beaver to hand to him to help him. And I definitely got the nice beaver part of that joke at a younger age than I got the stuffed part. Like, definitely. I didn't understand those jokes. At the same time, I didn't get.

Nic

The stuffed thing until just now.

Steve

Oh, boy. And you have a daughter. But yes, it's funny sometimes how even half a joke will go over your head depending on what age you see this as. By the way, I looked up Priscilla Presley before this movie, did a couple of minor things, but then was a regular on the series Dallas. So she spent. She was on 140 something episodes of Dallas. That was her main acting before the Naked Gun.

Nic

So, okay, well, that's. I mean, that's a show I'm not familiar with, but I know at the time when there was like five total shows especially, they had runs like that.

Steve

There were only three networks, right? This was even before Fox was a thing, really. So, yeah, there were three networks and that was like the primetime major show of one of them. So good for her. That was definitely where she, you know, got people's attention. Got the Zucker's attention, I guess, to be in this.

Nic

Another scene I thought was funny during this is she's down off the ladder and they're talking to each other and he points to her ankle, he says, oh, that's a nice ankle bracelet. And then she looks down, she says, oh, did that slip down there again? And picks it up and puts it on her wrist.

Steve

I'll be honest with you, I still don't really get that joke. Like, how would it get all the way down to her foot? I don't know.

Nic

Cartoon World. It doesn't, you know.

Steve

That's true. Yeah, that's true. I do love. I think we skipped it real quick, but I don't want it to go unmentioned. When Frank is still talking to Ludwig, he asks where Norberg is and he mentions the name of the hospital is Our lady of the Worthless Miracle. One of the funniest single little like the way to name something so ludicrously. But yeah, he's going back to Police Squad now. He's got to go back because he's now been given some files right by Jane. And so he's going to look. And of course. Oh, and before that, though, Ludwig has asked Jane stay close to him. You know, we need to know what he knows. Because if something illegal is happening in my company, I need to know about it because I have, you know, I have commitments to the stockholders. I got to make sure that, you know, Everything's on the up and up. Obviously, he really just wants her to, like, spy on Frank, you know, but she is, you know, not in on his evil schemes or anything. So she needs to be given, like, a legitimate reason to think she's doing this.

Nic

Right.

Steve

So that sets up sort of why she kind of gets. Tries to get closer to Frank a little bit, but he has to go back to the Police Squad. And something we should mention is that every single time Frank drives a car, when he gets to where he's parking, he just crashes into something. Right.

Nic

It's sometimes trash cars, A guy on a ladder.

Steve

Oh, my God, whatever. An entire scaffold with multiple construction workers on it or painters, whatever. They were real bad stuff. But, yeah. So he slams into a. I think it's a dumpster this time as he drives back to Police Squad, gets out of the car, but, like, doesn't put it in park, I guess, or something. What is it?

Nic

His airbag. And then there's a secondary airbag that then moves the three on the tree shifter to put his car into gear again. So his car starts rolling down the hill. So his car's rolling out of control down the hill, and Frank reacts in a very realistic way. Immediately starts freaking out and shooting at it. Stop that car. Did anyone get a license plate? Not realizing it's his car?

Steve

How did he not recognize.

Nic

And it's just causing chaos. It's just going down the road. I think it explodes at the end. It's just.

Steve

And it's kind of funny. It's got, like, seven airbags that are all really just balloons. Like, they're not even good airbags. There's balloons inflated out the windows. It's pretty wild.

Nic

He's. Now he's in police. He's at Police Squad, and he's kind of at the lab.

Steve

Yeah, yeah. Like in James Bond, when he goes to Q to get the gadgets. That's sort of the part of Police Squad that Frank has come to.

Nic

Right. And one of the gags that they do in the lab in this briefly, but this was something that, on the Police Squad show, really killed me, is every time he would walk into the lab with the scientist, the scientist opens a door to walk into a lab, and Frank just walks around the side of the door. Like, there's a half wall going into the lab, so you don't have to use the door to get into it. It's like a half wall. And it's just such a funny gag, especially for something that's like a top Secret laboratory. And he's showing Frank some of the gadgets that they have. So they have a shoe and push a button and the blade comes out of the toe of the shoe. And then he's like, oh. And then there's a corkscrew and it's like a Swiss army shoe. It has all this stuff in it. There's cufflinks that will shoot a dart that will knock somebody out for a couple minutes. And it just shoots this little tiny dart. And he's like, let me demonstrate on Frank, on Ed. And Ed's not even paying attention. And he shoots him in the neck with it. And he just holds his neck and he looks at him and he goes, goes, why? And then falls over.

Steve

And before that, they look out the window and they see, like in Demolition man, the anti graffiti wall. But this, instead of actually getting rid of the graffiti, just sprays the vandals with their own paint, basically. So I guess you could find them later and pick them up.

Nic

So good work in the police lab, as always. So they're trying to take a look now. I guess they have a fiber sample from Norberg's clothing that night, and they're looking at it in a microscope. So this is also a gag that works really well. Frank Drebin closes his eye, puts his eye down to the microscope. I don't see anything. And Ed says, try to use your open eye, Frank. And then he puts his head up and his closed eye was over the eyepiece. And then he also cranks the microscope down and you can hear the slide getting crushed. The information we're supposed to take from the scene, though, is that there's traces of heroin on Norberg's fiber of his clothing. So what they're saying about heroin, it doesn't look good for him. So you basically have 24 hours to clear his name, right?

Steve

Yeah, because they said if the Queen gets here and we're doing the security for the Queen, and then people find out Nordberg, this, who's part of Police Squad, has had this side gig of dealing. Horrible. That's gonna be a massive problem. So basically, you either gotta clear Nordberg's name or I gotta fire him before the Queen comes. Right? That's sort of. Now we have a ticking time bomb for Frank.

Nic

Now there's kind of like an interesting one sentence description of this movie that could be our hero tries to prove O.J. simpson innocent.

Steve

I don't think that movie would have done as well, I gotta be honest with you.

Nic

Mr. Ludwig is shown now, and he's meeting with one of the gentlemen that we recognize from the Lebanon meeting earlier.

Steve

Technically, really the only one we don't recognize, like, because we both were talking.

Nic

About how we know he was there, but we don't know like what his name was or anything.

Steve

Watching that opening scene, it was like, oh, here are all these very sort of famous and very. Whether from, you know, hairstyle or clothing or whatever, very recognizable, you know, world leaders. And then this other guy, right? And he was. And he kind of stuck out that way. And now we find out that his name is Pap Smear and he has.

Nic

Come to see Mr. Ludwig and what Mr. Ludwig. So now we know Mr. Ludwig is in league with these guys and what he's talking to him about what's the most effective assassin? And he says, well, an assassin who doesn't get caught. He's like, yeah, that's good too. He calls the secretary in basically and says, well, what about this? And he has her in some kind of mind control. There's some switch, like some trigger for her where she dissociates and turns into just a brainless Sirhan Sirhan style assassin. And picks up the gun, which is not loaded, but picks it up and points it at Mr. Pap Shamira. Click, click, click, click, click. And then up to her head. Click, click, click, click, click.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

And then he untriggers it. And then she's just all of a sudden, oh my gosh, there's a gun on the floor. What happened? So basically he's saying we're able to create an assassin that does not know they're the assassin. This is the most effective weapon that we can wield.

Steve

And then again, if they had assassin kills themselves after, then there's completing their assassins and there's no more investigation.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

It's literally like, hey, we literally all witnessed this person kill this famous person and then kill themselves. Like that's the story.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So it is really quite a brilliant plan. Not going to get into how the hell it could possibly work. It seems like it has something to do with people's watches because every time he presses the little button on his little car remote the person being affected, we see their watch and we hear it beeping. Yeah, but I don't, I don't. It doesn't really make any sense how that could work.

Nic

You would need a lot of like programming beyond that to make that work on someone with a device. You couldn't just put a watch on someone and make them do that. But you know, it's a movie. It's shortcuts. It's 85 minutes. Okay, so now Nordberg is in the hospital, and they don't like that Nordberg is still alive. They were pretty happy with the idea that he had been shot 20 times and that he's out of the picture because he. He could potentially blow this whole thing wide open. And the doctor in the hospital appears to have a similar watch to Ludwig's secretary. And he gets the beep and then all of a sudden, he turns into assassin mode. The doctor goes in there and he's trying to suffocate Nordberg with a pillow. At the same time, Frank Drebin comes in there and he catches the doctor in the act. So the doctor's trying to suffocate him with the pillow. At one point, the doctor throws the pillow at Frank Drebin, and then Frank, like, acts like it latches onto his face. It's so funny the way he's, like, struggling with this pillow up against his face and then throws it off. And the doctor ends up escaping and takes off in a car. And Frank goes to commandeer a vehicle, and what he ends up getting into is a driver's ed car, right?

Steve

Oh, that's right. And the driver instructor is John Houseman. Oh, the actor who plays John Houseman, like, if you don't know, like, John Houseman is like, Hollywood royal guilty. Like, John Houseman, like, was. That was a producer at David O. Selznick Productions. He was, you know, he helped worked with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane. Like, John Houseman is like a legend. This is the last movie he was ever in.

Nic

Oh, funny.

Steve

Which was, like, not bad for him, but definitely not like, really his style. Like, he was in Scrooged and this both in 1988. Those were his, like, last two films, you know, and. But in Scrooge, he played himself. He was literally like, John Houseman was narrating the movie business. Exactly, the TV business. And he was the narrator for the Christmas Carol in Scrooge was John Houseman. But yeah, I recognized, like, oh, my God, it's John Houseman. Why is he here?

Nic

This scene is great. We have Frank Drebin sitting in the backseat of the car, basically trying to lead a high speed chase against this doctor who's escaping the assassin doctor who's fleeing the scene. And he's basically telling the driver what to do. The driver will only listen to what the instructor's telling her. So he's kind of translating it into the driver instructor language. Really funny. And they're doing these Crazy moves. They end up going the wrong way down a one way street, about to come head on with a semi truck. He very calmly tells her, place the vehicle in reverse, backs out. Put your hand out the window, extend your middle finger. And the look on the truck driver's face that he got flipped off, I think was very funny. The doctor ends up just driving. He drives into a gas truck which explodes right then. He drives into a mobile surface to air missile looking thing, and that explodes. And then into a fireworks factory. And Frank Dreven is standing there in front of this with all these explosions and stuff, telling all the people, oh, there's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here. Please disperse.

Steve

Became very much a famous and very common meme these days on social media or whatever, where. Where people are talking about somebody's trying to cover something up or there's obviously something going on, but we're being told officially not to bother. It'll literally be the animated gif of Frank Drebin. No, nothing to see here, folks. Walk away as the fireworks explode behind him. I also feel like that sort of surface to air missile thing, I feel like I'm not gonna say it was. That feels like a slight nod to Spies Like Us, the Chevy Chase Dan Aykroyd film, which is also one of my favorites from the era. But maybe not. Maybe that's just lucky, happy coincidence.

Nic

Also very similar to one of the micro machines that Kevin McAllister puts down on the floor as the burgl step inside the window. So maybe we're spies like us all around here.

Steve

Good stuff.

Nic

Okay, so Drevin, now he's going home to his apartment, right?

Steve

And this was something that even as a kid, I knew this was good, right? Her standing in the kitchen, basically just wearing his dress shirt. Jane. Like that worked for me. Even just as puberty was nascent, it was like, yeah, all right. That's hot. You know what I mean? I didn't really understand it, but it was like, yeah, we're supposed to like that. I felt like there was something like ingrained in me that was supposed to like that.

Nic

For sure, for sure. And this is something they do with Leslie Nielsen where they add these absurd stunts to his character. You know, he's clearly like an older guy and, you know, not in bad shape, but not someone who's acrobatic. So when he walks into his apartment, he sees like, somebody's in here. This is weird. And he's flipping and rolling and somersaulting over the couch and Stuff to try. To try to find her before he stumbles on Jane in the kitchen. He says after he encounters her and finds out why she's there, she said, oh, you know, we should have dinner sometime. So I came over. He says, let me slip into something more comfortable. And he goes from, like, his suit, his, like police detective suit into like a three piece suit, which kills me.

Steve

Yeah. Like, it's almost. It's almost a tuxedo. Like, it's so formal looking. Yeah, it's very funny.

Nic

She has him try the, the pasta sauce. I think she dips his finger, or he dips his finger into it and she's sucking on his finger and he goes, I got nine more. And she just gets this disgusted look on her face.

Steve

Very, very suggestive. Very suggestive indeed. And yeah, and I think we can comment briefly on the age difference between these two. Right. Leslie Nielsen was 62, I think, when the Naked Gun came out. Priscilla Presley, I'm not sure exactly, but she was honestly probably in her late 30s. There's probably at least a 25 year old difference between these two. And so it's just kind of funny to me that that's the case. And I think that one of the reasons I'm going to kind of interject this now that I think you and I both are kind of excited about the Naked Gun reboot was, first of all, the involvement of Akiva Schaefer, who we're both big fans of.

Nic

Great work.

Steve

But the casting of Liam Neeson, who is in his 70s as Frank Drebin, who clearly they're playing the character, like in the Naked Gun in maybe his fourth 40s. Right. Like, this is like a mid-40s character played by an early 60s actor. Yeah, I mean, Nissan's even older. He's in his, like, 70s now. I don't know exactly how old he is, but he is not a young man, so very much leaning into and making more ridiculous. That sort of age discrepancy, I feel like, is one of those things where I feel like the people who are creative team behind the reboot get it right. And that's, I think, the biggest thing you can ask for if you're taking an old, you know, property and trying to bring it back to life. Like, do you actually get it or are you just there to, like, make a buck? And I get the sense that that casting decision alone is like, oh, they get it.

Nic

Yeah. It seems like it's made by people who grew up loving the movie and want to do it right. So this part Here has my favorite quote in the movie, and I just want to. I pulled it up so that I can read it properly. So him and Jane are in his apartment. They're kind of getting to know each other. They're flirting. She's made him dinner and everything. And I think she's asking him about his prior love life. So this is what Frank says. It's the same old story. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy forgets girl, boy remembers girl. Girl dies in a tragic blimp accident over the Orange bowl on New Year's Day. And then Jane says, good year. Frank says, no, the worst. To me, that is such a perfect joke. I cannot. It's very zero notes. I think about this all the time, like, of anything in this movie. This joke specifically, I think about so much the good year. Know, the worst is just. It has everything. So I love that so much.

Steve

There are elements of this movie that I feel like don't work as well as either Airplane or Top Secret, which I do think are both better movies than this. I'll be totally honest. And one of the greatest. I mean, the. The thing about Airplane is that one of the greatest lines that lived for, you know, forever from Airplane. Right. Is, you know, Shirley, you must be joking. Don't call me. Sure. I'm not joking. Don't call me Shirley. Right. Classic. It's delivered perfectly. It's wonderful. There's a couple others very much like it. And to me, Goodyear know, the worst is the. The most airplane like joke.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

In this movie. Yeah.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

And that's not to say that, like, the other jokes aren't good. I'm just saying, like, to me, that felt like a much more classic Kentucky fight theater joke where. And by the late 80s, they were leaning into kind of other stuff and more like satire and different things. But, yeah, I agree with you. That joke, the Goodyear. No, the worst is, like, so clean, like, so pure a joke. It's so nice. Yeah.

Nic

And it's. And really of the time, because I don't know how much swag the Goodyear blimp has here in 2025. But back in 88, it was the. Easily the most famous blimp for sure.

Steve

I mean, in 92. Right. Ice cube. Right. I even saw the light. That's a good blimp. Yeah. So, yeah.

Nic

Good day. Yeah, the best.

Steve

I missed it. Such a lost opportunity. Come on, Cube.

Nic

So just wrapping up the scene which you mentioned a little earlier is I think Frank says I practice safe sex, and Jane says, so do I. And then it cuts to the sex scene where they're both wearing full body.

Steve

Condom outfits head to toe, and they're sort of trying to roll around together. And then we get the dating montage, right? Which another real good.

Nic

This is where I was rolling, because, honestly, this movie started a little slow for me. And then at this point, I was like, oh, we are in it now.

Steve

Yeah, it was good for me, for better or for worse. I think my gummy kicked in right about this part of the movie. So not that I didn't enjoy up to this point, but it definitely got very enjoyable from here on. It's a wonderful montage because it so clearly takes place over multiple days.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Like, it has to. Like, they're wearing different outfits. There's, like, multiple different time periods. We go back and forth between where they're doing different things. My personal favorite. I'll let you get to. I know you've got some. But my personal favorite is the running on the beach. And another couple is in slow mo running towards them, and they clothesline one of the crispest. Like, the Road Warriors. Couldn't have done a better clothesline. Like, it was perfect.

Nic

It was excellent. They should have. They should have been the final two in the Royal Rumble that year, for sure. Yeah. The song that they play, that. That something tells me I'm amazing. Right? Herman's Hermits really just the perfect upbeat song for this stuff. So it's very kind of cheesy date Falling in love montage, and we're having cotton candy and stuff. The thing that made me laugh the hardest is it shows them walking out of a movie theater just, like, busting their guts, laughing. And then it pans up to the marquee and it says Platoon.

Steve

Right. It's very good.

Nic

It made me laugh so hard. And hopefully our listeners are familiar with. With the dark, dark movie Platoon.

Steve

But here's the thing, though. I feel like I had a better joke in my head. So as they're walking out of the theater, I remember that this joke existed, but I didn't remember what movie it was. So it's when they're walking out laughing, I go, oh, that's right. They're seeing something somber. And I don't know about the timing of when the movies came out, so maybe it wouldn't have made sense. But I thought, wait, what are they saying? Sophie's Choice. Is that what they saw? Because I feel like that would have been an even better joke than Platoon. It's strapping through Sophie's Choice.

Nic

Maybe they're like, we're not going to be able to be PG13 if we keep squeezing stuff in.

Steve

Maybe that would have been brutal. A joke. I don't know. But they do say, then at the end of the montage, Jane says to Frank, what a. I can't believe we only met yesterday. It's been such a great day. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You guys had like three dinners in that montage. What's going on?

Nic

So Frank and Ed now. God, this like three sequence between the Goodyear joke, the montage here and then, and Frank and Ed sitting in the car on stakeout, and they're both sitting there on stakeout outside of Ludwig's place, and they're eating out of these little tiny bags of red, dyed, red shelled pistachios. And they have red all over their mouths and hands and stuff. And they're just eating the pistachios and talking. And then finally when Frank decides, okay, I'm gonna go in, and he goes to open his door and he's struggling and there's a three foot pile of pistachio shells up against the door of the car.

Steve

There must be a thousand shells of pistachios at least there. And like, I've never had. Sorry, I've never had dyed pistachios before, but I've eaten pistachios. Like, those things are filling 20 pistachios. You feel like you had a snack, like you're good for a little while. He would like, they must have been there for hours and hours and just like. And eating without abandon, like constantly eating to get that pile. And the fact that, yeah, he has to like push his door open like four times before he can push the pile of pistachio shells aside, right? Really good.

Nic

If you had like the 92 Philly switch from sunflower seeds to pistachios, I don't think they generate that many shells. John Kruck and all. They're not gonna, they're not gonna put that many shells. So great visual gags. So funny. And then, so Drebin goes in and he's trying to get into Ludwig's apartment.

Steve

He takes his office, right?

Nic

It's like his office. He takes out his credit cards and he goes to open the door with the credit card and he can't do it. And then he pulls it out. That's a MasterCard. And then he grabs an American Express rest card to do the same thing, to try to wedge the door open. And it works, which another good gag.

Steve

Is Is I gotta ask, though, is that a joke that's just about the idea that the cards are like a ring of keys and he has to try a different one? Or was it a joke specifically about, you know, Ludwig being rich and therefore the Amex is the one that does it? Like, I don't know, like, how maybe a double goes, but, like.

Nic

Yeah, because the very least, it was hard to come by at that time.

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

Like you, you kind of. I don't think they had the gold or platinum or anything else carded that to get an Amex in the late 80s.

Nic

You.

Steve

You.

Nic

You had money because they didn't have, like, now they have an American Express branded credit card that works like a credit card. Back then, there was no limit on the amex, but you had to pay it at the end of the month.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

So it was like they didn't just give them out to anybody.

Steve

Oh, no. So I'm wondering if that joke was. Yeah. Two layers deep or not, or if I was making that up.

Nic

I do just like the idea of, like, oh, it's a different credit card that I need to.

Steve

This one didn't fit the lot. Right.

Nic

And he. So he gets in there and he's looking for. Or something. Some kind of clue. Yeah, he's being incredibly careful.

Steve

Yes, Very careful.

Nic

Not touching anything. Everything's going back how it started. He accidentally pushes a button that says piano. And all of a sudden, this player piano lights up, starts playing, like super loud. Oh, okay. Turns that off. And he sees that there's some unidentified piece of paper which is sitting under a house of cards that's built on this desk. And he very carefully sweeps it out like a magician pulling a tablecloth. And he's trying to read it, and he can't quite read it. He steps into the light. He can't see it, so he lights his lighter to try to read it. He figures out what it says. And I think it says, like, $20 million to kill the queen.

Steve

Kill the queen. Yeah, exactly.

Nic

And as he's pondering this, he's just keeping the lighter lit and the paper down. And he set the paper on fire.

Steve

Right. It's like his hands both dip below frames. We don't technically, but we realize he's put them down together and the smoke comes and he's like, what's that? What is that? Oh, I'm holding something burning. Oh, man. And the whole office just goes up.

Nic

He throws it in the trash bucket. That's right. He steps in the bucket. He ends up sitting on this panel of buttons and the piano starts going off, Right? And then. Oh, no. And I bump into. Bumps into a shelf. And all these vases start falling off. And he's trying to catch them as they fall. And then he's like. Everything he's trying to save, he's making worse. So he's destroying the entire apartment. And at the same time, he's looking at the surveillance camera. He sees Ludwig is coming up.

Steve

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he has to climb out the window.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And when he climbs out the window, like, the first thing I think almost anybody probably noticed is that these were very. These are like statues, like, very, like, Art Nouveau statues on the outside of this building. But they're very anatomically correct.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

Like, not just. Like. The female statues don't just have breasts, which is, like, fairly common for, you know, that style, whatever. But the male statues have, like, enormous dong. Yeah. Basically. And they're. And they're hooked. And so he's trying to, like, wiggle his way.

Nic

And it's like alternating, like, male, female statues as he moves his way along.

Steve

Along this, like, you know, the sort of ledge outside the window. Because he's trying to get away and he's. And he's, you know, initially able to grab onto sort of one of the breasts of the female statue to, like, make his way around a corner. At which point a woman is, like, for some reason, like, leaning out her window. I don't know exactly why he, without looking, grabs onto her breasts to, like, you know, try to steady himself. And of course, she freaks out. And that, you know, is like a whole thing. And then he's able to sort of almost fall, but catch himself. Yes, by grabbing onto one of the male statues, huge penises, basically, and hold on for dear life.

Nic

And he's holding on to this penis, this concrete penis, like a handle, and pulling it up. And it's like he's pulling. So funny. So funny.

Steve

Very visual gag. Hard to explain.

Nic

And it gets, you know, it gets twisted up and then it shows the. Like, the face of the statue is smiling, which reminds me a lot of the inflatable autopilot on airplanes. Right. With the manual inflate thing. And he ends up getting inside the window, but he has this concrete wiener in his hand. And he goes back into that woman's apartment, this poor woman who he grabbed when he was trying to come around the corner.

Steve

He's stumbling towards her, and she's freaking out. And we have a hard cut. Then back to the mayor, and Frank and Ed are in Front of the mayor, and the mayor's yelling at him about, like, oh, like, you know, arson, destruction of private property, a bad sexual assault with a concrete dildo. Like, what is wrong with you? She's just losing it. Oh, man. Have we mentioned, by the way, the mayor is the same woman who played Livia Soprano?

Nic

Let's talk about that.

Steve

Oh, my God. So I did not actually recognize her in the first scene she was in with the big sort of news, the press conference. It was in this scene that I looked at, and it was the way she looked yelling at him. I went, yes. Oh, man. That's exactly how Livius used to yell at times. Oh, that is Livia Soprano. Holy crap.

Nic

Great to see her. Really, really good actress. A quick Livia Soprano aside, I bought this cookbook one time, and it was like the Sopranos.

Steve

Oh, I've seen that one.

Nic

Yeah, it looked pretty official. Sometimes there's really bootleg versions of that, but it looked pretty official. And both the inside front and inside back cover full, like, two pages of one photo. And they were both the same photo. And it was a photo of when Livia Soprano was trying to cook and she set the kitchen on fire. Of all the scenes in that show where there was food and there was people eating and stuff, for that to be the inside and the front and back cover blew my mind. So that always really cracked me up. But I love Livia Soprano. Love that actress. She really, really good at yelling at Frank Drebin, too.

Steve

At least one of them. Well, at least one of those pictures should have been Silvio, like, beckoning the gabagulo. Exactly. The gravy's good today, right? The gravy? We are not Italian Americans. We don't know anyway. Yeah. So basically, she tells Frank, like, you're.

Nic

Off, you know, like, you're not welcome at Queen's reception. Stay away from.

Steve

Stay away.

Nic

A disaster.

Steve

Exactly.

Nic

Frank, he's back at his apartment. Frank isn't really a renegade cop, but in a renegade cop movie, the guy who's like, you know, plays by his own rules, whatever, has a very sad home life and just disgusting refrigerator. So he goes into it, and there's a half gallon of milk, and he goes to pour it. It comes out like cottage cheese, real chunky, real bad. There's just all this nasty stuff that had expired forever ago. Jane shows up and there's a Chinese food container. He asks if she wants to eat. She's like, oh, that place closed three years ago.

Steve

Did they reopen? I thought they closed three years ago.

Nic

Frank's like, oh, has it been that long? And then as she's talking to him, he takes a whiff of it and passes out on the floor and slowly makes his way back up. So I like Frank Drebben's fridge as a scene here.

Steve

Well, in the freezer, Jane opens the freezer and everything is frozen into a block of ice in the freezer because he hasn't even opened it in so long, like old ice cream and stuff.

Nic

But yeah, so this next scene here, this is me, like, not remembering when things came out. Okay, so he pulls up to. Frank is going to Ludwig's meatpacking plant. Right, Right. And it's just every movie has this end scene in this kind of industrial area. But when he pulled up, I was like, oh, that looks like Axis Chemicals from Batman.

Steve

Oh, from Batman.

Nic

I didn't realize it was that. I thought Batman came out after this. I thought it was 89, but I think it was 87 or something.

Steve

No, no, Batman was 89.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

Because Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, Batman was 89. Yeah.

Nic

So in this scene, though, he has, it looks like very much like access chemicals. And then he has the fight with this guy up on the meat rack. The guy falls in and then his hand comes up and it's a lot like the Joker when he falls into that vat. So I wonder if, like, some of that was available at this time because it was very confusing to me.

Steve

That's interesting. I never, I never. I didn't put that together watching it. But yeah, that's very interesting. I'm. Huh. I'm sure that. That Batman was 89, right?

Nic

I. I don't know.

Steve

I'm. Yeah, 89 was the. Was the Tim Burton. The original Tim Burton Keaton. Batman came out in 89. So I think that was either coincidence preview. It could have been coincidence or it could have been Burton referencing this. I suppose.

Nic

I don't know if there was some. Something that was pulled from like a Batman comic or something where it had that look. But anyway, I just thought that was very interesting. And it looked so much like Batman that it was uncanny because I'm not super familiar with it, but I was like, axis Chemicals.

Steve

It's a good point. No, it really did. And actually it's important, I think, for us to mention when Jane came over to Frank's apartment, she told him that Ludwig wanted to meet him at the packing plant. So then when he gets there and it's an ambush, Frank now is blaming Jane right in his head. Whatever about, like, hey, you set Me up, because I got there and this guy, he's like, hey, are you Drebin? Yeah. You know, like, shoots at him. And he basically says something like while he's shooting, like, oh, Mr. Ludwig says to die or whatever. He's like, I can't hear you. Don't talk while you're shooting the gun.

Nic

Oh, so good. So he's pissed now. So. So Frank feels he's been betrayed. And he goes to this queen's reception where Ludwig and Jane are there and they're sitting together. When he walks up to them at the table, Ludwig looks at him, he says, drevin. And Jane says, frank. And he says, you're both right.

Steve

But even before that, like, he gets their EDs at the front, and he's like, ed, we gotta, like, you know, the queen's in danger because he saw, right. This thing, and Ed knows that he saw the. The note, right, even though it burned up in the fire. And he's like, oh, you know, like, the Ludwig's here and everything's in danger. Well, whatever. We gotta frisk everybody. And it's like the amount of frisking they do is crazy. And then Ed standing behind a guy getting frisked, and Frank is reaching into Ed's pockets and finds Ed's gun. And it's just, like, so dumb.

Nic

He says, hey, Ed, this guy's got a picture of your wife in his.

Steve

Wallet, and knocks him out with one punch. Anybody else dating Ed's wife? Yes.

Nic

Oh, God.

Steve

But this is the point in the movie where I thought to myself, first of all, I had been smiling or laughing like, the whole time. Don't get me wrong. But, like, this is so dumb. And it's not dumb in a bad way at all. It's just so dumb to have the characters acting. The characters act in an incredibly dumb way often. Right? That's sort of like the thing of the movie, which, again, is fine. But this was the scene where I was like, God, the frisking in particular, that was a groaner for me. Like, it was funny, but I was also like, oh, man. Really? This is. We're like. I don't know. It just felt so kind of over the top dumb. Like, how do you not know? How does Ed not know? He did Frank's hands, right? It's just kind of weird.

Nic

But we're like an extra two generations removed from, like, the Three Stooges coins. And I think the people who made this movie were heavily influenced by that kind of stuff.

Steve

That's fair.

Nic

So a lot of it was kind of like Three Stooges. Drevin ends up, does he feel he's trying to save the Queen?

Steve

He ends up, yeah, because Ludwig is giving her a Revolutionary War musket as, like, a gift, but as she comes in as being introduced, he's, like, kind of pointing it towards her, but, like, trying to show it off. But all Drebben sees is he's pointing a gun at her. So, you know, he dives on her the way like Secret Service would on the President or whatever, but they end up sliding all the way down the, like, main table, essentially in missionary position.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So when we get to the end, he gets his photograph taken. You know, like he's porking the Queen and.

Nic

And all that newspaper headlines or, you know, police ruins everything, whatever. Real quick, about the. The Gun Gang gift. I'm reminded of one of my favorite Deep Thoughts by Jack Hannon, where he says, I think a really good gift for the President would be a chocolate revolver. But since he's so busy, you probably have to run up real quick and hand it to him.

Steve

That's good, that's good, that's good. For some reason, it made me think of Wayne's World like a gun rack. What do I need a gun rack for? I don't own a gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack. Like.

Nic

So Frank after this debacle, understandably, Frank Drebin is kicked off the force.

Steve

Persona non grata. He is not welcome anywhere at all.

Nic

Frank's line, he says, just think, the next time I shoot someone, I could be arrested.

Steve

Poor guy. What's he going to do? All right, so then we cut to the baseball game now, right? Because that's the big thing. The Queen. One of the big things the Queen's going to do while she's in la, apparently has not attended a LA Dodgers game, because that would make sense. She's going to go to Anaheim and she's going to attend a California Angels game. That's who they were at the time. Of course, now they're the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim because they still play in Anaheim, but she's going to go to the baseball game. And basically, Frank is knows that one of the players is going to be used to kill the Queen. So he has to figure out which player. So he has to get close to the players. And so the first thing he does is when he's in the sort of underbelly of the stadium, he sees the guy who's like an opera singer, who's about who's gonna sing the national anthem. His name is Enrico Palazzo, you know, sort of a Placido Domingo, you know, whatever kind of.

Nic

Who is very fat in a tuxedo.

Steve

Right, Exactly. Very, very overweight man. You know, big, big guy wearing a tux. Frank hits him over the head, like, pushes him into the room as the head Escher arrives. And immediately Frank is in the tuxedo. It fits perfectly. It is tailored to him. It's hilarious. And he's like, oh, Mr. Palazzo, like, why don't you come out? I actually want to say I think I jumped ahead just a bit, which is like, Happy Gilmore. This has another element that I love. Anytime movies with sports in it does this, where it's real announcers for the sports element. And it's really. I can't even remember who all of it was, but there was like. Like, Dick Enberg was there. Tim McCarver was there.

Nic

Jim Palmer.

Steve

Jim Palmer was there. And then, of course, at the end, there was vital. Yeah. Different reasons. Which is weird because he's a basketball guy, but then Dr. Joyce Brothers at the end because of course she's gonna have something to say about the. About the 12, six curves. So. Yeah. But, yeah, so now Frank is being led to home plate by the head usher to sing the national anthem because they believe he is Enrico Palazzo. By the way, just a side, a good buddy of mine, Mike Govier, who actually has a really great movies podcast, if you haven't heard it, it's called Cinema 9. And he and two of his buddies, Eric and Travis and Mike, they get together and they do kind of similar to what we do, but they cover a broader thing. It's a really great show. But he also has a baseball fantasy baseball Puget podcast called the Palazzo Podcast.

Nic

Nice.

Steve

Two L's and two Z's. And so it's very much based off of this. So anyway, shout out to Mike and those great podcasts.

Nic

Yeah, shout out to Cinema 9.

Steve

Yeah. And. And so, yeah, so Enrico Palazzo is now here to sing the national anthem. Of course, Frank can't sing. He certainly can't sing opera. First of all, the Star Spangled Banner is among the hardest songs to sing, period. If you're. If you're. A singer at all. And I. And I did spend a brief amount of time in high school singing in choir. It is the hardest thing to sing. The range of no notes you have to hit to actually properly sing the Star Spangled Banner is insane. So it's super hard. And he not only is not singing it well, he's not even singing the right words for most of it.

Nic

He's just in the air, gave proof through the night that we still had our flag.

Steve

It's just something about the home of the land and the free of the brave or something very bad. But he's noticing now. The police or. I don't know if it's stadium security or LAPD or whatever, but they're like, you know, they know he's not supposed to be there.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

So they're, like, inching towards him, but they're also not. This is very much like Fletch, actually. They're kind of like, you know, we.

Nic

Have to respect this. Like when he started the Pledge of Allegiance.

Steve

Same thing. So very much like at the end of Fletch, like, these cops are moving slowly towards him because they want him to finish the Source Spangled Banner. So as he finishes it, he has to haul ass back into the clubhouse, which is hilarious.

Nic

Oh, my God. And the Queen. One of the things the Queen is there for is she's there to throw out the ceremonial first. Oh, before that, actually. They treat the crowd to please enjoy this hilarious sports blooper reel. I used to love this. I had a couple of those VHS tapes when I was a teenager that were like, you know, great sports moments of the 80s. But then one was the Bloopers. You know, they would sell them on tv.

Steve

We have the Jonathan Winters tapes. Like the NFL Jonathan Winters tapes. Those were great.

Nic

Got some Ray Stevens, Jonathan Winters. Exactly. Freedom Rock. They. So they're pretty standard sports bloopers. But then all of a sudden, the shortstop gets hit by a car, like in Happy Gilmore.

Steve

Like, how'd they get a car on the field? Although, back then, they actually often did have a bullpen car that would drive the relief pitchers out from, like, center field, if that's how the stadium was built. But that looked more. That didn't really look like a bullpen car.

Nic

Yeah, that's a car. Somebody else gets mauled by a tiger. Someone jumping to catch a ball at the fence gets hit in the head by the ball, and his head just comes out. And the crowd is reacting like, this is just the goofiest, funniest, lighthearted stuff they've ever seen.

Steve

Chuckling and laughing and guffawing.

Nic

The Queen's there to throw out the first pitch. Steve, I wonder if you have any issues with this scene.

Steve

Well, I don't know about issues so much as I'd love to learn where the Queen learned how to throw a screwball. Like that or whatever that was. Because it literally came in like a cool corkscrew.

Nic

But why she throwing it from her seat?

Steve

That is odd. Yeah, I mean, that's. I think that was.

Nic

I mean, it's a quick joke. It's a quick joke. A whole stadium to show. Show that.

Steve

Exactly. And I wonder, you know, look, I don't. I've never attended a ball game where somebody sort of of that geopolitical stature was throwing out the first pitch. Maybe that is how they would do it because it's easier to maintain her safety not standing on, you know, on the mound, in the middle. I don't know. But yeah, it was a little odd.

Nic

W. Throughout the first pitch from the mound.

Steve

Yeah, I said important geopolitical.

Nic

50 Cent. No, I didn't get to 50 Cent.

Steve

Oh, that's. No, no, that's actually a good point. Curtis Jackson, that's. That man's a national treasure. So. But, yeah, it was a little odd. But, yeah, I think it's more just like I'm Will. I'm willing to look past that one. But I do think, you know, that, yeah, the pitch was wild and. Yeah. You know, and had the very. A very. The very Zucker brothers. The way that the players all reacted to it, like. Like, almost like they're shaking. Look at just how wild that was that that happened is. It's very funny.

Nic

And so Enrico Palazzo Frank has been chased away and he's got to find somewhere to go. And he sees the umpires all coming out to the field and he ends up knocking out one of the umpires.

Steve

Is this a regulation bat? Clunk.

Nic

Takes his stuff. So now he's the home plate umpire and he's standing there. He's there to pat down players. He's not a trained umpire, so he's like, I don't know what to be doing. And the manager's sitting there kind of looking at him like, so are we going to do this thing or not? Oh, yeah.

Steve

Play ball.

Nic

So then the game starts and the first pitch comes in, you know, and he just kind of sits there and they're all looking at him like, are you going to call this?

Steve

He's like, strike.

Nic

And since it was a strike for the home team.

Steve

Right.

Nic

Yeah, the crowd goes wild and he's eating this up. So we get a great scene of him calling strike on everything and really hamming up every single call and doing dances and everything.

Steve

It's a legendary umpire performance. It really is.

Nic

And it's something that often, you know, I'll hear people reference if there's A baseball game where sometimes you feel like, you know, the ump is really making this his show instead of just calling balls and strikes, right? People will say like, oh, Enrico Palazzo is the umpire. You know, it's really, really funny. And the crowd's getting all hyped and stuff. There's a montage now as they're going through the game because he has to do this before the seventh inning stretch when the assassination is supposed to happen. And we have Randy Newman's I Love LA playing I love that song, which is good in this context. I mean, it's just such a nice montage scene. Really good. And the funny ways that he's searching through the guys and then finding all these other illegal baseball things that the ump would normally care about, but he doesn't care about. So the pitcher, he finds Vaseline, like.

Steve

An entire jar of Vaseline Dremel tool.

Nic

And like sandpaper and stuff. He pulls a cork out of a bat with like a wine cork screw. Really good.

Steve

But he's looking for a gun. He doesn't care about all that.

Nic

He's increasingly, as he's dusting off the plate, he's using a little brush and then he's using a dirt Devil and then he's using a plug in Hoover vent. And then the other part of the montage is it's showing the managers, first of all, the baseball player's spitting, which keeps escalating, right?

Steve

Gross.

Nic

And then the manager's signaling to each other, which goes from the normal touch your chin, touch your belt type stuff to like full on flashing signal lights and like ship to ship semaphores and stuff. It was just really, really good, like elevating the stakes on that joke.

Steve

I want to mention too at this point, the manager of the Angels in this movie played by Lawrence Tierney, who played Joe Cabot, the sort of head boss guy in Reservoir Dogs. The guy that gave all the names and the colors and did the whole like Toby, Toby Chang. That's Joe Cabot. That's Lawrence Teeth Tierney. So he's who plays the Angels manager. I love that guy. Nice. But yeah. So yeah, the whole montage is great. And we get to the top of the seventh. So if we get through this three out, these three outs, it's the seventh inning stretch, right? Because it's the middle of the seventh inning is when the seventh inning stretches. Thank you. I think Herbert Hoover, I can't remember which president it was Garfield. It was one of those guys did it for the first time, just stood up at a Baseball game at that time. And everybody did it because it was the president.

Nic

Nice.

Steve

That's how the seventh inning stretch came about. But yeah, so we, we get, you know, Ed mentions to Frank. He's like, you know, he's like, I've checked almost every player, I can't find anything. He's like, yeah, but if you, you got to stop this. That you can't let him get this last out. There's one more out right through the top of the seventh. And so, you know, pitch down the middle. I mean, the prettiest textbook strike ever. And he goes, ball. And it's like the pitcher is like, what? And everybody's like, the crowd starts booing and it's like, you know, all this stuff and he keeps calling balls on like real strikes. And it causes the manager and all the players to. Gets to get apoplectic about, you know, this ridiculously calls. And so, you know, the Angel's manager comes out and screaming at him and then he's yelling at him. And then the other umpires get into it. The players start fighting. I mean, it just gets absolutely insane. And I think he throws one of.

Nic

The pickle play at one of the pieces. And then the umps are throwing the ball back and forth and he's trying to eject one of the umps. It just descends into chaos.

Steve

And Melot is there to be like, how about that? Over and over again.

Nic

He can't extend the game. And they decide like, no, that's too obvious. That's it.

Steve

Yep.

Nic

So now we're in the seventh inning stretch.

Steve

Yep. And my least favorite player in the history of Major League Baseball starts walking from center field. I hate Reggie Jackson so much.

Nic

I'm glad, I'm glad you said that because I was going to say, do we have any other guys who might have fit? And I thought of a couple that might have been good candidates for this. I think Steve Garvey would have been a nice assassin guy, but about the same point in his career as Reggie at that point.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

And then I don't know, maybe, maybe a Mike Schmidt or someone like that.

Steve

It could have been fun.

Nic

Like the Reggie. Yeah. And I was never, I mean, great player, like undeniably great player, but I think had a reputation as not being like the coolest guy.

Steve

I'll tell two stories about Reggie Jackson real quick because why not? It's my podcast. It's our podcast. But whatever.

Nic

I co sign this.

Steve

That's absolutely. So first off, Jackson went, you know, he spent more time in Oakland with the A's. More years. Years. More home runs. He hit there more games, played one more World Series, had more mvp. Not mvp. All Star appearances from Oakland. Okay, so no matter how you look at it, he had more of his hall of Fame career in Oakland than in New York.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

But when it came time to be inducted into the hall of Fame, in baseball, unlike some of the other halls of Fame, you go in with your plaque has your face and a hat with a logo on it, and you. Your player picks player. Well, see, it got funky. There was a times. There was a time when players didn't pick, and it was sort of picked by the hall, like themselves, the National Baseball Museum picked. Then the Players association worked in, like, now the players should be able to pick. And so. And then it kind of has gone back and forth. I think now it might be a thing where it's back to the Hall. They basically go off where you're most famous for. Right.

Nic

Okay.

Steve

Now, of course, you could argue that Jackson was at least as famous in New York as he was in Oakland, because it was New York and the Yankees and the whole Mr. October thing, I get it. But he had more baseball success in Oakland. But when he was going into the Hall, Steinbrenner, the owner of the Yankees, basically paid him money and gave him a job with the Yankees to go in as a Yankee. So he went in with the Yankees emblem on his hat. He's still there. Flip side of that is that when Jim Catfish Hunter, who had a very split career between Oakland and New York and arguably more success with New York, though he did throw his perfect game with Oakland, he won more World Series in New York. I think it was something like. It was like, really close. He went in and he demanded that he have no emblem on his cap. So Jim Hunter's cap style, really cool. And so, you know, so there's that. So I've always hated Reggie for that. And then when I think in. In 2004, at the 30th anniversary of one of the A's, Oakland A's, World Series wins, we got to meet a bunch of the players from those teams, from the 72, 73, 74 teams. So my wife and I went and, you know, got some signatures, whatever, and we were getting. I mean, so many players I love from that era. You know, Gene Tennis was there, Joe, Rudy, Vita Blue. You know, there's a whole bunch of great guys. And Reggie was there, and I got Reggie to sign my ball, and he was barely paying attention to anybody, not talking when being kind Of a, you know, above it. He's above it, basically. Yeah. So I go. We go over to Vita Blue next. And Vita, if you're an Oakland Ace fan, you know, Vita Blue is like. He's just one of the guys. He's just been. Always been a super cool guy. Great to fans, great to kids. We walk up to him, and he sees Reggie's signature on my ball, and he literally laughs. He goes, oh, the King Grace does with his presence today, did he? And I'm like, oh, my God. God, that's hilarious. And he signs his. But I'm like, yeah, he's sitting over there. He's on his phone. He goes, yeah, he is. All right, man. Have a good day. Like, he was fighting.

Nic

Was just so cool about it.

Steve

But Reggie was such a dick. So, yeah, not a fan of Reggie. But he is activated by. To get back to the movie now. He's activated by Ludwig's little keyless remote. And. And he, you know. I must kill the queen.

Nic

Yes.

Steve

And so as a brawl is occurring, both teams are brawling, like, at, you know, a. No, the brawl starts after he walks up, isn't it? Or something.

Nic

Yeah. So he's already on his way, but there's kind of a fight happening just because of the way everything ended. And the players are all going after each other.

Steve

Right.

Nic

There ends up being a big doggy pile there, and Reggie kind of emerges from the bottom. That comes out. I must kill the queen. Question.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

If he did kill the queen, would that be considered Reggie's side?

Steve

That's good.

Nic

Thanks, folks.

Steve

That's good. I don't know. Reggie's not the one. Does he have to kill himself? Is that a double regicide? Ooh.

Nic

Yeah, he probably would have, right?

Steve

I think that's the plan. At least he's going to put it on himself.

Nic

So Reggie, who we've established is the worst human out of all the former professional athletes that are in this movie, is walking towards the queen and about to take a shot at her. Basically, Frank is trying to save the day, and he goes to his cufflinks. His cufflink darts, and he tries to shoot a knockout dart at Reggie, and it ends up hitting this woman.

Steve

It ricochets off something. It's not super clear to me. Ricochets off something. Reggie hears it because he notices. He looks up. Yeah.

Nic

And this woman who's in the second deck gets hit.

Steve

Third. Third deck.

Nic

The third deck. All right. And she falls. I'm not used to baseball games selling that many seats.

Steve

That's true.

Nic

But I guess the Queen was there, and she ends up falling right on Reggie.

Steve

Yes.

Nic

And at this point, people recognize what Frank had done to save the day, and they say, you know, that's not the Empire. That's Enrico Palazzo.

Steve

Not only does someone. You know who says that, right? No, that's Francis from peewee's Big Adventure. Jumps up and goes, hey, it's Enrico Palazzo in this one line.

Nic

Oh, that's great. You know, I feel like he's gonna. He's gonna touch a lot of the films we end up doing, because that guy's. That guy's sprinkled throughout the 80s in a lot of good ways. Yeah.

Steve

So. Yeah.

Nic

So there's.

Steve

Yeah. Hey, it's Enrico Palazzo. And. And so the Queen has been saved, but now Ludwig has an Uzi because he just carries an Uzi with him, and he's put it into Jane's back, and he's gonna, like, take her up to the concourse and whatever, leave or something, I guess, right? Because now. Because he knows, or at least I think he's figured out that, you know, Frank knows he's onto him. Like, whatever. It's like his time is numbered. So he goes up to the concourse with Jane, and Frank goes to stop him.

Nic

Frank says, two can play at that game. And then he takes his own hostage, just some random woman chick. And Frank shoots Ludwig, now with one of the knockouts.

Steve

Oh, that's right. With the knockout.

Nic

And Jane is a little concerned, and he's like, don't worry. He's just stunned. And he kind of stumbles backwards, falls back all the way down, crashes onto the ground below, is immediately run over by a bus, Right? And then run over by a steamroller.

Steve

How a Fish Called Wanda of it. Yeah.

Nic

And then we start hearing the band playing, like, Louie Louie or something. Whole marching band goes across him. Just this really slow scene. And then it shows Ed and Frank, like, looking down in a horrifying way. And Frank's like, oh, what a way to go. And Ed goes, my father went the same way.

Steve

No, he didn't. No, he didn't, Ed. But that's okay. So as the marching band is walking all over the flattened corpse of Ludwig, it's stepping on this keyless remote thing again. And so now we're seeing someone new get activated. And, oh, my God, it's Jane. And she's got. She picks up the Uzi that Ludwig dropped and is pointing it at Frank. I must kill Frank Drebin. And, you know, it looks like Frank is in trouble, but he starts Pleading with her, you know, it's like, oh, like, Jane, remember, it's you and me. Like, whatever.

Nic

And he's on the Jumbotron, and it's rough, and everyone's watching it. He says, jane, since I met you, I've noticed things I've never noticed before. Birds singing, dew forming on a leaf, stop lights.

Steve

That actually slipped by me. Like that joke slipped by me while I was watching. I had to rewind and go, did he say stoplights?

Nic

So he ends up saving the day, and it's all good. He and Jane embrace. And then just to add a cherry on top to the whole thing, our friend Nordberg is out of the hospital, and he's here in his wheelchair, and he's ready. Hey, Nordberg's back. He's here to say thank you. And his name is cleared and everything. And Frank again. Nordberg. And then his wheelchair starts rolling down the aisle in the. In the stands, and he hits the end and does, like, five flips off of it into the field once again. My wife said that could have been his punishment.

Steve

Right? Exactly.

Nic

And that's the end. I mean, we just. We go to the. We go to the song, and that's the end of the film. One thing I will say, if you watch this movie, it's worth watching the credits, because there are jokes throughout the credits.

Steve

Okay.

Nic

There. There are joke roles there. There would be something like, you know, Mr. Zucker's assistant, Mr. Zucker's divorce attorney, and things like that. And then all these actors in the film that just have one line.

Steve

Yeah.

Nic

Instead of their character being listed, the line is in quotes. And then it has the person's name, which I've never seen in credits for a movie.

Steve

It's on IMDb as well. If you actually look at IMDb, it'll. It'll have a brief description like, you know, woman at game, man at restaurant or whatever. But then they are listed in the IMDb credits officially as the line they have. So, like, the guy who plays Francis and Peewee's big adventure says, like, man at game. Hey, it's Enrico Palazzo. Like, literally, that's his building in, you know, officially. So, you know, good for them on that. It's very. Also Monty Python, if you remember the opening of Holy Grail, where it's like, you know, the people responsible for the thing have been sacked or whatever, and it's all just very funny. And my oblama bit my sister once or whatever. Like, so I. I dig the whole using the credits as a gag thing. That's a lot of fun.

Nic

And this was. I don't think they really did post credit sequences at this point, but this is about as good, as entertaining as your credits can be for a movie of this era. And that's it. And it's a very tight. Was it 85 minutes, stuff like this for the movie, Real quick goes by quick, full of jokes and. Yeah, that's where we end up with Naked Gun.

Steve

There we are. Cool. All right, I'm going to give my assessment. First picks. I'm gonna go first. So I want to say two things. One, I love this movie. As a kid, I definitely did not find myself laughing out loud this watch through as I had in the past. I gave it a score in my little notebook. But having this conversation with you, I am rethinking that score. So I'm not even gonna say what it was because it was kind of low. I was definitely like, this is like, a little too dumb, whatever. But, like, I feel like in the discussion we're having in the way I'm remembering it, even just having seen it, like two days ago, you know, it's. I get it. Like, it's. It's. I'm getting it more. So I think I'm actually. I'm gonna go three and a half out of five on Naked Gun. You know, maybe not as high as some folks are on it, but, like, oh, I'll say. I originally wrote down a two. A two out of five is what I originally thought. And then I was like, no, that's not fair. As I'm thinking about the gags and the jokes and stuff. They are dumb, but they're dumb in the best possible way. You know, things like the Lonely island and I Think youk Should Leave. Like, they don't exist without the Zuckers doing what they did.

Nic

Right.

Steve

Right. Maybe a little bit as well. Mel Brooks, you know, had the same kind of influence, but really, the Zuckers, Monty Python, Mel Brooks. That is absurdism of the era of the 70s, 80s and. And 90s that spawned some of what I think are the funniest people today. Including, like, you know, even like, please don't destroy and stuff. Like, all those guys are just great and obviously really glom on to this stuff from their own childhood. So, yeah, I'm going to give it a three and a half out of five. I think Naked Gun is a lot of fun. Definitely looking forward to the reboot, which, if you're listening to this episode, the day it comes out is in two days. So get out to the theater on Friday and go check it out. But yeah, so three and a half out of five for me. A lot of fun, you know, Know, definitely not like perfect in any way and whatever. But like, even if I wasn't laughing aloud, I like smiled through the whole movie. There was no point where I was like actually bored. It's not long enough to get bored by anything.

Nic

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's a good point. And honestly, our conversation did, did bump my score up a little bit. I really enjoyed this movie, but talking through it, I'm just thinking about how many comedies can you run through this many scenes that you could talk to another person who's seen the movie and both laugh about it again, you know.

Steve

That'S a good point. Hopefully people listening are laughing too. Yeah.

Nic

And the way that jokes are structured, I just appreciate so much and bringing the influence of this like Three Stooges, Looney Tunes type stuff, which really gets me, especially in live action stuff. When you're able to make it cartoony, I enjoy it. I'm sure if you searched me saying cartoony throughout this series, I really talk about it a bunch. I love Leslie Nielsen. I love the team behind it and I did love the sequels to this. I think they're definitely worth watching. There's not a lot of drop off necessarily. It's strong jokes throughout. I'm going to give this one a four out of five.

Steve

Nice. Nice. That's seven and a half out of ten for us. Which puts us right, right where the IMDb score is a little under the Rotten Tomatoes score. But I think that makes a lot of sense. This is a fun movie. You know, I don't know how many people listening haven't seen the Naked Gun, but if you haven't, like go see.

Nic

This movie, it's for sure worth seeing. And then anything under 90 minutes. I mean, this is like a season premiere of a prestige TV show in length, right?

Steve

Absolutely.

Nic

It's worth watching.

Steve

Yeah, 100%. And you know, this is the kind of thing where, you know, we don't have the blockbuster VHS299 bin, but this is the kind of thing that's on sale on like the itunes movies, the store with Apple or whatever. It's got to be like a couple of bucks to get the Naked Gun. So definitely go see it.

Nic

Yeah, that's Naked Gun seven and a half. Good. And then Steve is up next. I'm excited to hear where we're going to go from here.

Steve

Yeah, we're definitely going. A very different feel for this one. So we're going to go to 1997. That's when this movie came out that we're gonna watch next week. It's from one of my favorite directors, somebody who I very much look up to and who has been very misunderstood over his career until recently, I think. And certainly at the time this movie came out, it was panned, it was not well received. It was seen as pro fascist. You know, sort of almost like in some cases we've seen reviewers talk about it as being pro Nazi, which is insane because Paul Verhoeven, the director of this movie, grew up in occupied Holland, like during World War II. Like, he is an anti fascist. Yeah, he is, you know, a progressive, politically person. And his other films like RoboCop, Total Recall, Basic Instinct and Showgirls are all satires of different elements, whether it's police militarization, consumerism, you know, the entertainment industry, whatever it might be.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

You know, America's general obsession with sex and violence. And Basic Instinct. This one, though, is a satire of fascism, of militarization and of military, you know, sort of a preemptive strike mentality of the human race. And it's Starship Troopers and it's based off the novel by Robert Heinlein. And Robert Heinlein, not so antifascist.

Nic

Yeah. Good. And I can't wait to talk about that because, yeah, I can't wait to get into it. This movie I remember seeing in high school. I loved it then and I've seen it a few times since then. So I can't wait to talk about this.

Steve

A lot of fun. So Starship Troopers will be next week. We'll get into that one. Maybe a little poignant for today's day and age as well.

Nic

Yeah.

Steve

If you like what you're hearing, folks listening out there, please go over to Apple, go over to Spotify, you know, throw us a five star review. It helps people find the show. Go ahead and follow us because we put out new episodes every. Every Wednesday morning at 5am Pacific, 8am Eastern. You can count on it. Yeah. If you want to send us an email, that's the showdads1movie.com. That's the number two. And the number one. This has been the Naked Gun from the Files of Police Squad. And this has been another episode of 2 Dads 1 Movie. I'm Steve.

Nic

And I'm Nic.

Steve

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

Nic

Thanks, everyone.