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We continue our odyssey into Development Hell to wrap up our dissection of Tim Burton's unmade Superman Lives! Having covered the origins of Jon Peters and the beginnings of this project through Kevin Smith's role in this story, we now focus in on Burton's vision for Nick Cage as the Man of Steel in a story of the ultimate outsider. We cover the cavalcade of wildly talented artists involved, the utter pain in the ass that Jon Peters was for basically everyone involved, the panic spiral Warner Bros found themselves in, and just how the death of Superman Lives led to Superman Returns -- including as much as we could stomach of the absolutely buckwild idea J. J. Abrams had that cost us a Batman vs. Superman film written by the guy who wrote Se7en. We also touch on Warner Bros current woes following their merger with Discovery, as it seems like they've learned nothing from their mistakes. We hope that you enjoy the conclusion to this absurd story in which people are wildly in-character throughout, because sadly no one paid us $85 million not to do it. Settle in and wonder for yourselves whether Saved By The Bell's Zack Morris or Tony Shaloub would be your dream Superman.
CW: Racism relating to Tim Burton, more Jon Peters, mention of Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey, mention of Brett Ratner and X-Men: The Last Stand
Podcast plugged in this episode: The Geeky Dad (@geekydadpodcast on Twitter)
For our latest venture into Development Hell, we take on one of the biggest, most infamous examples of a film that never came to be: Tim Burton's Superman Lives. In the first part of our deepest dive yet, we start most people's first exposure to the story, Kevin Smith's story of getting hired to write the script. We examine Smith's story and dissect his script, but to really lay the groundwork for this tale we need to get to know the producer who hired Smith to begin with, Jon Peters. We relive the most intense and absurd of their filming experiences, revel in the early years of the View Askewniverse, ponder whether Jon Peters thinks Barbara Streisand can read, learn something new about sex worker hair trends of the 70s, and so, so much more. Listen as we rifle through the vast and numerous filing cabinets that hold this story, as we wish Warner Bros had done before Peters could get his hands on Supes' rights from the Salkinds.
CW: Sexism, homophobia, violent behavior, comparisons to Donald Trump, mention of the Heidi Fleiss Hollywood Madame case -- and that's all just Jon Peters!
Podcasts plugged in this episode: The Geeky Dad Podcast (@geekydadpodcast on Twitter)
Welp, we finally did it. We broke Jack. Special guests/hosts Vince DeStefano and Emily Manno join us to help Jack claw his way back to some semblance to sanity and to (maybe) understand: what is The Room and who exactly is Tommy Wiseau? Armed with tons of great information from Greg Sestero & Tom Bissel's book The Disaster Artist, we do our best to answer Jack's questions. Emily shares what it's like to go to a midnight showing and actually meet Tommy Wiseau. Vince theorizes what's really going on with Tommy's history. And Joe tries to hold it all together, but hey, he's just the sound guy.
CW: misogyny, abusive work environments, Tommy Wiseau impressions
Podcasts Plugged In This Episode: Making A Martini (@MartiniMaking on Twitter)
People & Stuff Mentioned In This Episode: The Room, Tommy Wiseau, Greg Sestero, The Disaster Artist, Tom Bissell, 1UP, James Franco, Dave Franco, James Cameron, Avatar, Anne Rice, Interview With A Vampire, the Zodiac Killer, D.B. Cooper, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Terminator, Mark Frost, David Lynch, Twin Peaks, Scoob!, John F. Kennedy, The Zapruder Tape
We're officially back for SEASON 2! We open things up by taking a fortunately short trip to Textopolis to break down The Emoji Movie (2017), the only animated children's film to ever win Worst Picture at the Razzie Awards. While we do have some ideas for how to fix this mess, we decided to try something different for our season premiere and examine Jack's writing tool of choice, the Hero's Journey, and how The Emoji Movie ignores the parts of the Journey it actually does engage with. Listen as we rant about how deeply this movie misunderstands basic technology, Jack learns where emojis even come from, Joe gushes about how great Jason Mantzoukas is, and we all become overly concerned with Jack's foot hygiene and overall bathroom cleanliness.
CW: Sexual assault, intoxication, pee
People & Stuff mentioned in this episode: Tony Leondis, TJ Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Stephen Wright, Jennifer Coolidge, Maya Rudolph, Seth Rogen, Nick Kroll, Jason Mantzoukas, Gaten Matazarro, Sir Patrick Stewart, George Lucas, Joseph Campbell, Jordan Peele, Jared Leto, Morbius, Silicon Valley, Stranger Things, The Good Place, Parks & Recreation, Halloween, Chopping Mall, Mad Gods, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and more
Podcast plugged in this episode: The Geeky Dad Podcast (@geekydadpod on Twitter)
As promised, here's the rest of our deleted scenes from season 1! These bits were left over from the last 4 episodes of the season, and include:
-Several bits with BeLinda Berry in which we try really hard to avoid talking about 50 Shades of Grey, including talk of hot or un-hot teachers, noisy squirrels, and more
-Jack and Joe continuing to geek out over Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
-Our willingness to sternly scold someone who is talking in a theater, and mitigating circumstances that might prevent you from doing so
-The whiny opinions of fragile man-babies upset about the first glimpse of Natalie Portman's Mighty Thor in the first Thor: Love & Thunder teaser, and why they're wrong. (For the record, we're very much here for more women in the MCU getting better-written stories and being more front-and-center)
-One last ending bit with Caleb Feigles of Making A Martini.
CW: sex stuff, sexism, and generally content that would upset Jack's Mom. Sorry, Jack's Mom.
Programming notes: As discussed at the start, we will be delaying the start of season 2 for health-related reasons. Season 2 will officially start on 7/5/2022 with our fix of The Emoji Movie, the winner of the 2017 award for Worst Picture.
Podcasts featured in this episode: Making A Martini (@martinimaking on Twitter)
Welcome to the first set of deleted scenes from our first season! While we prep for season 2, we wanted to share some of our favorite bits from the cutting room floor. Scenes included:
-Jack and Joe acknowledging the logical impact of Spider-Man: No Way Home on the past of the MCU
-Antonio Palacios of the Cultworthy Podcast enlightening us to the wonders of Gilbert Gottfried's podcast
-Instagram bookmark maker and literary influencer Jill Sheehe admiring the work of Bob Hoskins
-Caleb Feigles of Making a Martini reminisces about post-dining mass bathroom emergencies in college with Jack, and his love of My Cousin Vinny
-Raphael Moran of the Geeky Dad Podcast digging deeper into Alfred's possible creepiness or maybe extreme tailoring prowess in Batman & Robin
-Mike Elliott and our recollections of movie rental places, presenting Knife-Bricker: The Brickening at a regional film festival, and an in-depth and possibly too serious discussion of some problems with the ending of WandaVision (note that this was recorded WAY before Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness came out)
CW: discussion of consent and consequences of actions in relation to WandaVision
We only started collecting these deleted scenes somewhere before the midpoint of the season, so we don't have material for the first handful of episodes. These bits are also not edited aside from some egregious background noise taken out of some clips, so we apologize for inconsistent volume or quality. Some of that is due to technical issues at the time of recording that we struggled to get around in the original episodes, and some of that is because Joe was recovering from COVID-19 while working on this and didn't have the brainpower to fix more.
We'll have another of these episodes in two weeks, and soon after that we'll be back in earnest with season 2! Thank you all so much for listening and supporting us. We can't wait for you to see what's in store.
If you have suggestions about films we should cover or broader film topics we should cover in 2nd Unit episodes, please email us at [email protected].
For our season 1 finale, we finally tackle the movie that SHOULD have been named Worst Picture of 2021, Thunder Force. While it wasn't nominated for a single Razzie, Ben Falcone and Melissa McCarthy's latest collaborative effort is but one of a whole line of films that beg the simple question: Why? We don't just tear Thunder Force apart -- we go back through the entirety of On The Day Production's films (2014's Tammy, 2016's The Boss, 2018's Life of the Party, and 2020's Superintelligence) to show conclusively that Falcone has not learned much as a director, writer, or storyteller, and break down the bad habits he and McCarthy fall into in the process. But, really, are they ALL bad? Join us for an academic treatise comparing On The Day's work to that of Adam Sandler, the absolute worst super powers you've ever heard of, bewilderment over Octavia Spencer's utter lack of emotion, and more praise for one weird crab man than you probably needed to hear.
We also take a moment to gush about how good The Batman and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once are, because we clearly needed to talk about anything other than these bad comedies for a bit.
CW: brief mentions of mental illness and bad media portrayals thereof; minor spoilers of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
Podcast plugged in this episode: The Geeky Dad Podcast (@geekydadpod on Twitter)
If you want to review our fix for this or any other movie, or if you would like to make a suggestion for season 2, please email us at [email protected]
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