It’s March 7, 1997 and Howard Stern is showing off his PRIVATE PARTS while Tim Allen is ditching “Tool Time” to go JUNGLE 2 JUNGLE. Watch out, Pig Vomit, ‘cus we’ve got Baboons, blow darts, and a good dose of Baba Booey on Episode 41 of Opening Weekend!

While Howard Stern was becoming the King of All Media in March 1997, Tim Allen was becoming the King of All Meh-dia....says the three guys who were barely scraping by doing Unrehearsed Shakespeare, indie films with porny names, and Irving Berlin musical reviews to 105-year-old Floridians.  What’s more impressive: Paul Giamatti’s breakthrough performance as “Kenny ‘Pig Vomit’ Rushton” or Fred’s ability to spread the smell of pig-vomit all over a Broadway stage with his surreptitious break-wind performance? Yes, Jason talking about listening to Howard Stern when he was still on WNBC shows his age, but he’s still at least 45 years younger than any character Dan was forced to play while in his early 20s.  And if Tim Allen thought that giant spider was scary, wait until he gets a load of QS’s new look. MIMI-SIKU! BABA BOOEY! MIMI-SIKU BABA BOOEY! Episode 41’s gonna Shock YOUR Jock. 

“We’re the Dream Warriors! Don’t wanna dream no more!”  It’s February 27, 1987, and all your wildest dreams are coming true with SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL, HOOSIERS, and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET: DREAM WARRIORS. High school, hoops, and hair metal on Episode 40 of Opening Weekend

Late February, 1987: Freddy Krueger may have ruled Jason, Dan, and Fred’s nightmares but it was the dulcet tones of Don Dokken, Phil Collins, and Jack Wagner that were ruling their dreams. While Gene Hackman was screaming court-side, Dan’s dermatologist was screaming neck-side as he drained yet another cyst from The Artist Formerly Known As Slaughter Neck.  And speaking of disturbing images, Hackman’s going in for another kiss! Wake me up, Patricia Arquette, WAKE ME UP!!!  Eric Stoltz may not have made the cut as Marty McFly, but does he make the cut as the Male Molly Ringwald? And what happens when you suddenly realize that you’re no longer a Keith or a Watts or an Amanda Jones, but just an old, curmudgeonly John Ashton questioning everything John Hughes taught you? Find out all this and more on another MINT episode of Opening Weekend!

“Umm, yeah, boys, if you could just head back to February 19th, 1999 and take a look at OFFICE SPACE, OCTOBER SKY, and RUSHMORE, that would be great, mmkay?” You got it, Mr. Lumbergh! Grab your red stapler, throw on your school blazer, and look to the sky, ‘cus it’s Episode 39 of Opening Weekend!

After having to sit through “Nothing But Trouble” last episode, this week’s three movies are just the sweet palate cleansers Jason, Fred, and Dan needed.  But not even the pleasant memory of life at Rushmore Academy or of gleefully destroying that Initech copy machine or of staring into Jake Gyllenhaal’s dreamy astronomer’s eyes can erase the horrific memories of “Substitute High School Teacher Dan”. Or “Bennigan’s Server Dan”. Or “Master of Fine Arts Dan.” Or “Dan.” Listen... In February of 1999, Fred had no idea that playing a Shakespearean fool would directly lead to him acting like a fool on this very podcast almost 20 years later. And back then, Jason, much like Ron Livingston’s “Peter Gibbons”, was walking through his office temp job with all the joy of a West Virginian coal-miner getting yelled at by Chris Cooper. Oh, to wear the flair of a Brewster DeVice once again! Ooh La La, it’s time to find YOUR Rushmore with Episode 39 of Opening Weekend. 

“You still wake up sometimes, don't you, Clarice? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs. Or is that just Jason watching ‘Nothing But Trouble’?” This week, the boys travel back to February 15, 1991, and the horrifying (for all sorts of different reasons) triple bill of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, NOTHING BUT TROUBLE, and KING RALPH on Episode 38 of Opening Weekend!

There are certain roles that fit an actor like a nice skin suit made of human flesh: Erudite cannibal, Jewish sailor, scrappy FBI trainee, middle-aged baseball coach, deranged serial killer, drunken ghost... The list goes on and on! But then there are casting announcements like “John Goodman as the King of England” or “Dan Aykroyd as Naked Obese Baby” or  “Dan Aykroyd as Penis-Nosed Elderly Man” or “Dan Aykroyd as Film Director” that just... well, they give one pause. 

Whether your movie treat of choice is human liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti, a heaping helping of spotted dick, Dan Aykroyd’s gray, wet sausage (don’t ask), or the elusive Mexi Melts of Fred, Dan, and Jason’s Taco Bell-fueled youth (now with 50% less actual man meat!), it’s time to chow down with the least appetizing film trio since two girls met one cup and sink your teeth into Episode 38 of Opening Weekend!

It’s February 6th, 1981, and both the Bronx AND Bill Cosby are burning. The Bronx will eventually be saved. Cosby? Well...

This week the boys hit the streets and descend into the depths of hell to revisit FORT APACHE, THE BRONX and THE DEVIL AND MAX DEVLIN on Episode 37 of Opening Weekend!

“RUDY! THEO! ELLIOT GOULD!” Ah, remember the good old days when we just thought Bill Cosby was PLAYING the Devil? In 1981, someone at Disney must’ve read the script to “Fort Apache, The Bronx” and thought, “You know what the kids need? Something grittier…something scarier… something more sinister. GET ME THE COS!” Yes, our collective trust with America’s Dad has since been broken, but that’s nothing compared to the trust that was broken between Fred and his 3rd grade teacher when she caught him cheating in math. Oh, the 8 year old shame. But at least she didn’t start singing, “What’s A Mattah You?” at him like a 7 year old Dan would have. While Jason is studying the classics and learning Greek in his 4th grade Gifted & Talented class, Dan gifts us with his favorite K-Tel novelty hits of the 70s/80s and Fred shows off his talent for writing songs about smelling butts. And, finally, the battle for the soul of Sheila comes to a head this week on a very special phone call you DON’T want to miss.  Shaddup You Face, it’s an Etsy Ketsy episode of Opening Weekend! 

It’s the day of the show, y’all, and the boys are heading back to January 31, 1997 to take in some amateur theatrics! From community theatre’s answer to “This Is Spinal Tap” (WAITING FOR GUFFMAN) to community theatre’s answer to “Caddyshack” (MEET WALLY SPARKS) and community theatre’s answer to the original “Star Wars” (STAR WARS: SPECIAL EDITION), it’s a “Stool Boom” of epic proportions on Episode 36 of Opening Weekend!

Greedo’s shooting first and Rodney’s shooting blanks as the boys struggle to remember who or where they were at the end of January 1997! That said, they can probably recite every lyric of “Red, White, and Blaine” - GUFFMAN’s ode to small town America and the bastard people who live there. In fact, Corky St. Clair should offer poor Cindy Williams “A Penny (Marshall) for (Her) Thoughts” after the indignities she suffered writhing atop Wally Sparks’s piano in her granny panties... And while it would appear that “Nothing Ever Happens on Mars,” way TOO much is happening on Tatooine: From an unnecessary Jabba the Hutt that looks like a child’s drawing of a poop emoji to a bunch of farting dinosaurs wandering around the desert (not to be confused with half the cast of MEET WALLY SPARKS), George Lucas’s “Not So” Special Edition ought to go home and bite it’s pillow. Maclunkey!!

Suicidal lonely guys, washed up talent managers, and factory workers with radiation poisoning; was January 27th, 1984 the funniest week in movies or WHAT?!? This week the boys revisit Steve Martin’s comedy THE LONELY GUY, Woody Allen’s ode to entertainment, BROADWAY DANNY ROSE, and the Meryl Streep/Cher drama, SILKWOOD. Dig if you will the podcast and might as well JUMP into Episode 35 of Opening Weekend!
1984 is known as one of the greatest years in movies ever, and with mid-winter films like Broadway Danny Rose, The Lonely Guy, and Silkwood, the boys at Opening Weekend would be hard-pressed to disagree with that assessment, but….WOAH! Watch out, there’s a Grue behind you! And if you got that reference then you MIGHT have been playing Zork with Fred in 1984! Camel Clutch got ya down? Don’t worry, 5th grade “Dan The Man” and the Iselin Wrestling Association will lift your spirits and break your backs with some sweet backyard suplexes. And if you thought Meryl Streep getting scrubbed down with wire brushes after being contaminated by plutonium looks painful, then just be lucky you weren’t there in Jason’s 7th grade English class when he sat down in….a normal, regular chair. OUCH. (It’ll all make sense when you listen to the episode).  Grab your fern, turn off the contamination alarms, and…let me interject one thing, darling….get ready to be the beard on Episode 35 of Opening Weekend!

It’s a symphony of suckers this week - BLOOD-suckers that is - as Mr. Holland teaches a group of sexy Mexican vampires how to make beautiful music with George Clooney. And in turn, they...teach...him (cue music). The boys revisit January 19th, 1996 and MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS is playing FROM DUSK TILL DAWN on Episode 34 of Opening Weekend!
If music be the food of love, play on, Richard Dreyfuss! And if bare feet be the food of lust, play on Quentin Tarantino! No, really. Play ON him. Ew.

What’s sexier? Salma Hayek dancing half naked with a snake around her neck or Dan Matisa facing off against Michael Ironside on “SeaQuest”? According to one professor in 1996 with a faulty gaydar, Jason’s going with option B! And, no, those aren’t maxi-pads in your bachelor pad bathroom, Fred - they’re just very fluffy tissues to wipe away the tears streaming down your face while watching Mr. Holland gaze inappropriately at that high school girl. Ew.

And finally, the mystery of the dead murder hornets and "QS" is revealed!

Gooooooooooooooood morning, Opening Weekend listeners!  This week the boys head back to January 15th, 1988 for deep dives into GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, MOONSTRUCK, and FOR KEEPS. And the show gets a touch of New York Times class when best-selling author and culture reporter, Dave Itzkoff stops by to discuss the late-great Robin Williams.  SNAP OUT OF IT! It’s Episode 33 of Opening Weekend!

TEENS GONE WILD: 1988!  Fred is throwing keg parties! Jason is dressing up like Jesus! Dan is rocking out to “Fish Heads!” And, please, Danny Aiello, don’t preach, ‘cus Molly Ringwald is keeping her baby! While Robin Williams was tearing up Vietnam with his tour-de-force comedy stylings, Jason was tearing up Long Island with his Fat Albert impressions.  Cher and Olympia Dukakis may have cleaned up at the Oscars, but the biggest clean up of 1988 was the one after Fred’s illicit house party.  Is Randall Batinkoff the poor man’s Zach Galligan-as-Stanley-Kowalski? Dan sayeth so! And find out which Robin Williams performance is Williams’ biographer, Dave Itzkoff’s favorite, when Dave joins the boys for an in-depth discussion about the legendary actor’s legacy and his best-selling book, “Robin.” A La Familia!

An Oscar winner, a cinema legend, and a leprechaun walk into a bar…nope, it isn’t an off-color joke, it’s just the newest episode of Opening Weekend! The boys are scooping up their pots o’gold, donning their bowler hats, and Tango-ing back to January 8th, 1993 to take deep dives into the wide releases of SCENT OF A WOMAN, CHAPLIN, and LEPRECHAUN.  “Begosh, Begorrah, and a Hoo-Ah, too, it’s Opening Weekend, Episode Thirty-Two!”

Throw on your most colorful vest, fill up that garbage can with some cheap, fruity alcohol and get ready to party like a bunch of Drama students in 1993!  “I’m in the dark here!” That’s what both Al Pacino’s Colonel Frank Slade said in his Oscar winning performance in SCENT OF A WOMAN *AND* what Jennifer Aniston said after reading the script for LEPRECHAUN.  (Don’t worry Jen, there’s this new Courtney Cox pilot for NBC that we think you’d be perfect for!) Before he was trying to snap villains out of existence as Iron Man, Robert Downey, Jr. was trying to snap movie-goers out of a biopic-induced slumber as Chaplin. Endgame? More like End-PLEASE! But seriously, folks….

In the end, Pacino turns a blind eye, RDJ gives us the silent treatment, and Warwick Davis thanks his Lucky Charms for Episode 32 of Opening Weekend!