The Good, The Pod and The Ugly

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I do say, it’s been a week of Sundays since last we here at The Good, The Pod, and The Ugly last heard from our fairer counterparts, but don’t you worry your pretty little head holes, listener, Season 17’s concluding 1x1s will remedy this sad misfortune with a movie celebrating all the major Christian holidays of the South along with its beauty parlor culture, that is, to let the proverbial cat out the bag or to shoot a literal arrow strapped with fireworks into a tree, STEEL MAGNOLIAS (1989) to be commented on by pod regulars without one ounce of Y-chromosome in either of their bodies: Andi and Meg.    
Joined by regular host Thomas after his first-time watch, these three explore the teased up big and modishly short hair of the movie’s six main ladies who span the three generations of womanhood, and determine whom among their present friend group fits to each character. There’s the two-time Academy Award-winning Sally Field as M’Lynn, mother to then-nearly-unknown Juila Roberts’ diabetic but baby-crazy character Shelby whose relationship will provide the main drama. But also in M’Lynn’s and Shelby’s respective age brackets, Dolly Parton as the salon owner and logistically-challenged Easter egg mogul Truvy and her young new hire, the desperately abandoned-turned-holly-roller convert Annelle played by a two-eyed, samurai-swordless, and purposely figureless Daryl Hannah who will also get herself hitched and preggers after Shelby’s corresponding life milestones during the flick. And rounding out the six, as the matriarchs, the feisty friends Clairee and Ouiser (not to be confused with the homophonous California rock band Weezer), the former who cares about Olympia Dukakis when we can talk about how Shirley MacLaine who played the latter didn’t wear makeup for the role in order to appear more age appropriate and how the playwright who adapted his play for the screen said he was afraid the locals from his hometown upon which this mildly fictionalize account derives (his diabetic sister died from ongoing complications after childbirth) would identify and be upset when in fact many of the older women vied to claim herself as the basis for the Ouiser character.    
The film is directed by someone who got his start as a Broadway choreographer and, reportedly, was less than gentlemanly toward the actresses in the movie. It was shot on location by John A. Alonzo, the lenser of such greats as Harold and Maude, Scarface, The Bad News Bears, and Chinatown.    
This episode is no lead petunia. Our two guest-hosting, real-life Southern belles this week explain the movie’s title, the phenomena of home churches, and the veracity of a groom’s cake; take the listener on a food tour of the movie; spill tea from the town where the events of the play and later film occured; and overquote the movie from memory, all this after Meg gives the shortest plot summary of this, and perhaps any prior, season.     
Spoiler, there might be cannibalism in Fried Green Tomatoes.  
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Friendly greetings, pod listener and follower of the TGTPTU. Stay excite: Season 17’s concluding 1x1s of very special one-off movies cultivated by show regulars continues this week with host Tom’s pick of a fellow Tom’s directorial debut, that being distant relative of Al Green and the rapper, the writer, the MTV’s late-90’s darling with a hit show and #1 single, the Tom of all trades, Ontario Canada’s very own (and once Drew Barrymore’s very own before she made what has to be the greatest regret of her life, I mean, even more than dancing on David Letterman’s desk or falling for the two killers in Scream or being Steven Spielberg’s goddaughter or in that third Adam Sandler movie, even if it meant she could later date Justin Long, that regret being her amicable divorce from…) Tom Green and his co-written and lead role in his romantic-inspirational-comedy magnus opus, FREDDY GOT FINGERED (2001). 
 
The film that help give rise to the American indie wave of small-budget (under $15M) studio comedies at whose crest would launch the careers of such luminaries as Todd Phillips, Adam McKay, and David Gordon Green (no known relation to Tom) follows the trials and tribulations of a misunderstood, aspiring cartoonist Gordon “Gord” Brody (played by Tom Green) as he, through increasingly charming and absurd antics, reconnects with this father (played by Academy Award-winner Rip Torn), re-earns the love of his paraplegic girlfriend (played by Marisa Coughlan), and, by believing in himself and his slanted view of the world so strongly, wins over the head of an animation studio head (played Anthony Michael Hall) with a marginally fictionalized version of his life experiences and thereby elevates himself out of the grind of service industry and factory work and is able to vacay with his daddy.   

This seminal and often overlooked work of the early 00s was the wellspring for new types of movie humor and visual storytelling. It is alleged that Al-Qaeda delayed their deadly attacks until after film had its worldwide release so they could catch it as an inflight movie. They had rightly suspected that their attacks on 9/11, originally commissioned by the Bush Administration for 4/11 (MIHOP), would shut down theaters and movie exports. Unfortunately, these same attacks would irrevocably change the face of comedy in the 00s, altering the tenor of the humor landscape, as discuss this episode. Given its highly personal nature of the film and its excellent cinematography by the great Mark Irwin, it’s little wonder that Freddy Got Fingered would appear as #2 on American-born auteur and skateboarding enthusiast Stanley Kubrick’s Sight & Sound list for the Year 2001, a year that he and best-selling author Arthur C. Clarke co-invented.   

This ep, Xennial host Ryan explains TRL (and pre-streaming television) to Thomas; Thomas comes dangerously close to almost nearly agreeing partially with Ryan; and Ken makes a Seinfeld comparison (take a drink), concurs that Tom Green is the Pavement (a popular 90s band) of moviemaking, and does in fact want some sausages.   

As mentioned during the show, Netflix (as DVD.com) shipped hard media even after the two world-shattering events of early 2020: start of the global COVID-19 pandemic and of TGTPTU: https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-dvd-the-final-season     

Japan4.  
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FREEBIE AND THE BEAN

Despite a brief detour off The Odyssey overpass, TGTPTU’s back on the case with Season 17’s concluding four 1x1’s. To kick off this celebration of films we’d otherwise not investigate during another season, the 70’s anti-establishment comedy that arguably might have spawned the buddy-cop genre FREEBIE AND THE BEAN (1974).   
  
Made by (un)celebrated creative Richard Rush, the bewildering director of such films as the Academy Award for Best Director-nominated comedy The Stunt Man (1980) starring Peter O'Toole and the Golden Raspberry Worst Film-winning erotic thriller Color of Night (1994) starring Bruce Willis, Freebie and the Bean stars James Caan as the titular Freebie for whom the Intelligence Squad beat is a grift to gain gratis goods and, as his partner, Alan Arkin who despite not being Chicano plays the titular roles’ pejorative half as a cop who is closer to by-the-book and who suspects his wife (played by Valerie Harper) of cheating on him. Set in San Franscisco as determined by what could easily be the third character in the movie for as much screentime as the iconic Transamerica Pyramid gets, Freebie and Bean must more-or-less reenact the plot of Bullitt with more car crashes and a less deceased person under protection in this situational comedy occurring the weekend of the Super Bowl with the wild and crazy premise of cops being bad at their jobs.   

The film was good enough, or late-70s TV bad enough, to garner a one-season TV series.   

This episode, we discover Ryan is an easy laugh, Ryan stumps Thomas who struggles to come up with a 70s comedy he likes, and Ken, whose 1x1 pick this movie was, has advertising trivia deets and clowns on the Temu SouperBolls branding.   
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ODYSSEY
The tales of our quartet of heroic hacks hath concluded, and alas Season 17’s continued voyage to cover a single work otherwise shunned by the codes of TGTPTU would have to wait another day as the movie theater houses of IMAX and lesser film abodes have brought to the weary masses a film of epic proportions and grand length. That motion picture would be THE ODYSSEY (2026), and the man of Briton to foregather the talents of the camera-wielding Double Hoyte and the Talented Mr. Damon harkens back to adventures during TGTPTU’s Season 12 and is no other than Sir (IRL!) Christopher Edward Nolan.   
As your humble scribe is no soothsayer, he cannot in good faith foretell how the film will deviate from the classic work of Homer (blind and of Ancient Grecian fame, not Simpson of Springfield). Nor can yours truly hint at the reactions the hosts Ryan, Ken, or he, himself, Thomas will have, nor may he here throw his customary shade and poison the reader of such unnecessarily ramose sentences as herein contained toward his views on the film.    
Will adapting an oral tale later committed to archaic languages befall the fate of Aronofsky’s Noah (2014, covered in Season 11)? Will Travis Scott with his role as The Bard for Nolan surpass his previous acting credit in Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft (2023)? Will Jon Bernthal battle Robert Pattinson in a clash between the comic book titans The Punisher and The Batman? Will Bill Irwin’s cyclops surpass both his previous Nolan role as robot and that of whoever was the cyclops in Krull (1983, covered earlier this season)? Will the film contain or be structured so that the beginning and end meet in the middle, again cribbing TGTPTU’s patented pincer movement and leading to further litigation? Will there be an Iliad prequel?   
Of all this and more, I am humbly ignorant. But I will wager anyone a Way of the Gun DVD with postage paid that Irwin’s cyclops will rival that of James Marsden’s or Tye Sheridan’s. You can @ me using the contacts below.     
In two weeks, a homecoming as the 1x1’s begin and Season 17 draws to a close.   
THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
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This week, the Italians are coming! For the final lap of TGTPTU’s 16 rounds of episodes this 4x4, we cover hack director Peter Yates’s heartfelt, heartland sports underdog working class summer coming of age bicycle story BREAKING AWAY (1979).   
Guest Shannon returns despite no possible book report, the film instead being an original work by author Steve Tesich who would win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for this melding of two prior scripts based on his college years in Indiana and his bicycling teammate local to the area who’d become the basis for the movie’s lead character Dave Stohler (although he’d prefer to go by Enrico Gismondi for the first half of the film). Dave is portrayed by Dennis Christopher, although the script gives substantial time to each of his three friends who will enter the local bicycle race with him (and even do a few laps themselves): Mike played by a ripped Dennis Quaid; a lanky, goofy Daniel Stern plays Cyril; and actor Jackie Earle Haley of Bad News Bears fame (the one without Billy Bob Thornton) as the vertically challenged Moocher.   
In one of the best depictions of a 1970s dad in cinema, Paul Dooley plays Dave’s father, a used car salesman and former cutter (of stones, not self or lines) who doesn’t understand his eccentric son, while Barbara Barrie plays Dave’s mom who encourages his Italophilia and passions, a role she’ll reprise in the short-lived TV prequel series along with Haley.  
This week, hear about the state of fridges in AZ along with Republican-bashing by Tobias; Shannon explains the 80s TV show Punky Brewster; Ken identifies with Breaking Away’s dad character and conceives of this film as a bridge to the 1980s; and Thomas reveals the name of Roy Scheider’s (not Rob Schneider’s) wife. By the end of the ep, it is still undecided, although they go around in circles, whether Shannon or Thomas won their off-air bet regarding Ryan’s reaction to the film.  
While the hosts might be done with Hacks as their focus, the season continues. Next episode, we’ll be taking the high road in our feud with Chris Nolan over the rights to the temporal pincer movement™️ to test the waters of his new release before wrapping with a return to the 1x1’s to end the 17th Season of the first podcast to record from the PDX airport bathroom and raise former prime minister Margaret Thatcher from hell.    
Ciao!   
THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.
Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
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Letterboxd (follow us!):
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Ken: Ken Koral
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