comedy Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Have You SEEN This?

144 – Fatal Beauty

Tim and Jen host Jacques of the Seeking Derangements podcast so they can hold forth about a personal favorite: Fatal Beauty starring Whoopi Goldberg!

Hear the whole thing at our Patreon, where you can also listen to Jacques’s guest appearance for House (1977), as well as more than 50 other bonus episodes!

Jacques somewhat confused the timeframe of Whoopi’s brief relationship with Ted Danson. They had an affair on the set of the 1993 film Made in America, and the infamous Friars Club blackface bit occurred in the fall of that same year. Ted and Whoopi dated until 1994; they moved on with Mary Steenbergen and Frank Langella(!), respectively.

Several stories exist on the origin of Whoopi’s stage surname, incidentally. The anecdote about “Goldberg” being her mother’s suggestion so she could appear Jewish enough to succeed in show business has not been confirmed. Hilariously, noted treat boy John Podhoretz once wrote an editorial for the New York Post demanding that she drop her adopted surname, in light of some wild-ass comments about the Holocaust Whoopi made on The View.

If you don’t recall the story of Big Lurch, we told it on our Disco Godfather episode.

143 – Wet Hot American Summer

Key art for Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

Jen and Tim fight to a standstill over a comedy that flopped in theaters, Wet Hot American Summer.

Hear the whole thing over at our Patreon!

Tim incorrectly identifies co-writer Michael Showalter as director. It was David Wain, not that Tim gives a fuck.

The five episodes of sketch comedy show The State produced by MTV have been preserved on the Internet Archive!

The children’s TV special Jen struggled to name is The Night Dracula Saved the World, aka The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t. We highly recommend the Rifftrax version!

For more Angry Tim, try our episode on True Stories!

129 – Hot to Trot

Tim and Jen make hay out of the 1988 comedy Hot to Trot, which killed Bobcat Goldthwait’s career for two decades. The horse was unscathed.

Hear the entire episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 other bonus episodes!

Tim confused God Bless America with Red State (and Jen did not catch the error, shame on her) — the other movie from 2011 with a divisive title and middling reviews about a gun-toting ingenue.

On his blog, script doctor Andy Breckman reminisces unkindly about working on the screenplay.

Listen to the Q&A we discussed in the episode, in which Goldthwait puts the screws to the interviewer for opening with a question about Hot to Trot.

087 – Serial

Screenwriter Josh Olson brings us a movie that he swears is actually funny and good! It’s the little-seen Serial from 1980! Featuring Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld, violent gay bikers, Sally Kellerman’s boobs, casual homophobia, Tommy Smothers in a headband, hot tubs, est probably, psychologically disturbed children whose acting out is played for laughs, etc.

Hear the whole episode at our Patreon and get access to more than 50 bonus episodes!

For the curious, here is the full Kevin Thomas review of Serial from 1980 that we mentioned on the episode:

You can also hear more of Josh with Dave Anthony on The West Wing Thing, or with Joe Dante on The Movies That Made Me, or check out our episode on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls!

082 – Ernest Goes to Camp

The boys take over as Tim welcomes our comrade Mike Rosen to discuss a classic from their youth: everyone’s favorite lowbrow comedy, Ernest Goes to Camp!

For more Mike, try our episode on unloved fantasy misfire Krull!

077 – Hudson Hawk

Tim and Jen revisit everyone’s favorite dad-joke heist movie: the unfairly reviled (to some) Hudson Hawk!

Bruce Willis mugging in Hudson Hawk (1991) — Doing an comedy

The entertainment media subjected Hudson Hawk to an unusual amount of negative attention during production. This poor publicity appears to have had a detrimental affect on the box office returns. However, enough time has passed that a nonzero number of people (who aren’t Tim!) will defend it. One of those pieces appeared at the Guardian:

The action scenes are fun, particularly one sequence where Willis is riding a hospital bed down the Brooklyn Bridge (“How am I driving? 1-800-I’m-gonna-fuckin’-die!”)
Oliver Macnaughton

For another movie that became synonymous with “flop,” try our very first episode, where we discussed Ishtar.