#250. 'Unfrosted'
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Jerry Seinfeld's Netflix absurdist comedy Unfrosted, a Pop-Tart-origin-story spoof pitched somewhere between Airplane! and Mel Brooks, leaves all three hosts frustrated rather than firmly for or against it. Sonny wanted to go to the mattresses for it — he loved the truly absurdist bits (the cereal-themed funeral for Steve Schwinn, Hugh Grant's Tony the Tiger wanting to do Shakespeare, Bill Burr's hard-ass JFK, the Nazi sea-monkey ravioli, the milkman cartel) — but says the joke density never hits the airplane-level two-gags-a-minute it's aiming for, so it's "deeply frustrating," about 30% short of being genuinely great and probably doomed to be forgotten inside Netflix's discovery-proof algorithm rather than becoming a cult classic like Zoolander. JVL says his reaction is "99.5%" convergent with Sonny's, piles on about the distracting one-day celebrity cameos (Tony Hale gets singled out as pointless) and flat, static direction, though he credits Peter Dinklage and Jon Hamm as actors who "came to play." Mike is the lone defender, arguing (with a deep-cut Seinfeld stand-up bit about the Roosevelt Island tram as evidence) that absurdism has always been part of Seinfeld's comic persona and that he laughed more on his couch than the reviews led him to expect, while agreeing Seinfeld's stand-up-honed craft doesn't translate well to directing a movie. That review kicks off a long, heated digression about the internet backlash branding Seinfeld "never funny" over his comments on comedy and DEI, with the hosts drawing parallels to Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, and Shane Gillis. The front third is the usual banter: JVL, just turned 50, recaps a blissful birthday weekend with extended family and a new Grand Seiko GMT watch from his co-hosts before spiraling into an extended "hose talk" saga about brass-vs-aluminum garden-hose fittings that ends with a Wirecutter-endorsed Eley hose; Mike reports being solo-parenting three kids through a stomach bug with daycare shut down; and Sonny recounts taking his kids to a 25th-anniversary rerelease of The Phantom Menace, which spins off into complaints about Disney's Marvel TV/movie glut and a nostalgic aside on X-Men '97, plus box-office hand-wringing over the soft opening of The Fall Guy and worries about Furiosa.
From the show notes
An episode almost as long as the movie under discussion!
Full transcript
Mike00:00:00Whoever gets to the shelves first is going to win this thing.
Guest00:00:03Give us the cartel, man! How did it get this far?
Mike00:00:09It's breakfast. Things happen.
Guest00:00:13Isn't this a cereal company? Why did my husband explode?
Mike00:00:26Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. With me, as always, are my two co-hosts, whose whereabouts during the storming of the Kellogg headquarters are still unknown. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Tell your friends, tell your family, they've got to come over to Sub-Beacon.com where they can become a part of the Sub-Beacon community. Get those episodes every Friday morning. Comment, join the conversation. You can only do it at Sub-Beacon.com. We are going to be talking about Unfrosted later in the show. But first, how are we doing, fellas? JVL, we're talking to the birthday boy here. You had a big birthday this week. Tell us all about it.
JVL00:01:18I did. I turned 50 and it was honestly the best birthday I've ever had. Best birthday ever. I love that. I love hearing that. I only wanted one thing for my birthday. One thing. Peace on Earth. I wanted to... Sorry, what did you say, Sonny?
Sonny00:01:34Peace on Earth.
JVL00:01:35No.
Sonny00:01:36No, I don't care about that. Nobody wants that.
JVL00:01:38I wanted to spend my birthday with my family and my sister's family and my mother-in-law and my aunt. That's all I wanted. I wanted that configuration of people. Okay. And it happened to be my niece's first communion on Saturday. Mm-hmm. So I had an excuse to travel down to Virginia and I rented a house down there and I convinced my mother-in-law and my aunt to come and stay in the same house with me and my children. And then I got to spend like four days just waking up in the same house, not only with my kids, which I get to do every day, but with also my mother-in-law and my aunt was absolutely massive. Just going to like sit down at the kitchen table and have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning with those two. It was just, it was wonderful. And then to spend the whole, the rest of every day with my sister and her husband and their kids. It was great. It was really, really special. Awesome. And then you guys gave me a watch. So it's like all of, all of the people in my life banded together to get me an insane watch. Banded together. So to speak, uh, the, the grand Seiko, uh, it's, it's, Hey Otani, this is the watch show. Hey Otani wears and it's a GMT and it is, uh, it is not safe for work is how nuclear hot it is.
Sonny00:03:10I don't know what GMT means. What does GMT mean?
JVL00:03:12Greenwich Greenwich meantime. I'm not on the watch nerd and I know that it means that as a, as a fourth hand, right? So it has a, an hour hand, a minute hand, a second hand, and then a four, it's got one more hand and that hand points to the Grinch meantime. So you always know what time is there. It's a, it's a two time zone watch.
Sonny00:03:35Why would it, why would that be useful when you're traveling?
JVL00:03:39I travel a lot.
Mike00:03:41And so it seems like it would only be useful if you were traveling to the prime meridian.
JVL00:03:47No, no. Cause you can, you can say you can set local time versus just, just trust me.
Sonny00:03:53But when you turn your phone on, it automatically changes to the new time zone.
JVL00:03:56All right. Uh, I, uh, You're yucking. his young son. I have a question. I have a question. This afternoon, I paid a plumber $200 to cut the hoses off of the outside spigots at my house. Why? Because the hoses had fused to the spigots. That happens. These were cheap hoses, and I assume that the reason they fused is because the fittings were made of like tin or something. Any good brass fittings? Brass, brass, brass. Is that copper? No, brass. I need to know you, Mike Warren, you're a tool guy, and a mulch guy, and a home improvement guy. What is your garden hose of choice? I am trusting that you will be able to give me a little hose talk! Hose talk!
Mike00:04:59I'm going to disappoint you, JVL, because I don't have any complicated or complex or interesting thoughts on hoses. I look for, because here's the thing. I am in a season of my life where what's going on outside my house, in terms of landscaping and yard work, is a shambles. It is a real mess. Same. Just ask my wife. Just ask my wife how she feels about that. But... Interesting. I aspire to get back into peak landscaping condition, but for the... So when I say I aspire, I love, I would love to have one of those fancy schmancy hoses that folds up.
JVL00:05:51Do you know what I'm talking about? What is a fancy schmancy? No, I don't. Oh, yeah. It's like
Mike00:05:54it's not like a roll. It sort of like flattens out when not in use and takes up... Are those cheap? Are they not? I think there's some that are... I don't think those are
Sonny00:06:05fancy at all. I think those are like... I think those are like the
JVL00:06:06cheap, cheap ones that you see at Walmart now.
Sonny00:06:09That's like garbage that you order on TV. No, no, no, no, no, no. They send you like, you buy one and they're like, but wait, if you get one, we'll send you ten more for free. No, no, no, no, no.
Mike00:06:17That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about some high quality garden hose that is compact, but strong and doesn't kink, because that's key, right? You don't want it to kink. Don't kink, kink. Mm-mm. Can't kink. Won't kink.
JVL00:06:34You're kink shaming, aren't you, Michael? You gotta
Sonny00:06:36shame that hose if it kinks. Exactly. No kinks. No kinks for this hose.
JVL00:06:41But for Fitments, I... So I've started looking, looking as the... Yeah, what are you looking for?
Mike00:06:44The plumber judged me, and
JVL00:06:46he's like, yeah, look at this. It's, you know, you gotta have brass. That'll be yellow. He's like, just talking to me like I'm a child. So what were you using?
Mike00:06:53What were you using? Just cheapo, Walmart?
JVL00:06:54I don't know. It's whatever we picked up when we moved. Yeah. It was the first hose we probably moved. We didn't even take it off for the winter. It's, you know,
Mike00:07:01I'm the same as you. I don't go outside.
JVL00:07:03Unless I have to. And, uh... That's where bears are. So I went looking, and what I noticed is that a lot of hose makers are now coloring their Fitments yellow, even though it's aluminum. And so you can't just look at it and be like, oh, that's a brass Fitment. No. No, no. You gotta read the fine print where it says it's aluminum. Aluminum. Like, Johnny Ivy comes out. We took the hose and we thought, what if we just made it rounder?
Mike00:07:35You're in a British mood today, aren't you, JBL? Anyway,
JVL00:07:38okay, so you don't have any actionable advice. I want somebody to tell me you want the Swan Ergo X Pro. That's the best hose to get. It has the proper brass and it does... That's what I want. I just want one person. It turns out when you Google best hose, Google is useless. Google has become absolutely useless.
Sonny00:08:00Yeah, it is. Google
JVL00:08:02has lost its war against the internet because everybody else is here to have a game at. And the first 10 results are all sponsored. And the next 10 results are all bot content farms. Yep.
Mike00:08:16I'm sorry, JBL, that you want to take my interest and knowledge of outdoor landscaping and meld it with your extreme attention to detail and some might say, I wouldn't say, but some might say obsessive need to measure out every single option before you make a purchase. But I do appreciate, and I appreciate that in this moment you went to your bros before you bought your house. All right, Sonny, what were you going to say?
JVL00:08:55That is A plus
Mike00:08:56plus. Sonny loved that so much. You guys can't see it because we don't have video, but Sonny was he's beaming because he loves being associated with that joke.
Sonny00:09:08I was just going to ask, I mean, have you not tried Wirecutter? Do you not? I feel like, isn't Wirecutter the go-to? I'll go do that right now.
JVL00:09:17You talk. Tell me about your weekend.
Sonny00:09:18Sonny, what's going on? I don't really have anything good or interesting going on in my life. I don't know. That's fucking depressing. I mean, I just saw, like, there's nothing there's nothing. It's been a weird, it's been a weird, very treading water sort of week. To the extent that, like, I have nothing. I was going to save this for afterwards, but then I realized I didn't have anything. Instead of doing the new Planet of the Apes movie, we should do one of the old Planet of the Apes movies for next week. Which one? But that's the question. Do we want to do, like, the original Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes movie, or do we want to do do we want to do something more like, um...
Mike00:10:07Not the Mark Wahlberg version.
Sonny00:10:09No, well, we could do the Mark Wahlberg version, but I was thinking, I was even thinking, like, the fourth or fifth Planet of the Apes movie, or, like, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which is the one where they go underground and blow everybody up.
Mike00:10:23So, that's, um... Is that Battle for the Planet of the Apes? Yeah, it might be. No, it's Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Yes, of course. Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Yeah, that's right.
Sonny00:10:31That's right. I, I, so, it's a thing we should think about, because, you know, I like this bit where we do an old version of New IP for, so, I'm pro that. I think they're all on Hulu, because they're all owned by 20th Century Studios, formerly 20th Century Fox. I will say, so, my one thing is, speaking of 20th Century Fox, we went to see, I took the kids and the wife to see The Phantom Menace, which was playing this last weekend. Number two at the box office. We went on May the 4th, we went to see The Phantom Menace, and my daughter has seen it a bunch of times, so I, you know, and so my son has, too. They, they, they love, they love the prequels, the trash generation, they, they, they, uh, really enjoy the prequels. Um, but the, uh, but it was so funny, like, at one point uh, we were there with another, with another family, uh, who were, who were friends with, and their daughter had not seen it before, had not seen, uh, had not seen The Phantom Menace, Star Wars The Phantom Menace, Episode 1. And she got up to go to the bathroom during Duel of the Fates, and I, like, wanted to jump out of my chair and grab her and say, sit down! This is the only good thing in the movie.
JVL00:11:47This is literally the only good thing in the movie.
Sonny00:11:49This is literally the only good part of
JVL00:11:52the movie. You're missing the best part of the movie. You couldn't have gone to pee during the pod race? The pod race
Sonny00:11:55is good, too. I enjoy the pod race fine, and it works fine on the big screen. It's, you know. But, but man, I was just like, I was just like, child, you are, you're doing the wrong thing. You're making bad
Mike00:12:07choices here. Did she, did she ask to pause it? Because. No, no. That's, that's, I think, that's becoming a problem.
Sonny00:12:14No. Uh, no. With kids, yeah. So that was, and my, my one big, my one big insight into the movie this time is that, despite having seen this movie many more times than I should have over the years, because I keep trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, um, I, and, and it's a bad movie. It's not a good movie. And I, uh, I, I, I still, despite knowing it's a bad movie, despite having seen it any number of times, despite all of this, when the 20th Century Fox fanfare plays, and the once, uh, you know, the galaxy far, far away title card comes up, and then John Williams' big blaring score and the scroll starts, I get goosebumps every time.
JVL00:13:01It's just like, it's like,
Sonny00:13:03it's like, this is like, it's such a cheat code, it's such a, it's such an absolute cheat code, so my, my main takeaway from the movie this time was that now that Disney, which made the sequels and started making them before they owned 20th Century Fox, now that they own 20th Century Fox, 20th Century Studios, whatever they're calling it now, they should put the 20th Century fan, they should do a special edition where they insert the fanfare in front of the Lucasfilm card and the title crawl and all that, and that is how they should start the film. That is, that is how they should, they should, they should retcon it, so if I turned it on Disney Plus today, I would get the 20th Century Fox fanfare, and that would, that would make me feel, it would make me feel so much better. No, you don't get it. About, like, The Last Jedi. What do you get? No, you don't, because they don't, because it, the sequels were not made by 20th Century Studios, so there's like, so there's like a, there's like a logo, there's like the Lucasfilm logo, and the Disney logo, and then
JVL00:14:08And you get like the Stormtrooper head morphing into the Darth Vader head morphing into the Kylo Ren head.
Sonny00:14:12Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, you get like the Star Wars title card, and then you get the, you know, long time ago, Galaxy Far, Far Away, and then the brr, brr, brr, brr, and it just like, it, it, it ruins the whole thing. Totally. I want, I want, so if I, if I was going to Bob Iger with a five point plan to save Disney, point number one, special edition of the sequels, and you put the fanfare in front of it, and that will increase enjoyment of them by 27%, I guarantee it. That's point number one, too, in theory. Point number one.
JVL00:14:42Point number two, no more Marvel series on Disney Plus. He, he,
Sonny00:14:49did you guys, I don't know if you guys read his, his interview, you know, new earnings calls out, blah, blah, blah, and he said, he said, we're gonna, we're gonna pull things back on the Marvel front, we're only gonna do, we're gonna do no more than three movies a year, and no more than two series, and that's what they've been doing this whole time. That's way too much, you idiot. That's too much? It's two series? You should have zero series. Zero series. That's how many zeros, you should either have, I'll, I'll actually go this far. I'll say, you should either have zero series, or you should have zero movies. But you can't do this multiple movies and multiple series thing. You have to choose a lane. You have to do theatrical or you have to do TV. And if you don't, if you don't choose a lane, you're gonna lose people because I, I, like, uh, it's just too much
Mike00:15:37homework. But Sonny, Sonny, but then where will I get the joy of sitting in the theater and something pops up in a Marvel movie, and I won't be able to point and say, Oh, that's from the TV show that
Sonny00:15:52I saw. But this is, and this is the, this is the most ridiculous. It's so much joy. This is the most ridiculous thing about it is that the, the, the, the films like, essentially have to reiterate the entire thematic arcs from the TV shows and just do it, like, so this was exactly, I don't, did we talk, uh, Doctor Strange 2, the Multiverse of Madness? A little bit. On this show? I can't remember if we did. But, like, the problem with that movie is that it basically takes the whole WandaVision show arc and condenses it into, like, ten minutes of story and it's like, well, if you need that, you don't need the TV show. If you could do, if you could do it here, you don't need it there.
Mike00:16:30You don't need the TV shows. You don't need any of the TV shows. Every single
JVL00:16:34one of those TV shows is ten minutes of a movie.
Mike00:16:38The only thing, the WandaVision, the only thing that's worth it in the WandaVision are the, uh, stylized, uh, TV intro theme songs, which is like, which is like a great idea that they've, it's almost like they thought of that before they had the show and then they just built a show around it. WandaVision. Here's my
JVL00:17:00controversial idea. I believe Marvel needs to do with the cinematic universe what it did in comics when it launched the Ultimates line of comics, which is just blow everything up and start over.
Sonny00:17:14Or just have a parallel, have a parallel thing. Have two parallel things. Just wipe,
JVL00:17:19wipe the entire, the entire existing cinematic universe has now gotten to, look, it's 25 years old or whatever, right? It's too unwieldy. It's, you, you've, you're burned out of all the good characters that people actually like because you don't want to pay the actors anymore. And we're into these, you know, quaternary characters that nobody gives a shit about. Just, just start all the way over. Start all the way over. Brand new parallel universe. Everybody gets an origin story again, but they can be different origin stories. You don't have to stick to the slavish, uh, you know, like, hey, we're just going to do the comics again. Do whatever you want. Let's start over. Can we get a five-year break?
Sonny00:17:59It's, it's amazing. It really is amazing that the, that the MCU did a speed run through the whole comic book problem, right? It took, it took DC, what, 40 years to get to Crisis on Infinite Earths? Uh, it took, it took Marvel 15 years to get to the point where it's like, we gotta, we gotta nuke it all and start
JVL00:18:19over again. I think that's right, but that makes sense, right? Because Marvel was always just picking and choosing the best stuff from the comics. It was, you know, like, we're, we're Right. It was leaving aside, because the truth is, in comic books, you know, like, 70% of it is dross, and 30% might be gold. 90. Okay, 90, it's like
Sonny00:18:39wrestling. 95.5 is
JVL00:18:4190% of wrestling is bad, and 10% of it is just absolute gold, and the same is true for comic book writing, and that, but that was the value of having the print comic books is they were just an IP farm team to develop the good plots and the good stories and good characters for, for the cinematic stuff, which is expensive to make. I will say
Sonny00:18:58one last thing I've managed to talk now for 10 minutes despite having nothing to say. Yeah. This is really, really the moral of this show. Fitting. Fitting. Uh, I, I, I have been watching X-Men 97. Do you guys know what X-Men 97 is? Yes. No. So, X-Men 97, Mike, uh, it's, it's, it is essentially a continuation of the X-Men animated series that was very, very
Mike00:19:22popular on... Oh, yes. We have talked about this.
Sonny00:19:24So, so, there's the X-Men animated series that was on, on Fox, you know, Saturday morning cartoons from like 92 to 90, I guess 92 to 96 or whatever. Um, uh, and it, it is like, it's a, it's a seminal, it's a, it's a fairly seminal thing because it, it not only, um, it, I don't know, it, it just was, it was really well done. It was just a really well done cartoon series alongside like Batman the Animated Series. Correct.
JVL00:19:54Right? Yes. Seminal because, seminal because you were of the age to watch it. Well, no, but
Sonny00:19:58so, no, but this is the thing, right? So, this is, so, like, X-Men 97 is designed very explicitly to appeal to people who were A, nerds, B, uh, between the ages of 8 and 13, uh, C, 30 years ago. Like, this is, if, if, if you are of that very specific generation, which I was smack dab in the middle of, X-Men 97 is pretty fucking great. I've been, I've been tearing through it. I've been, it's, I love it. It's, it hits all. What is it on? Hits all the nostalgia centers. It's on Disney+, because, of course, Disney owns the, you know, X-Men. So, like, I've been enjoying that a great deal, but apparently nobody is watching it. It's not making any of the ratings charts. It's not making any of the, and, like, I'm not surprised because it's aimed at a very small sliver of the population that is now 40 years old. I don't, JVL, do your kids watch it? Are, are, have they? No. Right. So, like, I don't, like, I, I don't think it really would appeal necessarily to kids who have no idea, like. It's too serious
JVL00:21:00for kids. Like, it's not, kids need stuff, animated stuff that is very action heavy. Yes. This is, and this is not. This is, it's,
Sonny00:21:10it's, it's, it's a show that is designed to appeal to, like, late 30s, early 40s, 40s people. And it, like, it's good.
JVL00:21:17Disney Plus can have animated Marvel content, but no live action. That's how you split the difference, right? Sure, yes. You want live action Marvel content, you go to the fucking movie theater and you pay your
Sonny00:21:27money. You, what ifs? Or, like, these, these X-Men, you could do a Spider-Man series, I guess. I, like, whatever. But, like, if you, if you want to, if you want the MCU to exist and be successful, it has to just be movies that people go see, like, two a year of. That's it. Yeah.
JVL00:21:45Mike, how are you, buddy? Wirecutter has three recommendations for us, by the way. Yeah, let's, let's,
Mike00:21:51let's, what's the number one rack?
JVL00:21:53So, the, uh, the number one rack, their pick, is the Continental Commercial Grade Rubber Hose, available from Home Depot for $50 for 50 feet. It's, it's heavy and it's, uh, it's, it's, it will kink sometimes, but it's made of rubber and it's, it'll last for a long time. Also, they like the Dram ColorStorm Premium Rubber Hose, which is $100 for 50 feet, which I just take to mean that it's better. Um, but they say is like a, it's really a number two pick. It's not a good, however they have an upgrade pick.
Mike00:22:42Yes.
JVL00:22:43The Ellie, I think that's how you pronounce it, E-L-E-Y. They call it lighter and easier to use. The best hose we've ever tested. So immediately, my peenie went whoomp. I bumped on over to the Ellie website where they're having a Mother's Day special and I look and it's not that bad. It's 40 bucks for a six foot hose.
Sonny00:23:13Whoa!
JVL00:23:14If you would like say a 50 foot hose well, you can get that for $121.
Sonny00:23:24Well, that's a good deal.
JVL00:23:26And it does say 10 year warranty and no kinks and it's made in the USA and it's got heavy brass fitments and I just think that maybe this is what this is what we need. We love these. The best, the best and I'm looking at their website. Unlike aluminum fittings, the brass fittings on the Ellie will never weld to your faucet.
Mike00:23:59Well, that's never asked and answered JVL. So I feel like we're going with the Ellie. You don't need me. You need Wirecutter.
Sonny00:24:08There we go. I told you Wirecutter. That's just that's where you go.
Mike00:24:11All right. How am I? I'm fine. Another week with with me all by my lonesome with the three boys. So that's called great, right? Oh, it's you know what? You know what? What it was the moment I realized it was going to be a super duper week was on Sunday as the toddler is emerging from his stomach bug that he got from his two brothers in succession is emerging from this and leading me to believe that, oh, he's going to be able to go to the sitter tomorrow and the big boys will be at school and I'll be able to get some work done and then getting the text message that the sitter has the same stomach. And daycare is closed tomorrow. So that was awesome to find out. Have you gotten it? No. No, I'm fine. I'm good. This is not happening for me. Oh, we got
JVL00:25:28unbreakable over here. Because our mutual friend, Andrew Egger, sent us a photo from his house where it has gone through everybody and it was his wife just sitting on the floor with one of their kids and just a whole bunch of pots all around them for sheets out. I was just like, oh, yeah, I've been there. I mean,
Sonny00:25:50some of us like the toilet stall from train spotting.
Mike00:25:56Now, some of us, some of us have just, you know, stronger immune systems than others. And
Sonny00:26:01no,
Mike00:26:04it, it did not get me. It did not get my wife. And I think it's because we are relentless hand washers. And this just comes from a lot of experience.
JVL00:26:18That's all I have to say about that.
Mike00:26:20No, but it was fun. The over the weekend, my brother came down because he was supposed to help me with I had to base. We had two baseball games on Saturday and he was going to help, you know, cart around and see his nephews play. And of course it got rained out. Over the weekend. So but it was great hanging out and and then as soon as he left on Sunday to drive back home is when I found out about the daycare closing. So but we're surviving out here, you know, did you make a
JVL00:26:57survivor? I'm not going to give up pop tarts for the kids. No, any toaster strudel. No,
Mike00:27:05I didn't get any. We don't get any of that stuff. I don't know. They like they like their Trader Joe's, their little cups of yogurt in the morning. They'd rather it be
JVL00:27:13unfrosted.
Mike00:27:16Probably speaking of no, no, we should get to box office talk before we talk about the movie this week. What is there to say except the fall guy number one at the box office number two of the box offices. I previously mentioned a movie that is, you know, 25 years old and Star Wars episode one. Any box office thoughts before we talk about the non box office
JVL00:27:39Sonny, can you talk about the sheer panic over the fall guys performance
Sonny00:27:44people in Hollywood are freaking out because
JVL00:27:47that movie looked amazing.
Mike00:27:50It's number one. What's the
Sonny00:27:51problem? It's a it's it's soft. It's a soft number one. It's a soft number one. Way below tracking, right? I mean, look no, it was it was the tracking was not great on it all along which is what people were like mostly worried about. They were like this is how could
JVL00:28:07people not want to see that movie? Who would look at that trailer and say, yeah, not for me. I don't I don't
Guest00:28:13know. I
Sonny00:28:13I don't know what it is precisely that audiences want from this sort of movie because it might as well have been an original. Everybody talks about how they want original and yeah, it's based on a Lee major show, but I like nobody. Nobody remembers the fall guy TV show. You know, it's got it's got people who are who who both are stars kind of and also like are recognizable faces, right? So like Ryan Gosling, we can argue about whether or not Ryan Gosling is a star, but people know who Ryan Gosling is and I guess I one of the lessons here is Ryan Gosling is not a movie star because Ryan Gosling did not open this despite being the best thing about Barbie, etc, etc. Emily Blunt is in was in, you know, the second biggest movie of last year and like you know, she she's in this and she's great and she's delightful and people aren't into it. I mean, look, it's not it's not a perfect movie, but I also just is it better than
JVL00:29:12the Lost City because that was the big comp for me because the Lost City looked like a very similar movie, but then when you got to it, it felt like a Netflix movie.
Sonny00:29:23It's very similar and this is this is the part of the problem. I do think I look David Leitch has has a lot of talent, but what his talent is is staging fights. His talent is is we're going to do an interesting fist fight and and knife fight and shoot out and when you and and this movie has some of that, but it also is like focused. It's focused on stunts more broadly, right? It's focused on like car rolls and that sort of thing and he doesn't quite know how to shoot a stunt. I don't think he does not it. Look, I gotta be honest, you know, not everybody has to be Michael Bay, but you do need you do need the immediacy of a big stunt for you to have impact and he doesn't quite know how to do that, but that doesn't have anything to do with how this movie opened like if there were if the if the movie had come out and it it had had, you know, an $80 million opening and a B plus at the cinema score. I would be like, okay, there's there is but instead just nobody nobody came despite of what is I think pretty right a minus it did find a minus a minus is an okay like a minute a minus is basically like what you need for a movie like this to not be considered a disappointment. I don't know man. I don't know what audiences want. I don't know what audiences want from from anything anymore. I think they just I think they just want to stay at home. Yeah, and watch unfrosted. I mean like that is like, you know, I honestly just don't know. I honestly don't really don't really know what what what the studios are going to do here and it's not like it's been a terrible. I mean, it's not been a very good year. They want
JVL00:31:05Barbie, right?
Sonny00:31:07But like I
Guest00:31:09I guess I mean, I guess I just don't know. I don't know. I
Sonny00:31:13honestly don't know and I do think people are freaking out a little bit because nobody else knows
JVL00:31:17that are really well directed and really well written with movie stars in them. I mean like I it sounds silly when you say it that way, but this is my question. What is the quality level of this because that was the big problem with the Lost City. The Lost City had recognizable movie stars in it and an interesting story like it was an interesting idea. And then just like the movie itself was underwritten and directed like indistinguishable from
Sonny00:31:47but you know, but that's not that doesn't have anything to see this what I'm saying. This doesn't have anything to do with the opening weekend. This doesn't have anything to do with the opening weekend. The opening weekend is the opening weekend is entirely dependent on on advertising and and like whatever the Rotten Tomatoes scores and the Rotten Tomatoes score for this is good. It's like 88% fresh or something like I you know, I
Mike00:32:14could it be that could it be the weather has gotten nicer through most of the country. What the fuck
Sonny00:32:22does the weather have to do with anything? The weather weather weather can weather can weather can keep people away from the theaters. If there's like a big storm and people don't go out
JVL00:32:30right like Furiosa dead on arrival.
Sonny00:32:33I don't think so. But Furiosa is another interesting one because like, you know, people talk about Fury Road like it was an enormous hit and like it was big cultural touchstone and it did fine. It did fine. It grossed $150 million domestic, you know, which is not a bad number, but it also cost $200 million to make whatever like that movie that movie did. Okay. The big thing about that movie was that it held week after week after week. It opened a 40 million or something like that and then never had a weekend below had it never had it never had a weekend. What's that? That was the best
JVL00:33:06movie I've ever watched on my phone.
Sonny00:33:08Exactly exactly know that that movie that movie did that movie had an okay opening, but it never had a drop of more than 50% in in any of its subsequent weekends until the very last one and when it went from like a thousand screens to a hundred like it just never it never it held and held and held people kept going to see it. So I don't know. I mean I Furiosa. I wouldn't say is dead on arrival, but I do I people have got to be nervous about it because they look at they look at this and they're like, she's the best. Everyone is the best
JVL00:33:46and it has been weeks since she was in a movie theater on screen in a really your
Sonny00:33:51your antipathy toward Anya Taylor Joy is one of your one of your more fascinating traits. She is delightful. I love it. It is
Mike00:33:59delightful. It brings me joy. So to speak that JV so much. It sparks joy sparks joy and it's a new Taylor Joy. All right. Uh, okay. Well, that's all interesting, but we're not talking about the fall guy. We're not talking about anything. It was in theaters this week. We're talking about unfrosted the big Netflix comedy from Jerry Seinfeld. Is it sunny? Give us a big boy.
Sonny00:34:23Is it big or is it a comedy? Either that's that's all right. So here's so unfrosted is a fascinating movie on on one level for me, which is that I went in kind of expecting your kind of typical Brando pick prod you pick, right? Like I was expecting something in the vein of the beanie bubble or Tetris right? Something something that could be they could have some comedy in it, but also would be and it's not that totally it is tonally it is much closer to Mel Brooks or airplane or Zoolander or um, wet hot American summer. It's it's an absurdist picture is what it is. It is it is an excuse to make a bunch of uh, gags and to do like to do like really weird crazy things and that is that's a very different sort of picture and I there's there's part of me that understands why critics when they got the first look at it kind of reacted against it. Now. I also think this movie is taking a beating from critics because a lot of them are very mad about Jerry Seinfeld saying that, you know comedies to woke now or whatever blah blah blah, but like I do think I think there was a mismatch on expectations and what the thing actually is, which is always a problem that you don't want to do that. You don't want to like trick people into seeing something and I think there were there was some level of of that here. So basically so what what this what this movie posits basically is like the development of the Pop-Tart was the equivalent of the uh, breakfast industry space race, right? Like that is moonshot. That's very explicitly what is going on here and um, and or you know, the other movie it reminded me of is the Weird Al movie weird, right? It reminded me a lot of that because it's taking elements of reality and forcing them into this like frankly wacky ridiculous heightened heightened reality. So uh, Seinfeld plays a um, uh a employee of Kellogg's who is his name is Bob Cabana. He's fake. He's not a real person. Um uh, he goes to uh, Edsel Kellogg the third who is played by Jim Gaffigan and he and they're you know they're they're basically running the Kellogg's Empire. It's it's a hugely successful enterprise. They're winning all the breakfast cereal awards. Uh, you know, they're blah blah blah. And then uh, it turns out that post the cereal company post is working on their own um, secret weapon in the factory across the street whose factory is across Battle Creek Michigan. Exactly. They're they're all right on top of each other. He across the street run by Marjorie post a real person actually, uh, who's played by Amy Schumer. Um, and uh, the the post company is developing a pastry with the jelly filling that is going to uh, if we believe the children who are living in the dumpster outside of the post post factory is going to change the tide of the breakfast wars because it's so interesting and great. And this is and you know the this movie's biggest problem is that it takes it. It eases into the absurdity. It doesn't jump with both feet right into the absurdity. It takes you a little while to get there. Um, but once you do, I think it's I think it's actually like pretty funny. I I this is a movie I really wish was about 30 percent better because I would really love to go to the mattresses to defend it. And I can't do that. I can't do that for a couple reasons. One of them being that the joke density aspires to airplane level like two gags a minute and does not get there. And as a result, stretches of it feel very long. Stretches of this movie feel interminably long. And part and another part of the problem is that the gags are oftentimes very grown worthy. It's very much like Jerry Seinfeld drinking an orange powdery drink like, oh, that has a nice tang to it. And then Melissa McCarthy saying like, oh, Tang, that's what we should call it. And like, that was death for me. You get one of those. That was death for me. There were like ten.
JVL00:38:40It's the worst. Right, but this is the thing, right? So it leans so heavily on the idea of jokes that are it's funny because that's what's really going to happen in the future. And we're going to pretend that we're just thinking of it for the first time and it's a bad idea. Like, you know, what if you put frosting on that? Nah, that'll never work. Vietnam, that's a good idea. You get one of those jokes. You get one of those and this movie has a lot of them. And instead, it goes to the well over and over and over.
Sonny00:39:07But where this movie really succeeds is when it leans into the absolute comic absurdity, right? Like, so there's a sequence in the movie that comes way too That was pretty good. That was pretty good, though. Again, it feels like the first draft of that joke. So, like, the Mad Men characters show up and they're like, here's how we're going to sell your Pop-Tart. It's like sexy
JVL00:39:29Pop-Tarts. I wonder who owns that IP. Who owns the Don Draper, Roger Sterling IP? Well, I
Sonny00:39:34think, I don't think they ever used the words Don Draper or Roger Sterling. Right, but that Well, I think it's just parrot. You can just do it. Like, it's not, as long as you're not saying like, here's Mad Men
Mike00:39:46They said, these are Madison Avenue
Sonny00:39:48guys. These are advertised. Here are the Ad Men, I think they were called. So, anyway But, again, it's like the first version of that joke where it was like, it's like a funny reference and they're getting there, but it's not quite there. The stuff that really worked for me was like, for instance, the funeral sequence, right? So, like, there's one of the guys in the space race, Steve Schwinn, who's played by Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock. He gets killed and they go to his funeral and there's a grieving widow there who's playing it totally straight and is like, horrified because they're like, pouring cereal into the grave and snap crackling
Mike00:40:29A full cereal send off. A full cereal
Sonny00:40:31burial and like, snap crackling pop, bring her the prize inside and fold it up like a flag and are like and it just, like, the absurdity of it is very funny. Or like, you know, Tony the Tiger, Thorough Ravenscroft, who's played by Hugh Grant, wanting to do Shakespeare in the room where they're making the food. Or like the trip to JFK where, you know, we've, you know, JFK has impregnated the Doublemint twins and it's like, JFK's calling them all a bunch of fucking idiots and, or the cutaways to Walter Cronkite who's, like, super depressed and can only get excited for breaking serial news. Like, there are these elements of it that I think are very funny and off the wall. Or the mutant ravioli, right? So, like, they make a ravioli filled with sea monkeys and it gains more Nazi content.
JVL00:41:25The inventor of the sea monkeys is clearly a
Sonny00:41:27Nazi. Right, he's clearly, like, an Operation Paperclip guy. Like, it's like, it's again, it's like, it's funny. We're making it sound funnier than it is. It's funny.
JVL00:41:37Hold on, JVL, we'll get to you.
Sonny00:41:39I found all this stuff like, very funny and amusing and I wish the whole movie had been that. Or, like, the milkmen, the, like, milkmen cartel who are implicated in the JFK assassination. Like, again, it's just like, there's there are all these ideas that, like, if you, if they, if somebody with an actual absurdist sensibility and that is not Jerry Seinfeld and that's the real problem with this movie. Jerry Seinfeld is very funny, he does the observational things, but his humor is based on the real world based on things that we see and, and happen and how we react to them. And this movie is based on a world in which insane things that could never happen, happen. And that's, that's where the actual funny stuff is. That's where the funny stuff is. Not the serial humor. I'm very frustrated by this film because again, I want to I really want to defend what it is doing and what it is going for and I think when it hits those high notes it works but it so often doesn't that I I'm hesitant to, you know. It's a deeply frustrating movie for me I really, I want to like this so much more than I actually do. There are so many glimmers of good stuff there that it doesn't, it's frustrating. I'm very frustrated. I don't know. JVL.
JVL00:43:03JVL, what? I wonder what I'm even doing on this show because this is like the fifth week in a row where my feelings on the thing we're discussing are like 99.5% the same as Sonny's. Convergence. It really is convergence. We used to have a lot more disagreements amongst, and I just I'm in total alignment with you these days. I love the premise, the idea behind it. I love the idea of an absurdist movie, a Mel Gibson Mel Brooks style a Mel Gibson version of the story would be very different. It was the Jews. It would have been much bloodier. But I
Sonny00:43:47love that. A Mel Gibson January 6th serial mascot
JVL00:43:51insurrection is
Sonny00:43:53a fascinating film.
JVL00:43:56And it's just not funny enough. This is the I'm sorry. It's not funny enough. And the problem is I think there is an acting problem, which is that this is this is filled with people who are doing one day cameos and the number of one day cameos were just supposed to look. Oh, I know him from oh, she is on is distracting and feels like a boondoggle for Jerry's friends, which is fine, I guess, but it does take away a little something and it makes it too episodic like it needs to be like 10% less episodic. There are things which work and things which don't like Tony Hale, who I love but there's Tony Hale is in this for 30 seconds and there is absolutely no reason for that actor to be Tony Hale. It could have been anybody else in the world. Tony Hale doesn't add anything to it. He doesn't do any special sauce to it. It's just like we love Tony Hale. Let's put Tony in this movie. And but that's one of these absurdist. So Tony Hale plays a ventriloquist who is visiting the sugar King Pin who is then shot because he makes fun of the grout, which is a great bit a great bit but but he's not shot the right and then we find it's the puppet that shot again. Great bit all like that. That's nice work, but like why is Tony Hale there? Now that makes sense and just the writing's not sharp enough and I think you're exactly right Sonny that Seinfeld's gift is that he is a little bit like Anthony Trollope. He is a really keen observer of manners and so that I mean Seinfeld is essentially Trollope like it's just it's a comedy of manners. It's a it's about the way that people are in the world and this is airplane, which is not the way people are in the world, which is just not his strength and as a result also he does not know how to direct I mean the the this feels direction like the way a lot of the George Lucas prequels like, you know, they're walking in a master shot. They sit on a couch, right? They're walking in a master shot. They said this has a lot of one camera to camera master shot conversations one camera to camera master shot and hey buddy, maybe get somebody else to come in here and DP for you like it's you know, you're Jerry Seinfeld. Nobody's expecting you to know how to
Sonny00:46:29do a movie. Shot by Bill Pope It's shot by Bill Pope. Hold on who is the Bill Pope did the cinematography for amongst other movies. The Matrix Wow. The Spider-Man, the first Spider-Man movies Baby Driver. Wow. Scott Pilgrim versus the world. He did not have enough. He did not bring his
JVL00:46:55A-game. He did not have enough input on this and it's I just it left me very cold and there were moments when it worked. As you said, so like when Peter Dinklage shows up, there were a handful of actors who really came to play. Peter Dinklage is one of them. Yes. I actually think that John Hamm like really came to play in this but a bunch of them like it doesn't work and
Guest00:47:23I
JVL00:47:24as you said, you said you needed to be 30% better. I probably needed it to be 50% better.
Sonny00:47:32Yeah. But I don't know. Again, there are just so many little moments where I like I unexpectedly laughed like the the sugar baron scene where it's like they're going to like essentially they're treating sugar like cocaine and he like he goes to like the cocaine kingpins house and it's awkward. Or or this Bill Burr, Bill Burr's JFK
JVL00:48:02was great. JFK is like a mastermind like a not not the charming JFK, but the like hard ass mastermind. That's great. I like bring in Tina bring in Tina Fey for a rewrite on this. Like, you know, punch it up make it work better. You needed the 30 Rock writers room. I think 30 Rock is absurdist in many ways that would have would have helped. But Michael, you're a man of the people. Are you going to sit here and tell me what are you guys talking about? It was great. Sort of.
Mike00:48:33So, okay. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm not just saying this so that we can have some variety in our reaction to this. Because the truth is that I basically agree with both of you about the level of funny in it. But I want to defend the movie because I want to defend Jerry Seinfeld because Jerry Seinfeld, has been unfairly, I believe, unfairly criticized recently.
JVL00:49:05Can we make that separate? Because I have all, I really want to talk about Seinfeld qua Seinfeld.
Mike00:49:09Yes, but I, but it folds into my take on this movie. Okay. So, I disagree with you, Sonny, that the absurd is not a part of Jerry Seinfeld's comedy. Because I think it actually is. And in fact, you can see that in the Larry David, Less seasons, the final couple seasons of Seinfeld, when Larry David left and was no longer showrunner, and the plots became more absurd. And this is, and Jerry Seinfeld himself has said that this is sort of more of his approach to comedy. I would argue that there was always a level of absurdity, even during the Larry David years, that that was Jerry bringing this, bringing that part to the show. I think that that is, I'm a defender, I love Jerry Seinfeld, he's one of my favorite comics. I think that is such a part of his comic persona. Yes, he is observational. Yes, he notices these things about manners and everyday life. But his comedy is in the realm of the, of taking those ideas and playing them out into the absurd. One of his first jokes ever on TV, he talks about this. He has a great joke, it's written in the time of the hell that was New York in the late 1970s. He's talking about the new tram to Roosevelt Island, over the gondola basically to Roosevelt Island that the city created. And he takes this observational idea and says, what's this crime has gotten so bad, the city doesn't know what to do. They're making rides for us now. Okay, funny conversation. And then he's got this absurd escalation of the joke in which he says, what's the next part of this? They're going to have a roller coaster through the ghetto. Which is also hilarious. And then he adds this line which brings it back to some versamilitude where he says, it's the only roller coaster in the world where you scream on the flat part of the ride. Great, well-structured joke but it goes into the realm of the absurd. And I think that is his secret sauce. Because it's buttoned up absurdity. But it is, I think, absurd. And I think that you're seeing the sort of extreme of that in this movie, Unfrosted. I heard on another podcast Jerry Seinfeld himself promoting this movie saying he said, I'm not saying Unfrosted is in the same you know, can be you know, at the same level as Blazing Saddles. He says but like that was like kind of what I wanted to, that was what I wanted to do. So he was clearly trying to do this. And I think that that is that is just something we should keep in mind. I also think Jerry Seinfeld does not work in movies. And the reason he doesn't work in movies is because his craft is ultimately it's stand-up. It's audience, it's hearing laughter, and it's cutting and honing and figuring out every single night which part of the joke works, which part doesn't, shaving off a little bit more, changing a word to find the funniest word. He has the ear for it. But he freely admits it's the audience that he needs to sort of use as an editor. And so I think he doesn't get that in the, there was what, four writers on this movie? He's not getting that day-to-day filming a movie like this. So I think that's why it suffers the problems that it does. But at the end of the day, I'm sitting on my couch watching this and like laughing a lot more than I thought I would based on the reviews. And I think that it's nice to have, an absurdist, somebody attempting to do absurd comedy. I just wish it were better. But I still laughed. I still thought it was funny.
Sonny00:53:36Look, that is why I wish I could really stridently defend this movie is because I did find, I found myself laughing more than I expected to. I found myself, I, like involuntary, the involuntary laugh is the best one. And I had a number of those where I was just like, what is, what are they doing here? Or like, and again, it's just like, it's the stuff that plays against expectations, like Jim Gaffigan grabbing the little urchin and threatening him with violence. That was great. Which like, cracked me up because it's like, it's Jim Gaffigan. You don't, you expect him to do something else? He does this, and I, like. I know
JVL00:54:21how to talk to kids. Yeah.
Sonny00:54:23Yeah, like I, again, there are so many moments in this movie. It did, it is, it is very much a Netflix film in that it's probably 15% too long, and it's not a long
JVL00:54:35movie. It's like 80, yeah.
Sonny00:54:37It's 90, it's like 88 minutes before credits, you know. So it's not a long movie, and it could still probably have been 15 minutes shorter. And it looks like shit. And it does look like, I mean, it looks like, it looks like a Netflix movie. Yes. It looks like, it looks like, but again, I did find myself enjoying it, and I feel like I
Mike00:54:59I feel like people will laugh at this movie. They will turn it on, and they will laugh, and they will maybe not pay full attention to it. So here's But they'll watch it. Let me, let me
Sonny00:55:09throw an idea out there to you guys, and I'm curious to get your take on it. I, this is the sort of movie that I could very much see becoming a cult classic. In the same sense, in a previous era, I could see a movie like this becoming a cult classic in the sense of a Zoolander or, again, a Wet Hot American Summer. Something that's like a little bit that's a little bit out there that audiences and critics didn't understand what they were getting into, and then once it gets to cable and DVD and people are like, hey, you gotta watch this, it becomes I do not think a movie, and this is what I wrote in my newsletter this week, I do not think a Netflix movie can do that. I don't, I don't think a Netflix movie, and maybe it's streaming in general, but it feels particularly true of Netflix. Like, if you don't have, if you don't have a cable programmer saying, this is a movie we're gonna play ten times a week because we have the rights to it and it's cheap, and also I like it. If you don't have the guy in the dorm room with the DVD going and saying, hey, let's watch, let's get drunk and watch this. If you don't have the midnight movie programmer saying here's a lost classic and we're gonna we're gonna do fun screenings and they're gonna, and it's gonna become a thing. If you take all of that away and you just throw it on Netflix and it's there in the morass of content there's no way to discover, the discovery mechanism is simply not there. It's a movie that just ends up getting lost. Like, nobody watches it and it ends up getting lost.
JVL00:56:40I totally agree.
Mike00:56:43Yeah. So, fewer laughs
JVL00:56:45Sorry, Jimmy, go ahead. I'm just gonna ask you this, though.
Mike00:56:47I think fewer laughs
JVL00:56:49total for this 96 minutes or whatever it is, than in any random episode of 30 Rock, Seinfeld, or Arrested Development. Oh, yeah. Yes. It's just not enough laughs for that much. I agree.
Mike00:57:03Totally agree. But this, yeah, this is my point about the cutting down, the getting into the movie and the Netflix aspect of it, right? Hey, Jerry, spend whatever you want. Like, restrictions are good, right? A 30 minute sitcom, even a 30 Rock, you know, like all those restrictions, like, all right, we gotta get another episode done. Yeah, that helps comedy. Absolutely. It helps all creative pursuit actually. Can we talk about the Seinfeld backlash? Because it makes me mad for a couple of reasons. Why don't these children respect their elders, Michael? Exactly. Exactly. What needs to be said? All right, that's all the time we're giving to. No,
Sonny00:57:43I don't want to talk about it. I'm kidding. It's not the children, though. It's not the children. It's actually not the children. It's not. It's the older critics who look, this is there's nothing more boring than people complaining about movie critics. I will say that there's a class of movie critics that lives in absolute terror of being a falling outside of the zeitgeist of what is politically acceptable. And so when they are confronted with somebody like Jerry Seinfeld who knows what he's talking about and is not wrong, precisely saying things that fall outside of the political zeitgeist, there is very much a strong pushback against it. That's that's all I'll say on that.
Mike00:58:23But but the the I think it begins with a misrepresentation of Seinfeld's point, right? So he's he's doing this this press this press run to promote this and he makes it was this is the New Yorker, right? Like the thing is, it's like it's also hard to keep track of it because everybody
JVL00:58:47tick tock is what happened because all of a sudden all I know is I see everybody saying Jerry Seinfeld was never funny. Yes, which is what the fuck are you people talking
Mike00:58:55about? It's it's insane. So he does this Jerry Seinfeld is turn it to Barry Weiss. Well, so so that is that is what I think is a that the problem is, is that his comments in an interview have been repackaged so much that nobody actually knows what it was he said or the context in which he said it and and his point has been completely lost and people have been able to make me make it into all he's saying is comedy is woken. You can't do anything. That's not that's not unwoke anymore. And you know, therefore is Jerry Jerry Seinfeld's wrong because look at him. He's got gazillion dollars and he's making a movie on Netflix. And so it's he, you know, the point is, is that in his in the interview and Sonny, tell me if I'm wrong about this. He basically says like comedy has changed. You've got you've got to change with it, but I don't really like the ways in which it's changed in a way that that it's actually something he's been saying for years. Yeah, a version of what he's been saying for years, which is where you're prioritizing other things besides the joke, besides the expulsion of air involuntarily out of the audience's mouths because they are laughing
JVL01:00:24at something funny. Was he talking about stand up or getting a TV show to air or TV show?
Sonny01:00:31He's talking more about TV and movies. Yes. So he's talking about
JVL01:00:34programming decisions by corporations.
Sonny01:00:38That's yeah. So his argument is, I would say broadly, and maybe I'm truncating it too much. His argument is broadly we live in a situation, we live in a society where if you are writing a script for a sitcom, it ends up having to go through layers of sensitivity readers who say, well, this is funny, or they don't say this is funny. They say this will be, this will you know, we can't say this because it'll hurt these people's feelings, blah, blah, blah. And his point earlier in the interview, he's talking about, he's talking about, you know, his life as a stand-up, his friends who are stand-ups and the way they interact with each other is trying to give offense. It's like they are trying, they are saying like the most ridiculous things possible and, you know, the winner is the one who is able to get the, you know, get the, say the most ridiculous, outrageous
JVL01:01:35outrageous thing.
Sonny01:01:37And, you know, that is not that is not the current situation of comedy, certainly in the world of TV and film. Now, this is, again, there's, the world of stand-up is very different. It's, you know, they still have their own mores and morals and stuff. We saw some of that in the roast of Tom Brady, which I don't know if you guys saw. I've seen enough of the clips. I saw some
Mike01:01:58of the backlash to that. What happened? It's hilarious. I mean,
Sonny01:02:02it's a roast, so they're trying, they're saying offensive things about not only the person being roasted, but also the other roasters. And it's like, it's like a series of, like, fairly stereotypical, like, you know, ethnic humor, shall we say. Ethnic and gender and sex-based humor.
JVL01:02:23People are complaining that it's offensive when the point is to be offensive? No, no, no. People are not complaining. People are eating it all
Sonny01:02:28up. Yeah, people are mostly eating it up. There's always some complaints, you know, how can you say this? But mostly people are very into it. And anyway, I, like...
JVL01:02:38So how has this complaint from Seinfeld morphed into, he was never funny, he doesn't deserve...
Mike01:02:44So, okay, so this is my... So they, so he's, his complaint boils down to essentially what I think his complaint really is. It's like all of, like, all of the actual funny people this guild that we are in, which is he feels very strongly about, and I agree with him on, that we are being sort of infiltrated or stymied by essentially corporate interests who are shoving this kind of DEI stuff down our throats by way of... So that has... So it's like, I think he says DEI at some point is sort of like some up the kind of like, okay, you're not prioritizing funny, you're prioritizing these other things. And so I think people have latched onto that. And it's given people a reason to keep saying Larry David was the only real funny part of Seinfeld. He's the only reason why Seinfeld was successful. And I don't know why this is sort of like a simmering idea that every time Jerry Seinfeld, opens his mouth, people have to, on the internet, have to jump up and say this.
JVL01:04:02Because the long
Sonny01:04:04and the short of it is he's essentially making an argument from authority, right? Which is I am a funny person. I have a long career as a stand-up. I'm very successful. I have this inarguably the greatest sitcom of all time. And I am saying that the stuff is not as funny now. He's not saying it like that, but essentially that's the argument being made. So in order to say, well, Seinfeld was never funny. I mean, Seinfeld was, he was always a hack. Nobody likes Seinfeld. You have to say that to undercut his argument. You have to take away his authority.
Mike01:04:34Yes, you have to take away his authority. But it's just, it's just,
Sonny01:04:38it's just not true. It's objectively incorrect. It's incorrect. Objectively incorrect.
Mike01:04:42And to see all of these
Sonny01:04:44people who don't
Mike01:04:46even like comedy talking about it. Like, I love this stuff and I love consuming all of it and it drives me nuts to see people who don't even care about it
Sonny01:04:56saying this stuff. And just to loop it back to Unfrosted, right? The reason, I think, at least part of the reason that the critics have been, it's not just saying like, ah, it's not a good movie. It's not funny. There's been real, there's been an undercurrent of real, like, really vituperative Yes. Anger towards
JVL01:05:15Seinfeld.
Sonny01:05:16They have to, they have to say, well, how would Seinfeld know what's funny? Look at this movie. That's the worst garbage I've ever seen. And like, there are, again, there are a lot of criticisms of this movie. I, we have gone through any number of them, but the people who are just, like, aggressively saying nothing in this is funny, it's terrible, and I mean, like, I don't think you actually watched it. Yes. Frankly. If that's if that's your takeaway here. Or you went into it wanting to hate it, which is a, you know, look,
JVL01:05:48that happens. What is it that in the culture decides which older comics get revered and which get retcommed into being terrible? Because like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, right, these guys hit old age and are, well, maybe not Richard Pryor, he didn't make it to old age, right? But older, right? I mean, and just revered and there's, there should be no reason Seinfeld isn't in the same the same
Mike01:06:20general class, right? I mean, he's an older guy now. But I think he is. I think this
JVL01:06:26is a limited... Mel Brooks, right? Everybody reveres Mel Brooks. But Seinfeld suddenly has to be unpersoned? But this is,
Mike01:06:32I think this is a very limited amount of people who have a lot of who command a lot of real estate on the internet, but do not reflect, I think, popular... Good. Yes. Okay. That's just one I want to make sure. Yeah. I mean, you cannot go through things like, you know, Instagram and I'm not on TikTok, but like TikTok without seeing like, you know, a version, you know, modern versions of Seinfeld or like people doing Seinfeld, or like these, it's like it's ridiculous. It's a claim that nobody who actually likes this stuff would ever make. And I'm just, I'm outraged on behalf of this extremely wealthy man.
Sonny01:07:11Dave Chappelle is instructive here, right? Dave Chappelle remains one of the most popular stand-ups in the country, sells out everywhere he goes. His Netflix specials are very popular. They do very well for the service. And he, if you said something nice about him on in the New Yorker or New York Magazine or maybe even the Atlantic, you would get pilloried because he has been reduced to transphobe. That's all, you know, like he and for as much as people talk about wanting comedians to be truth-tellers, to be bold, we want them to get out there and gore those sacred cows. We want them to, what they really mean is we want him to kill somebody else's sacred cow. We want him to say it's funny when they kill your sacred cow. When you kill my sacred cow, it's a tragedy and I'm going to make your life bad. That is, and that's
JVL01:08:13the long and the short of it. Isn't Chris Rock in the same place as these guys, right? Didn't he wind up in the same, you know, like saying he doesn't like playing colleges anymore? Yes. By the way, they're all friends. If Seinfeld was the only person in the world making this complaint about how the world of comedy has changed, they maybe could say oh, okay. It does seem like this is basically what the vast majority of successful and talented stand-up comics now say. So maybe there's something to it.
Mike01:08:40But this goes, this I think goes to Sonny's point maybe a little farther. I think there is a version in this segment of the culture for authority. Like I think there is an idea that like he cannot be an authority because like it comes off, I think to certain maybe generation or type of person as smug, right? Jerry Seinfeld is a smug guy, but he has every reason to be smug. So he's not endearing in the way that Mel Brooks is. Correct. Correct. But like of course, that's what I love about them. Like that's what I think is you know, it's the same reason I love Norma McDonald. Like Norma McDonald thought he was better than every other comedian on the planet. And he was right. And like that's what I loved about it. And the truth is that other comedians thought the same thing. Other comedians revere Jerry Seinfeld. They also revere Larry David. Like you would not like those two guys are buddies. They're like best buds. So like this idea that like one's better than the other is just not something they would agree on.
JVL01:09:55I'm not sure how official any of these rankings really are.
Sonny01:09:58I want to let me I want to let me maybe maybe this is one way to think about it right in in there. There is a there's a very real split in in the audiences for these stand-ups and and you could maybe sum it up like this like Hannah Gadsby gets invited to do the corporate diversity lecture for don't worry about it. Yeah, but Shane Tillis Shane Gillis sells out the stadium correct, right and that's that's that is I think the kind of split you're seeing here and I think it's going to be more pronounced as guys like what's his name Matt Reif I don't know. I like I've never even watched his I don't I don't know anything about Matt Reif but I there was an effort to like get him, you know canceled because he made a joke about domestic violence or something and like it had no effect on his career and I think there is there is a there is we have gotten to the point where there is like enough public lack of giving a shit about this stuff anymore that like has it has essentially destroyed that as long as you're funny as long as you make people laugh there will you will still have career opportunities, which was Mr.
Mike01:11:16Seinfeld's point all along. All right. Well, that's all going very long. We're going very long here, but I was outraged which is but which is a rare thing. That's all the time we're going to give to this episode. Join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Become a member. Tell your friends and family and we will talk to you next time. We've already we've already referenced the the Planet of the Apes musical on the show recently. I think recently was that was that you and me Sonny I think but thinking about if we're going to do that I that that is one of my one of my touchstones, you know, Dr. Zayas, Dr. Zayas and all that great. Maybe we should just watch
JVL01:12:06that or the Simpsons
Mike01:12:08or just not the whole not even the whole episode. Just that first
Sonny01:12:12first the montage of the show. We're going to watch 180 seconds of one episode of the Simpsons from 25 years ago. That's going to be the whole episode.
JVL01:12:20He can talk, he can talk, he can talk, he can talk, I can see.
Mike01:12:27Yes, they finally made a monkey
Guest01:12:30out of me. This is the whole
Sonny01:12:32episode right here. I love
Mike01:12:34musical theater. I'm sure it's fun.
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