I spent three wishes to make sure I wouldn’t have to watch this.
Tim wisely stays far away while Jen hosts the lovable Worst of All Possible Worlds boys to chat about the worst of all possible musicals, Aladdin from 1990. Yes, it’s not the animated version, but it does involve Disney. Listen if you don’t believe us!
Behold the “I Want to be Ninja” lady, but be prepared to apologize to your Asian friends. And yes, she does appear to be milking her dubious viral fame.
Regarding the Barry Bostwick-featuring commercial Jen mentioned, Brian made up a Pepsi product, and Jen believed him! The commercial actually presented Pepsi Twist, with lemon.
Tim and Jen welcome Alex Rancourt of the Saucer Cinema podcast to discuss a concentrated version of the political correctness panic of the 90s, Disclosure.
If for some reason you need to subject yourself to the gross-out video Alex dropped in the chat while we were recording, here you go: Michael Douglas eats an oyster.
From 1995, this Vanity Fair article about Michael Douglas covers some of the production of Disclosure. Also highlighted are Douglas’s personal struggles at the time, including a reconciliation with wife Diandra (who’d file for divorce later that year).
If you just can’t get enough 90s tech references, check out this history of SiliconGraphics, the company that created a lot of the computer imagery in Disclosure. It’s a UNIX system! You know this!
For more Michael Douglas (dunno why you want more, but you do you), listen to our episode about The Ghost and the Darkness!
K. Thor Jensen makes a triumphant return to the show to help Jen and Tim make sense of a nice young man’s three-hour-long passion project, That One Amazing Movie!
See the movie for free with ads on Crackle, or rent or even buy it on Amazon!
Watch Deception on Demand, a short documentary laying out several grievances against Adler &Associates Entertainment, the entity which distributed That One Amazing Movie.
“The true story of how the grifters and con artists from Adler & Associates Entertainment hired O.J. Simpson’s lawyers, and spent a small fortune, futilely trying to intimidate, harass and rip-off a very determined filmmaker. “
Hear Thor talk about Sass Girls X, the novel (!) from the auteur who brought us That One Amazing Movie, on the I Don’t Even Own a TV podcast.
Listen to Thor’s first appearance on our show, to discuss a movie just as baffling as the one we talked about in this episode, Wonder Boy.
BREAKING: new evidence for the historical Great Pumpkin
Tim and Jen enlist the help of Bitter Karella to wade through the 22 minutes of treacle that is the forgotten faux-Peanuts special, Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.
William Conant Church, brother of Francis Church, did indeed help found the NRA in 1871, in an effort to improve marksmanship amongst the broader American militia. He and brother Francis co-founded several news publications, including the New York Sun, and he also co-founded the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Additionally, Frank Church was not the volcel depicted in the Yes, Virginia special— he was married to a woman named Elizabeth Wickham. In spite of Tim’s joshing, it appears that Church did not have a severe yet shapely assistant who browbeat him into publishing the editorial addressed to Virginia O’Hanlon. The O’Hanlon letter was passed on by Edward Page Mitchell, the real-life editor-in-chief of the Sun.
Finally, if you want to pretend that it’s 1974 again and you’re spinning some 45s, you can hear the theme song for the special sung by a piercing li’l Jimmy Osmond.
Want more weird cartoons? Check out Tim & Jen’s riff on the animated short “Eveready Harton” from 1975’s Self Service Girls, or one of our other episodes on trauma-inducing animation.
For audiences clamoring for Star Wars, Sorcerer was a bridge too far
Tim and Jen finally give the departed William Friedkin a proper sendoff with a discussion of his once-maligned masterpiece, Sorcerer. Guest Darren Herczeg provides his usual able assistance.
To clear up an anecdote Jen related during the episode: she says that Paramount president Charles Bluhdorn freaked out when he spotted himself in the group photo of oil company executives in a scene from Sorcerer. The source of this story is screenwriter Walon Green, who describes Bluhdorn as having had a “shit hemorrhage” during the screening. However, a review of the offending scene reveals only other Gulf+Western execs, not Bluhdorn.
“To me, they looked like a bunch of thugs,” Friedkin said (as quoted in Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls).
Catch the documentary Friedkin Uncut on Tubi, where the man himself evokes Hitler in the first five minutes. We’ll miss you, Billy.
31 films when a lesser series would have gone limp!
Tim and Jen seek aid from wacky funster Bitter Karella to explain a film series as British as lousy weather and inedible food: the Carry On series! Also, Tim positively bursts with Carry On-related research.
The fittingly-titled Cor, Blimey! telefilm dramatizes the affair between Sid James and Barbara Windsor, set against notable Carry On moments of the ’60s and ’70s.
If you’re not familiar with the canon and want to sample the world of Carry On for yourself, stop by the Internet Archive. Be warned, though: if you’re as susceptible to broad comedy as Tim seems to be, you might end up Carry On-pilled too! Cor blimey!
Tim and Jen bring back one of horror’s heaviest (lol) hitters to talk about a movie William Friedkin couldn’t be bothered to mention after he made it, The Guardian!
Tim’s quip about Q’s on Wilshire refers to a 2000 incident in which screenwriter and director Eric Red plowed his Jeep into a crowded bar following a fender bender, killing two people, then attempted to slit his own throat with a piece of glass. The linked LA Weekly article draws some tenuous conclusions between Red’s work and the bloody mess at Q’s, but as of 2023 he appears to have stayed out of trouble and written several novels.
KCRW memorializes Deirdre O’ Donaghue’s incredibly influential playlists with its Bent By Nature podcast.
The ballerina clown of Venice remains in situ, where it has been since 1989. Presumably, it makes the CVS underneath it easy to find for out-of-towners.
Do you love Tim and Bitter Karella, but have had enough of Jen? Hear the former two discuss a beloved childhood favorite in our Ernest Goes to Camp episode!
Jen enlists show stalwart Bitter Karella to help offend nearly every single person in the Czech Republic by providing an honest review of Goat Story: The Old Prague Legends.
See the intro for the show Jen and Karella saw in Switzerland, Kommissar Rex. That’s what I call a good friend!
If you would like to see the “Roy Orbison in clingfilm” stories for yourself, you can do so here, but keep in mind that the site owner has “ceased answering mail” because of “weirdos.” However, the film and television rights to his long-awaited Roy Orbison in clingfilm novel are still up for grabs!
Tim is too cool to talk about a nerdy British kid’s coming of age story, so Jen and special guest @bitterkarella step in to talk about cult BBC teleplay Penda’s Fen.
The 2010 post that originally turned Jen on to the film may be found at John Coulthart’s excellent art blog, Feuilleton. At the time of writing, Penda’s Fen was almost impossible to see, as a home video release was far in the future.
As for Penda’s Fen, whenever a TV executive tries to argue that television hasn’t dumbed down I’d offer this work as Exhibit A for the prosecution. Rudkin and Clarke’s film was screened at 9.35 in the evening on the nation’s main TV channel, BBC 1, at a time when there were only three channels to choose from. A primetime audience of many millions watched this visceral and unapologetically intelligent drama; show me where this happens today. – John Coulthart
Jen mangled the words to the Bonzo Dog Band’s “Sport” a little bit (“Sport, sport, masculine sport / equips a young man for society”), but you get the idea.
