Episode 008: My Email, Hollywood Strikes, and "Mallrats"

In this week's show, Frank begins by making an important correction to his email address so that you we may correspond.

Next he discusses the recent writers' and actors' strikes in Hollywood and why he cares.  He reminisces about how there was once a greater quality with lesser availability to Hollywood productions and this leads in to what he would really like to happen at the conclusion of these strikes.  He even makes fun of Fran Drescher from The Nanny in the process.

Finally the Priscilla Barnes review this week is the comedy buddy classic Mallrats from 1995, that not only has a certain 80s quality but produced one of Priscilla's most memorable yet quirky scenes ever.  Frank recounts his own "mallrat" experience from this time as a high school senior.  He also tells of learning to swear partly due to the early days of cable, and asks what else is one supposed to call movies with unique titles from that time.

The theme song is called Retro Funk by SoulProdMusic and can be found at pixabay.com.

Mallrats is available on DVD and Blu-Ray,  and Amazon Prime.

--The best way to contact is:
Twitter: @frankwebertx
Web:  frankwebertx.com
Email:  frankoweber@hotmail.com

Transcript

Frank: 0:01

Well, in this episode, I give you a little correction to my email address. That's pretty important for contacting me. And I'll tell you a little bit about my take on the recent Hollywood strikes both with the writers and the actors. And then finally we get into the comedy classic from 1995 called Mallrats. Which is very funny. On the whole and especially funny with Priscilla's one. Several minutes scene. You're going to love it. So stay tuned. hello, welcome once again to Frank Weber's party. This is your host, Frank Weber. So glad that you're here once again, and thanks for listening and hitting, subscribe and downloading. Please tell your family and friends about us. I think we've got a really great show for you today. I'm planning on telling several personal stories. the first thing I needed to. Tell you about, I had one van tell me in person this week that, she sent me an email with some questions in it, to the, email address that I had on the site. And, that email address is apparently not receiving emails. I'm not really sure why, but I've changed to a much more reliable email address, and so if you have been trying to correspond with me, I really apologize for that because I haven't been getting them and haven't been responding to them. So that new email address is quite reliable and I'll should be able to answer your questions and get back to you. Today before we get into a fun Priscilla review, we're gonna talk about the movie Mallrats. should be a lot of fun. But before that, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about, some of the striking that's going on now in Hollywood. And if you don't care about Hollywood, I understand, the only reason that I really care about it is. because I like what they do and what they can do, what the potential they have to do over there. I'm interested in that field among other arts and humanities, and so I think it was a important topic to discuss. but essentially what's happened over there, the riders went on strike in May. and the actors, just last week, that would be on July the 13th or 14th, I think it was the 13th. The actors announced that they were going on strike as well. a lot of it apparently has to do with AI or artificial intelligence. And a concern that that could be taking over the industry. writers are concerned that AI could write something better than them, and then actors are concerned that AI could do many things, like use their image without their consent, which is an intellectual property issue. And apparently both of them also have something to do with wages and it's also. Unfortunate because the strike is going to trickle down. there's people on cruises and stage hands and caterers and whatnot that are not going to be able to work as a result of that for the time being at least. and so I find, it was an interesting topic. I use ai. To edit my podcast and AI program, it's not perfect, but, I would not, in these early stages of my podcast, I would not be able to edit the show if it weren't for ai being able to transcribe the sound waves into words to where I can see and hear the words, and that allows me to edit them. I'm not skilled enough to just look at sound waves and edit. Like that, that's not going to work for me. So it's been very helpful for that. Some people think it's gonna take over the world and fire off nuclear missiles and do all sorts of crazy things. I don't know that it's advanced enough yet to create something in the humanities that people are really going to wanna watch or listen to. and that's where the human spirit. Comes in and really needs to take over again in Hollywood. And what I'm asking here is what AI. Be able to write and produce something. Good enough. To produce certain emotions in us to make it a true. Arts and humanities production. And i'm not so sure that it can or necessarily would in the future And I just have a couple of things I wanted to say the lovely, still beautiful after all these years. Fran Drescher is the leader of the Actor's Union. when she made the announcement, it almost looked like she had just gotten outta bed. she didn't seem to have, any makeup on or anything like that. So I don't know what was going on Something that I thought might be amusing is when she first wakes up in the morning, does she have that accent or is it something else? maybe she's, from the south or from Europe Or something entirely different or whatever than the Northeastern sort of accent that she has. I don't know, maybe we should call her in the middle of the night and see if it's different. My concern about Hollywood over the years though, is that they have gradually declined in quality, general quality of stuff. I mean, there's still occasionally good TV shows and movies out there. you know, really like the new version as well as the old version of night court, for instance. That, uh, I don't know if that's gonna start on time. I doubt it now for the new TV season, but, I'm trying to give you a little bit of a historical context, and background that probably won't solve the entire problem. I get that we're in a different time now, different situation, different business model, but you can sometimes find solutions or at least helpful things that can help you. Correct the situation and make it better. And so what I wanted to tell you is, I started to lose interest largely in network TV throughout the nineties. I started losing interest in movies back then too. And like I said, there was still occasionally good things that came out, but if you look at the situation, I was born in 1977 and, We didn't have cable at my house until probably latter part of 82. We definitely had it by 83. We didn't have any VCR or any recording playback devices until I think we were a little bit later on that probably 87. And the only thing that we had in my very young years was. three main channels, cbs, abc, nbc. There was also PBS and maybe the Spanish language channel. I don't know for sure. I never really watched it, but, and we also had an Atari 2,600, which I'm not sure when we got that. Apparently my dad, who doesn't like video games or cable won that. won it in a contest. But, The thing back then is the country had essentially half the population it does now. I think that's the rough estimate and the best shows back then could easily, especially regular shows, they could get 25 to 30 million people to watch them every week. You know, whether it was Threes company or Happy Days, or Dukes of Hazard or Dallas or whatever was on back then. Right. And there was so much less competition for your eyes on a regular evening like that. they had to make shows good, not only so that you would watch them and they could get those high, numbers to view the TV that particular time and channel, but obviously getting those kind of TV numbers allowed them to really rake in the big advertising bucks. And obviously there was a few duds out there that didn't work and they didn't get very many eyeballs and they were replaced the traditional meaning of being canceled. but then of course slowly you get other competition came along. Like I said, we got cable and then we wound up getting initially something like 50 channels instead of four or five. And we had the old white little box where you slid the number around. There was no remote still. You had to get off your ass and slide the channel changer thing around that little box and kind of wish I could find those for relic's sake. but yeah, cable was 50 channels and then it was a hundred channels and now it's, 500,000 channels and now you've got tons of online streaming as well. And so people have adjusted, the expectation that maybe we're lucky to get a million or 2 million or 3 million to watch our show whenever it comes out, especially on network TV and that somehow that's all we can get. And so the incentive to make things better isn't quite as there anymore. So I think that's a problem. I also reminded about movies too. I was looking something up. There's a guy on Twitter, maybe on Facebook too, eighties retro sites, who's always saying such and such was released on this date in 1981, so we're just using 1981 as an example. But in movies, there really hasn't been a great. summer Blockbuster movie season for quite some time now. I really don't think there's one this year. I know there's a few things of interest, but it's definitely not like it was, apparently that blockbuster season started. back in 1975 with Jaws, but then you forward to let's say 81. the blockbuster season in the summer, started with Raiders of the Lost Ark in late May, and I'm leaving some other movies out here too. But in the ensuing weeks, one week you had Cannonball Run came out. Which I think it may not be the best movie ever, but it's funny. And that very same day, Superman two came out and then the very next week you had for Your Eyes Only, which is, you know, bond Movie and Stripes came out that day as well. And that list is not all inclusive. I mean, there were other movies that came out those exact same days as those films I just mentioned. but it was a big fucking deal back then, is what I'm trying to tell you. And it's not the same now. and that has to do a lot with quality of movies and the cost of going to a theater and all these things. Now, the cushy seats they have in theaters now, that means they can't fit as many people into the theater as they used to. I don't know if you realize that or not, but that quality issue is a real big thing. movies actually followed a progression back then, cuz I was telling you about early days of cable, your blockbusters were in the theaters for a while. star Wars movies were in there forever, it seemed like. Before they even got to TV and once they got to pay tv, they would have a little bit of run on there for maybe a couple of years. And usually they were on one of the networks for the movie of the week, Sunday night movie or whatever. They would have a nice run there. They sometimes would even show an extended version. that was a big fucking deal too. So movies followed this crazy life cycle and. Nowadays, of course if you can find him on TV or streaming anywhere or maybe have to watch'em on DVD or whatever that's the thing. Now if you want to reminisce, but anyway, I know things are different now. Different market, different situation, but. There's something about that time that says, you have to up your game, writers, actors, producers, directors, you wanna make something good. Again, that's where you gotta get really creative and, really let the juices flowing on your creativity. But I get the feeling. That in this situation with Hollywood. That I can want in one hand and shit in the other. And see which one gets full, faster. hope that made sense to you. Let me take a quick break. I believe that's everything I wanted to say on that, and we'll get into a fun movie. I would consider it a classic now, not just as an entire movie, but also a classic for my favorite, actress, Priscilla Barnes. And that's small rats. And we'll be right back. All right, we're back. Mallrats was called a buddy movie back then from 1995. I have a lot to say about this and particularly about Priscilla's role. We'll probably go in some depth with that, particular scene. this movie. It, didn't do well at the box office. the critics didn't like it. I didn't even go and see it when it came out. apparently it's become a cult classic. Now, there's actually three different versions. We got the main version is the one that I used, I believe, and there's also a theatrical version, and there's an extended version, and it's produced by a guy named Kevin Smith who. Wrote and directed this movie Mallrats, and also played the character of Silent Bob of the J in Silent Bob Fame. And it's part of a franchise that started with Clerks the year before. There's several clerks movies. There's also one called Chasing Amy. a lot of people you've probably seen before, and we'll get into the cast here in a second. I don't know why I didn't see this when it came out. October 20th, 1995 is the release date and I was a senior in high school. Then I turned 18 on the 23rd. So just three days later I can tell you what was going on that weekend. And also a story about being a senior in high school and being sort of a mall rat myself. I'm not exactly in the same way as these guys But that weekend, I remember the 21st on Saturday, my older half sister got married. and I think my brother, who was only not quite 16 at the time, got drunk at the wedding. It was pretty funny. but I didn't really understand why she had to have the wedding that day. It was only two days before my birthday. And, she was a big UT fan, the Longhorns, and they had a game in town there in Austin that Saturday. And I don't know why she didn't have it on some other day. it was always a big issue. And they left the. Wedding and a limo And then my birthday was on Monday and the family took me out to eat. And the same limo driver took me to dinner, and picked us up, But that was obviously a big milestone birthday for me. And that year in, 1995, my mom thought that I was, A little overweight, and I can't remember exactly when this started, but she put me on a program that you may have heard of called Nutrisystem. And back in those days, you had to go to their physical location to buy the groceries, which were. not refrigerated and you had to add water to them. And some of them actually did taste pretty good, but a lot of them didn't. And then you had to weigh in there while you were there, but senior year in high school, that was the only year that we had, off campus lunch. And I usually went somewhere else and, took a break usually by myself. And a lot of times I wound up at the mall. And, I didn't want to eat Nutrisystem at lunch because somebody I know might see me with it and then they would, make fun of me or say something, I was still. Image conscious. I'm less so now, but anyway, I'd go to this corn dog place, get a corn dog, sit on a bench and it was relaxing and quiet and cheap and middle of the day on a weekday at the mall, But anyway, I did this, at least three times a week, Somebody apparently saw me there one time and the word got back to my brother Tom. I've mentioned on this show before. And of course the word then got back to my mom and she's like, why are you eating corn dogs and ruining your diet and all this stuff? And, I hope you find it funny. I tell you all these stories all the time, about her and what kinda. Things we were doing when we were, still growing up. I, wish a lot of times I had been more active and done some different things than what I wind up doing in high school. if I had known what I know now, back then, it would've totally been a lot different. That's my little mall rat story. So anyway, this movie, is about these two guys, Ts and Brody who are buddies and, they break up with their girlfriends on the same day. ts is picking up his girlfriend. Brandy wants to take her to Universal Studios in Orlando. To propose to her on the Jaws attraction And, her dad is producing a game show that is gonna be at the mall later. And, it's supposed to be like one girl with three potential suitors, they call the show truth or date. But anyway, she's volunteered to take over, the female position because ts apparently told the other. contestant that she was overweight and she went crazy swimming laps at the Y M C A and now she's dead. And so Brandy's kind of filling in for her in a pinch and. The dad's not real happy with ts, so they can't go to Orlando. And so they break up there. The other guy, Brody, he's a big, Sega video game player, and, his girlfriend is Renee, played by Shannon Doherty. They'll get into all those actors here in a second, and, apparently Renee comes to his house every night, but they don't do anything. They're not. having sex or whatever. he's busy, doing his games and his comics and she never meets his mom. She really wants to meet his mom. And so they break up as well. And so ts and Brody decide to go and spend the day at the mall where many hi jinks and Sue. I'll get into a few scenes here in particularly Priscilla's scene, I read a review on I M D B that kind of described it as eighties humor. The movie is most definitely set in the nineties though. 95 of course, where the music and dress is definitely 95. You've got a lot of the grunge look, which I was very disillusioned with when I was in high school. People, Wearing all these brown clothes and gray clothes and drab looking stuff and shit. I would call it really. and that was weird after starting in 92, we still had a lot of bright colored clothing from the eighties. that sort of defined the nineties time in high school for me. the movie is pretty slapstick, relatively fast paced. You have to be listening, paying attention to the jokes. you also have, Some running gags that were tremendous in the movie. You've got, the guy, William, a friend of theirs who's looking at one of these, prints where you have to look closely in order to see something else, which apparently is a sailboat and he can't see it. And a lot of people come by and tell him it's a sailboat, but he. obviously can't see it and there's a lot of frustration over that. You've got a running gag about sex in the back of a Volkswagen. You hear that two or three times. Brody even tells a great joke about how Lois Lane could not possibly bear Superman's baby. a lot of interesting comic book logic there. so really, it's pretty crazy. the pursuit is ultimately to get back together with their girlfriends all in one day. And how that happens from point A of breaking up to point B of getting back together is, the really special part of the movie. There is a gag also with, the Easter Bunny. the Easter Bunny has a set up similar to Santa Claus in the mall where the kids go and see him and tell him what they want for Easter, and Jay and Silent Bob who are, throughout this movie and this franchise, they help. Brody and Ts and, help them accomplish their ends here, including one scene where they actually beat up the Easter bunny and, they help Brody and ts escape in the middle of the film from security because, Brandy's father doesn't like ts at all and tried to kick them out of the mall and plant marijuana and try to send them to jail. but Jay and Silent Bob helped them. They also helped them at the end on the game show and, ultimately everything ends up happy. it's kind of an unusual time capsule now. I hear a lot of stories about people. they don't really go to the mall anymore, I guess because they can get so many things online but, that was always a good hangout place when I was a kid. And, also during this time, But, the movie ultimately has a happy ending. Everybody gets back together. the best part of it, Priscilla's scene is quite exquisite, but, the humor throughout is really the best part of the movie, and that's why you really have to be paying attention. Pretty outrageous, pretty outlandish. Okay, so let's go over some of the cast here quite a few that I wanted to go over. Some of the names you may not recognize, but, Renee is played by Shannon Doherty. She was probably the most famous person on this movie at the time. She had been on 9 0 2 10, which. I don't think it was still on by then, but, obviously very recognizable, name. Jeremy London played ts the rumor had it that Henry Thomas from ET. and like one other kid's movie from the eighties, he was rumored to play the role of Ts, but instead it was Jeremy London. You had, Jason Lee played Brody. Apparently Adam Sandler was considered for that role. You had, Claire Forni who played Brandy. A very lovely young lady. And also very notably, one of the rivals of Brody, a guy named, Shannon Hamilton. He worked in a men's store in the mall and was courting Renee in the movie was played by Ben Affleck, who was pretty unknown at the time. He was basically the bad guy in this movie, along with Brandy's dad, which we'll talk about in a little bit, a young blonde. Lady Joey, Lauren Adams was in the movie played, Gwen Turner, who was an old girlfriend of tss. You had Renee Humphrey, played Trisha Jones, and that was a little bit of a complicated plot, pretty outlandish. she played a 15 year old at the time and through an experiment she was doing, they were able to. do something with Ben Affleck. They're the bad guy. At the end of the movie, Jay Muse played Jay as part of the Jay in Silent Bob, franchise. rumor has it that Seth Green could have possibly played Jay in the movie. Of course, you had Kevin Smith as Silent Bob. Ethan Suplee played William, who was the guy trying to figure out the sailboat picture. And then, Marvel comic creator, who's no longer with us. Stan Lee played himself. Of course he created Spider-Man, incredible Hulk and some others. fantastic Four, I think some others there. Priscilla Barnes played Miss Ivana, and we'll get into her scene here in a little bit. Michael er played Jared Finning, who was. Brandy's father, he was bald in this movie and I recognized him, but I couldn't really place him at first. In my world, he'll always be remembered as rowdy Burns from Days of Thunder, which is a, Tom Cruise and NASCAR masterpiece, I believe, from 1990. And, if you haven't seen it before, it's worth a laugh. things were quite a bit different back then in racing as well as in Hollywood for that matter. just a couple of other, guys here. Svin O Thorson played LA Forests. Who was the head security guy? Brian O'Halloran played Gil Hicks, who was suitor number three, and Brody and ts were the other two. Suitors there for Brandy. Also need to mention, I didn't know this at first, the guy who was hosting Truth or Date, was Art James, who was Bob Summers in the movie. He was an old game show host, playing a game show host here, and then Luke Wilson was a member of the audience watching Truth or Day, and he was uncredited. So roughly in the middle of the movie, Brody and Ts, they're thrown out of the mall and nearly arrested. they try to plant marijuana on them, and that's where Jay and Silent Bob save the day. And, ts and Brody retreat try to figure out what they're going to do, and they wind up going to a nearby flea market. and that's where, they're perusing various stuff at the beginning and they run into. Somebody, called Ivana, the topless fortune teller, who's played by the lovely Priscilla Barnes. And, there's a number of important quotes But, they go in there, she's actually talking with a northeast accent as well, but they pay her$58 and 60 cents and she ask them medical questions like, do you have heart conditions? And other things. Even though they're just sitting there, she's gonna wind up pulling down her top and using her breasts to tell them their future, especially with regard to, ts and his relationship with Brandy. And so she does that and she's actually got three nipples. the third looks exactly like the other two. and it's actually touching the right nipple, and I'll tell you something about that in a little bit in case you're curious. she rubs her nipples and she fonds her breasts. because ts needs this advice. Her most popular quote during this is understanding is reached only after confrontation. So some sort of confrontation needs to happen in the future for, things to be resolved and for ts to get back with Andy. it's a very quirky, odd scene. It may even be considered crude. It goes on for at least 5, 6, 7 minutes. they eventually walk out, ts was excited to get the advice. And Brody actually, despite saying it was disgusting, he was actually the last to leave. And eventually, Priscilla walks out near the door and she pulls off the third nipple and eats it like a candy. So that. Situation was really fun. I don't want to give out everything about it, but I think if you can suspend reality for that scene as well as the entire movie, you'll really enjoy the movie. but before we do the synopsis, I'll just tell you, when they walk in ts says, this looks like something out of Octopussy. Because they go through these beaded doors, you know where the beads are hanging down, and you have to move them outta the way with your hands and arms in order to go in. And so it got me thinking, because there's potentially some other Bond references in here. I had a story from the early days of cable. Octopussy was Roger Moore's probably last Good Bond movie. everybody hated a View to a Kill, but in 83, Octopussy came out. I don't really know exactly how they were able to use that. Name in the movie, in the theaters and on TV and all that stuff other than that's the way Ian Fleming probably wrote a story But, when we first got cable, My dad would complain to his side of the family that we were all cussing. these young boys are cussing and swearing and saying things that we shouldn't And, he says, oh yeah, they get it from that cable and that hbo. And I'm like, that's possible, but we also get it from you and Uncle ej. that's where a lot of it was coming from too, quite honestly. I don't know if we ever said that to him, but Octopussy in particular, you have to remember in 83 or 84, I'm six or seven and Dad still frowns on me saying things like hell and damn, much less saying stuff like, son of a Bitch, which is not even really a bad word anymore, but you say the name of this movie Octopussy. there were some other controversially titled movies in the late seventies and early eighties. Just as examples. There was a movie called The Bitch with Joan Collins, and there was another one called The Bastard. Can't remember who was in that. the Jerk with Steve Martin you can call someone a jerk, I think, obviously that's a great classic movie comedy there. So the point is, what else do you call these movies? you gotta describe it somehow. And yet I was a young kid and shouldn't have used that language, but what else can you call the movies? And he is like, you better put saying that. Don't say that. And I'm like, that's what the movie is called. what am I supposed to call it? Roger Moore's most recent James Bond movie. I don't know. That was a confusing time for me. But that's just one of the many stories from, like I said, the early days of cable. And so you also had, the third nipple thing with Priscilla on there. there's a couple of things about that that could have come from a James Bond movie man with a golden gun. Christopher Lee had a third nipple. However, if you wanna talk about anatomy, third nipples are actually fairly common, but they don't look like the other two. And gonna give you like a little bit of science information. Here they actually look much smaller. Like they don't really have an ola, but they may just be like a little nub and they may not even be noticeable. So that's where this movie was a little inaccurate in that regard. I also should probably say third nipples don't typically contact the other nipples like, on Priscilla's right breast here in this movie. and then of course, Priscilla like I mentioned a few weeks ago, had a role in License to Kill, so that was a fun scene. Miss Ivana, the topless fortune teller. She, said many people still frown on topless fortune telling. Anyway, it's a great scene, great movie. It's definitely worth a look. I would definitely, Rent it or, it used to be on some streaming services actually. overall I'd give the movie an A plus. I would give Priscilla's performance an a plus. The humor, like I said, it definitely has an eighties feel, even despite the fact that it's definitely in the nineties there was a nineties attitude in it. That was inescapable and that was part of the difference. I think the other thing that I wanted to say is there, wound up being more. Of a realism that kind of snuck into comedy during the nineties, and this show does not have that. I'm so very thankful for that. I think it was part of what was killing comedy along with political correctness, and there's none of that in this movie. So I just wanted to add that real quick at the end. I think that's about all I wanted to say for today. Anyway, I just wanna thank you again for being with me this week and, taking in this content that I make for you. I work pretty hard at it, still considering some format changes and adding some other things. I noticed this week the downloads really went way up since about. Friday the 14th. I'm now recording this on Tuesday the 18th of July. somebody in Houston is really downloading them like crazy and I don't think it's my brother. But I could be wrong, but I'm really pleased that you're a fan and obviously encouraging you to contact me with whatever questions you have. like I said I'd really like to do an ask me anything segment at least, and, one day maybe get into some interviews. I'd really love to have, some folks that we've talked about on here, perhaps Priscilla, herself. I'm gonna wrap this up for this week, so thank you for joining me. I'm gonna go ahead and sign off. Take care and look forward to seeing you at another party very soon, next week, in fact. So take care. We'll see you then. This is Frank Weber signing off from Frank Weber's party. The theme song is called retro funk. Bye soul prod music and can be found@pixabay.com.