The Legend of Billie Jean (1985)

Laci (00:00:22):

Nothing. I’m not putting the dangly earring on Matt that you told me I can’t wear because of audio issues.

Matt (00:00:29):

Okay. Laci put in a very, I

Laci (00:00:31):

Didn’t put it in. I put it on.

Matt (00:00:32):

Okay. Laci’s wearing a very obnoxious, loud earring to look like Helen Slater as Billie Jean.

Laci (00:00:38):

Billie Jean Dave the only. You’re lucky it won’t go

Matt (00:00:42):

Back on. Look, it does make you look rocking. I won’t disagree. I like that,

Laci (00:00:47):

But I’m not allowed to be on the podcast if I wear it,

Matt (00:00:49):

But the problem is, alright, Laci’s a very animated person. She doesn’t do anything quietly, including just moving her head. She’s like, Kramer, we always say this. Laci is like Kramer. Oh, this is Load Bearing Beams. I’m Matt Stokes

Laci (00:01:00):

And this is Kramer

Matt (00:01:02):

Cosmo Kramer.

Laci (00:01:03):

This is Laci Roth.

Matt (00:01:03):

Every twitch that she hears, she jerks violently in respond to it.

Laci (00:01:08):

Well, part of the reason is that I hear twitches, you know how hard that

Matt (00:01:11):

Is. Know I know

Laci (00:01:13):

It’s hard

Matt (00:01:14):

And I know it’s worse on you than it is for me having to hear about it and see it. But yeah, I just kept hearing it in my earphones and we’re trying to make an audio program.

Laci (00:01:24):

I was just trying to be visually inspiring.

Matt (00:01:26):

You’re already visually inspiring.

Laci (00:01:28):

Thank you. To me they’re audio

Matt (00:01:30):

And to everyone.

Laci (00:01:31):

Yes. Okay. Then underneath the airing,

Matt (00:01:33):

This is our movie podcast. If you’re just joining us, because you’re a big fan of the Legend of Billie

Laci (00:01:37):

Jean, which I don’t blame you.

Matt (00:01:39):

I don’t blame you. And also this is one of the least covered movies we’ve ever covered. We’ve covered Star Wars, we’ve covered James Bond movies, we’ve covered superhero pictures.

Laci (00:01:49):

So you’re saying it’s down there with loser in terms of with

Matt (00:01:54):

Loser

Laci (00:01:55):

Up there with loser,

Matt (00:01:55):

Down there with loser. It’s honestly down there with our most recent episode. Baby boom,

Laci (00:01:59):

Baby

Matt (00:02:00):

Boom. But even less about this

Laci (00:02:02):

Movie. These are some gems. We’re unearthing them for you. You’re welcome.

Matt (00:02:06):

Yeah, so what we usually do is Laci and I, internet who are married to each other, take, do a deep dive into a movie, try to unpack the history, and then you just go through the movie and do impressions and make jokes and

Laci (00:02:15):

Try

Matt (00:02:15):

To understand what’s really going on.

Laci (00:02:17):

Deep Dive is perfect for this movie because she wears scuba gear.

Matt (00:02:22):

Yeah, and she dives with alligators.

Laci (00:02:25):

She didn’t, I guess she Yeah, she did. She would. She don’t have no fire. She do.

Matt (00:02:30):

This movie is, but usually one of us picks a movie that we love from long, long ago and now we take a look in the present. How does it play out? Except this time we did a listener’s choice. We do these occasionally and I love doing them and we put it out to our friends and listeners and viewers and everything. Please submit your movie and we’ll do a lottery. We spun a wheel. The winner was Monique’s Movie Madness

Speaker 3 (00:02:55):

And

Matt (00:02:56):

We had her submit a little video explaining what it is that she loves about the legend of

Laci (00:03:01):

Billie Jean fellow film talker. Do catch her on the TikTok. I’m

Speaker 4 (00:03:05):

Sure I’m so stoked that legend of Billie Jean was picked for the listener’s choice lottery pick to be discussed on Load Bearing Beams because for Monique’s movie Madness, legend of Billie Jean is the load-bearing beam. This is actually the first movie that I ever saw in a theater environment, was at a drive-in. My mom took me to see this with the movie mask and it’s just what led to great eighties movie fun. It had a great soundtrack. It wasn’t an over to the top plot of a movie, but I just fell in love with the way it was done. It led to my love of Christian Slater as one of my favorite actors, and so I am super stoked to hear you guys talk about this movie and fair is fair.

Matt (00:03:48):

I can’t imagine a better environment to see this movie. Can you imagine it’s the mid eighties you go to a drive-in,

Laci (00:03:53):

If it was in Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas, that would be the, and if that driver and were also on a beach,

Matt (00:03:58):

Go to see the legend of Billie Jean on a double bill with Mask, but I’ve never seen Mask. Have you seen Mask with Eric Stoltz and Cher

Laci (00:04:06):

With the deformed person? Yeah.

Matt (00:04:07):

Yes. I assume it’s what she meant. She didn’t mean the Jim car.

Laci (00:04:11):

No, somebody

Matt (00:04:12):

Slapped me or does it stop me? Stop

Laci (00:04:15):

Me. Somebody

Matt (00:04:15):

Slapped me. You just don’t like Jim Carrey. No, I liked that movie. I watched it recently for the first time.

Laci (00:04:20):

Oh,

Matt (00:04:21):

And speaking to Jim Carrey, we’ll be covering the Truman Show soon. That’s why you watched Pat

Laci (00:04:25):

Patriot. You got to pay, pay, pay.

Matt (00:04:28):

So our histories with this movie was nothing. I barely even heard of the movie. I know that. It’s an unfortunate title. If I heard the title, I’d been like, what is that? Some tennis movie?

Laci (00:04:40):

Yeah, I thought it was a baseball movie about a man.

Matt (00:04:44):

Oh, okay. Why

Laci (00:04:46):

Legend of Billie Jean? I don’t know why.

Matt (00:04:48):

Yeah. I assumed it was about Billie Jean King, the tennis player, or somehow related to the song that just happened to be the biggest song in the world at the exact same time the movie came out, which is kind of weird. The radio’s always playing in this movie and nobody ever references. Hey, this is kind of like that song that’s very popular.

Laci (00:05:03):

How’s it anything like the song though? It’s not

Matt (00:05:06):

Just the words Billie Jean.

Laci (00:05:07):

Yeah, but it’s a negative song about a person named Billie Jean.

Matt (00:05:10):

Yes, I know, but if you hear, if the song is the biggest song in the world and people keep saying Billie Jean, isn’t somebody going to be like Bill Jane? Nobody ever does that.

Laci (00:05:18):

They don’t do it. They couldn’t get the rights to even those moments of the song.

Matt (00:05:21):

No, I know. That’s why.

Laci (00:05:24):

Oh, he knows everybody. I’m so sorry. I told you something, you know. Well

Matt (00:05:29):

Fuck. But here’s what I don’t know.

(00:05:32):

Well, I’ll just say what I think before. So, okay, I was looking at the poster. I have the DVD right here. So this movie, which was not a hit at the box office, is a Tri-Star release. So this was the Sony Pictures, I mean owned by Sony, so neglected by the studio that this DVD was literally print on demand is a model some of the studios were doing. It’s like if somebody places an order. Yeah, we’ll print it out and then you can tell this is printed on not computer paper, but it just looks really chinsy. This DVD. So this is a neglected movie, but I was like, I bet it’s fun. It’s got the 80 sleeves just from what I can tell,

Laci (00:06:15):

They can come into my movie orphanage, which is what I consider all of these are my foster children.

Matt (00:06:21):

Oh, that’s why you feel so powerfully for them. You take care of them.

Laci (00:06:25):

Yes. And if someone wants it more than I do, I will give it to them. I am just a foster home.

Matt (00:06:30):

This is just temporary. This

Laci (00:06:32):

Is the VHS is in’t particular. I just want them safe until someone else wants ’em safer.

Matt (00:06:36):

Yeah. This is a stop. This isn’t

Laci (00:06:38):

Or forever. It just depends.

Matt (00:06:40):

Things might turn out that

Laci (00:06:41):

Way. Yeah.

Matt (00:06:42):

Anyway, I think she undersold it. I think this is a secret masterpiece of eighties American movies. I love this movie.

Laci (00:06:49):

Awesome. Fuck yeah. Monique, look what you’ve done.

Matt (00:06:52):

What did you think?

Laci (00:06:53):

I fucking loved it. I was enraptured Southern accents are, they’re dicey. It can really

Matt (00:07:02):

Turn. Say that again? Say dicey again.

Laci (00:07:04):

Dicey.

Matt (00:07:04):

Yeah, sure.

Laci (00:07:05):

They can turn me off of a movie really quick, but these were so believable and sweet that it didn’t bother me once it added to it. It’s a minor miracle that I had never heard of. Doesn’t make sense to me that I’ve never heard of it because it’s right in my groove of movies. I assure you it is the title, it was probably in Ms. Barbara’s little fricking recipe box and I thought, oh, baseball movie gRoth. That’s all that

Matt (00:07:30):

Happened. That’s probably true for me. But the working title of the movie was Fair is fair. Which is also bad.

Speaker 3 (00:07:35):

Yeah.

Matt (00:07:36):

I think the legend of Billie Jean kind of how do you even, is the Beatles a bad band title? I don’t know. It’s just the Beatles. All I know is the Legend of Billie Jean a great movie. How can I,

Laci (00:07:45):

Now that I’ve seen the movie though, I think the title is perfect because of exactly what it’s

Matt (00:07:49):

Exactly you’re watching.

Laci (00:07:50):

She went viral, you were

Matt (00:07:51):

Watching a legend unfold before your

Laci (00:07:54):

Eyes, right. And then even becoming mythical in that she’s not actually doing all the forever in her life. She will always be tied to things she did not do as well because that’s just how it goes.

Matt (00:08:07):

So why did we like this movie so much? I mean, for me, I’ve talked so much about my love of 80 LEAs and just I love the Friday the 13th movies and partially I just like looking at these weird people and the way they dress and how little clothes they wear, the boys and the girls. I like the soundtrack. I like this movie looks incredible. It was shot by Jeffrey Kimball who the next year would shoot Top Gun and you can just feel the heat in every scene. You can feel how hot everything

Speaker 3 (00:08:35):

Is. Yes. I loved that.

Matt (00:08:37):

They’re like pouring glycerin on the actor

Laci (00:08:39):

Are

Matt (00:08:39):

Actors. Yeah. We need you to look like it’s hotter.

Laci (00:08:41):

They look sweaty shit and they’re like, they’re clothes have sweat on them too. And yeah, I love

Matt (00:08:47):

That. And it is weirdly pitched at kind of a PG audience, even though there’s a few F-bombs and a pan away before a sex scene happens. And I realize this is kind of a Spielberg movie like Spiel.

Laci (00:09:01):

Sure, yes. It’s kind of a goonies. It is meant for children to watch it or slightly older children to watch it and feel grown up and feel taken seriously. It is in the pantheon of movies that I love that take kids and address the fact that they have human big person problems and it treats ’em that way. It’s like movies like Stand By Me or Little Monsters to a lesser extent Sandlot because that’s, it’s goofy the way they do it, but they let the kids handle their business. And I don’t mean we need to let our kids go outside more. I just mean these kids have fucking problems and you might not always understand them. They don’t know how to voice them. Exactly. But just go ahead and trust them that they’re handling it the way they think they need to.

Matt (00:09:49):

Yeah, the main character has a mom. It’s not like she’s been abandoned, but the mom is kind of off busy with her new boyfriend and busy. We don’t need to worry about her when she’s aware of what’s happening to her daughter. She’s like, how about that?

Laci (00:10:01):

That’s not true. Every time we check in with the mom, the mom is worried. But that yeah, she’s an independent older sister, older sisters who decide that they’re going to also be caregivers do kind of end up peers with the mom and sometimes surpass them in other ways in that they’re more tuned into like what’s going on with their siblings.

Matt (00:10:20):

There’s a little bit of a class politics in this movie

Laci (00:10:23):

For sure. There’s

Matt (00:10:23):

Definitely

Laci (00:10:24):

A lot of it.

Matt (00:10:25):

Yeah, there’s definitely,

Laci (00:10:28):

They perfectly show you lower, middle and high with all the main characters, the lower being Billie Jean, middle being the business owner and a shitty son, and then high being the boyfriend in the way that he lives. I think that they’re very much as a class thing.

Matt (00:10:41):

Oh yes. And it’s so easy to get trampled on and things like sexual assault when they happen, it is so much worse to, it’s obviously horrible to happen to anybody if you are in a class disparity, if your victim has more economic power than you, you are all the more victimized because you just have that much less power.

Laci (00:11:00):

And it looks like you’re trying to get something.

Matt (00:11:03):

As we see in this movie, and I’m sure you and I are both straight people, there’s definitely a queer reading of this movie of her shedding the skin of a straight cis person and becoming what she wants to become and society accepting her and loving her for that and how lovely that would be. So this is just a goddamn good little movie everybody. Good little, good little movie. Check it out. I think that’s the podcast, right?

Laci (00:11:31):

Goodnight.

Matt (00:11:32):

Just kidding. No, we did a bonus video and not really related to the movie this week. We instead explored the question who what actor do you hate? Lisa and I both named actors or actresses who we hate.

Laci (00:11:45):

We both named Anne Hathaway.

Matt (00:11:47):

We both named

Laci (00:11:48):

Anne or did we? Damn

Matt (00:11:49):

Anne Hathaway.

Laci (00:11:50):

You need to go watch it.

Matt (00:11:51):

Now I’m not saying I would name Christian Slater to this list, but Christian Slater is an actor who might perfectly illustrate for me neither here nor there, what never think like, oh hell yeah, Christian Slater, but also very rarely think like, get off the screen bud.

Laci (00:12:08):

Then why even bring him up, man?

Matt (00:12:10):

Because he means what the fuck a person of a certain age. He means a lot and I don’t get

Laci (00:12:15):

It. He’s the fucking river Phoenix that stayed alive. That’s what he means.

Matt (00:12:22):

What has he ever done on my own private Idaho Heather’s.

Laci (00:12:28):

I’m not talking about this with you right now, man.

Matt (00:12:30):

Okay,

Laci (00:12:30):

What about Better Roses? What about something about hearts and shit?

Matt (00:12:34):

You know what he actually is tangentially. Yes. He’s related to the actor who I did name who I won’t say anymore, the actor. You have to watch that video. You can do it on our Twitter load bearing pod, blue sky Load Bearing Beams, Load Bearing Beams on Instagram, Load Bearing Beams on. That’s a stupid talk TikTok. And now the brief history of the legend of Billie Jean and we start with in the most logical place with communism. Perfect.

Laci (00:13:23):

This is all just becoming a way for you to sneak into your history, things that you like to talk about anyway, but go on.

Matt (00:13:29):

Or as j Edgar Hoover pronounced it communism. Now again, very little information about the production of this movie anywhere, but on this shitty DVD that I mentioned, which was released upon the 25th anniversary of the Legend of Billie Jean, there is a commentary with Helen Slater and Yardley Smith. Yardley Smith plays poet better.

(00:13:51):

Yardley Smith is of course Lisa Simpson. She is a delight on, I’ve heard her on hundreds of Simpson’s commentaries. So she’s a pro’s pro and she’s a delight on Simpson’s commentaries. And this is a very charming commentary where these two are just hanging out watching the movie and laughing, saying Our accents are so bad. Helen Slater, though, has a lot of good information about this movie. For example, this kind of made everything a little clear to me. The original screenplay for this movie is written by a person named Walter Bernstein. Now this guy who originally in the 1940s was an up and coming writer in New York for the New Yorker and then in Hollywood in the movies until he was blacklisted for his left wing political activities. And then many blacklisted writers of this period, he just worked with very little pay and without credit, he wrote really famous movies like The Magnificent

Speaker 5 (00:14:42):

Seven.

Matt (00:14:43):

After that era, that stupid era ended in Hollywood was like, we’re sorry, come on back now we don’t care anymore. He wrote a movie called The Front starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel a movie about a blacklisted writer and he got an Oscar nomination for that movie. So just knowing this person, knowing his philosophy and his experience, the legend of Billie Jean’s class, politics, class consciousness, and its story of a person like going up against the injustices of a system. It makes a lot of sense. And Helen Slater says, the final screenwriting credits for the movie went to Lawrence Connor and Mark Rosenthal because this went through a lot of revisions, but she made sure to point out this all starts with him with Bernstein and his political message for the movie. So that’s why we had to start with Communism.

Laci (00:15:26):

Well, thank you.

Matt (00:15:27):

Alright. Matthew Robbins is the director of this movie and he was part of the same film brat scene as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in Los Angeles in the early seventies. He was a collaborator of Spielberg’s. He wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s first movie, first theatrical film, the Sugarland Express. And the Sugarland Express is like a spiritual bill Jean’s kind of a spiritual sequel. It’s a Sugarland Express because that’s also about a Texas small town. Couple of crooks go on a famous, they just become folk hero. Goldie ha. And her breaks her husband out of jail and they go on a really slow car chase from the cops and they just get celebrated by everybody they come in contact with and it’s got the same sort of vibe and sense of humor as this.

(00:16:13):

But he did uncredited writing on Jaws and Close Encounters. Then he moved over to direct into the director’s chair. He directed Corvette Summer in 1978, dragon Slayer in 1981. Legend of Billie Jean in 85. Battery’s not included in 1987. Since then, he’s pretty much been a writer. He works with Guillermo del Toro. He wrote Mimic Crimson Peak and the most recent Pinocchio that Del Toro made. And to now Helen Slater, who was 21 years old when this movie was produced. Her father was a television executive. It seems like every person we talk about has a, if not famous father, a father working in a very important job,

Laci (00:16:51):

They can’t help where they’re born. Matt.

Matt (00:16:53):

So super girl, the spinoff to the very successful Christopher Reef Superman movies was going to be, I mean it’s just like now the studio’s like, here’s our big plan. We’re going to have 10 Supergirl movies and they’re going to spawn off and then we’ll have a Wonder Woman movie. But it all starts here. And they did a nationwide casting search for an unknown actress to play Supergirl and found Helen Slater. And so this movie Supergirl comes out in 1984 and it’s a big old disappointment, but it does have a cult following.

Laci (00:17:22):

Can I ask, when Blue Lagoon came out,

Matt (00:17:25):

Was that 78? Why?

Laci (00:17:27):

She looks just like, is it not clutter?

Matt (00:17:31):

Brook shields?

Laci (00:17:31):

Brook shields, the way that she’s posed her hair, the way she’s getting out of the water, the way they way that they make her look like sweaty hot but hot.

Matt (00:17:44):

The camera loves her. Yeah, that was 1980. I’ve never seen Blue Lagoon.

Laci (00:17:50):

I’ve remembered being awkward and sexy and also having to do with the period at some point too.

Matt (00:17:58):

Huh? Just like this movie,

Laci (00:18:00):

I’ve never seen a movie more awesome about a period than this fucking movie Awkward and way ahead of the God damn time.

Matt (00:18:05):

Awkward. The awkwardness is in other parts, the period, it’s very pro period.

Laci (00:18:09):

I love that.

Matt (00:18:10):

Periods are good

Laci (00:18:11):

Explanation,

Matt (00:18:13):

But they produced Legend of Billie Jean, which is Helen Slater’s big star follow up to Supergirl. They produced it before Supergirl gets released. So they’re like, we got the next big fucking movie star,

Laci (00:18:24):

Right?

Matt (00:18:24):

Anchoring this thing and instead, girl Bombs Legend of Billie Jean is not a big hit. Let’s see. She goes on to be in movies like Ruthless People and the secret of my success opposite Michael J. Fox, she’s in city slickers in a small role and so is Yardley Smith. Weirdly, Yardley Smith is at the beginning of the movie, she crashes the party and is like Daniel Stern, you knocked me up and I don’t want to get an abortion. It’s so weird. Helen Slater was in the 1994 Lassie movie, but basically she’s just done tv. She’s very involved with DC Media. She played and she did a role on the live action Supergirl show as not Super Girl. And she was a voice on Batman, the animated series, the Great Animated Series from the nineties. She played Talia Al Goul, that’s Helen Slater and that’s the legend of Billie Jean told you, we got nothing,

Laci (00:19:13):

Got nothing

Matt (00:19:15):

For a very fun movie. Somebody should do an oral history. Somebody should talk to all these people.

Laci (00:19:20):

Just type up whatever the fuck she said during her commentary.

Matt (00:19:23):

Well, but the commentary was good. It’s just there’s a lot of like, oh, I’m wearing a wig right there. Oh, I’m not wearing a wig there.

Laci (00:19:29):

Oh, when Man win, Matt, why wouldn’t you? Okay, you better fucking tell me, man.

Matt (00:19:33):

Well, it’s often within the same scene because there’ll be pickup shots. Oh, we had to go back and reshoot that. So in that shot of not

Laci (00:19:40):

Wearing wig thought, is it sometime with her short hair? Is it sometimes that the short hair is a wig?

Matt (00:19:46):

I don’t It

Laci (00:19:46):

Was twice where it looked wrong.

Matt (00:19:48):

No, I mean I think she has long hair, then cuts it and then had to go back and shoot scenes when she has the long hair. Got it all. So this movie, the Legend of Billie Jean, the legend begins, every legend has a beginning and this is where we begin.

Speaker 3 (00:20:33):

Thank you,

Matt (00:20:34):

Matt, with this trailer park and this beautiful electric scooter that all this fuss is about. This whole mess that unfolds is because of this little electric scooter and a short shorted little Christian Slater is about to take her out for a spin. And we hear this radio host, this movie has a radio, well, there’s a music playing constantly

Laci (00:20:56):

And

Matt (00:20:56):

You also hear radio chatter throughout.

Laci (00:20:58):

It’s the same VJ or sorry, dj, JJ whatever,

Matt (00:21:04):

JJ whatever here for Corpus Christ,

Laci (00:21:05):

I dunno know his last name, but

Matt (00:21:06):

You don’t know.

Laci (00:21:08):

Instead of a narrator. I think it’s clever. Two years to use a radio, especially in the car so much and because this is a time when everyone listened to the radio everywhere

Matt (00:21:17):

And he’s kind of a Greek chorus.

Laci (00:21:19):

I’m going to slap

Matt (00:21:21):

The face. Well, so this is Corpus Christi, Texas where the movie was actually shot and people, it’s too damn hot. We see Helen Slater is Billie Jean. She’s doing the laundry. So we see right away she’s kind of running this family, even though she has her mom, her mom’s kind of a dumbass or something.

Laci (00:21:38):

Helen

Matt (00:21:38):

Slate. Oh God.

Laci (00:21:38):

Damnit. She’s a widow. Widow or widow. She’s a widow fucking widow. And she lives in a trailer park who’s the only income probably. So get off her. Goddamn back.

Matt (00:21:49):

Sorry. She’s

Laci (00:21:49):

One person.

Matt (00:21:50):

Mrs. Jean, this trailer park though it’s not what those Hollywood sickos have their prejudices about trailer parks, this trailer park. It’s a good family environment.

Laci (00:21:59):

Fucking I want to go to there. I will say it is a fucking weird move though that with the insurance money from her dead husbands who died of a motorcycle accident, that she allowed her son to buy a scooter. She didn’t want to do it, but that’s what, I guess they’re all grieving in their own way.

Matt (00:22:18):

Yeah, this is Howie. I didn’t connect it that he died in a motorcycle accident. So he owns it by getting a scooter. I mean, that looks like a motorcycle,

Laci (00:22:27):

But

Matt (00:22:27):

They keep saying scooter,

Laci (00:22:28):

But it means so much to him because he bought it with his father’s insurance money and to be more like him.

Matt (00:22:34):

Right, right. Exactly. Right away the leering camera with Helen Slater, Christian Slater, and these people are not brother and sister in real life despite having the same last name and they play brother and sister in the movie Helen Slater says to this day, people ask her about that. He’s like, come on sister, we got to go wherever. And she’s like, hold down there banks, Christian Slater plays a character named Banks and Billie Jean. We just get a from behind shot of her just taking off her shirt and changing.

Laci (00:23:08):

This is a very sexual, I’m glad she was 21 because Jesus.

Matt (00:23:12):

Yeah.

Laci (00:23:13):

The movie is just, I mean, everyone in the movie is just, I mean, they’re just sexualizing her. Don’t be pretty.

Matt (00:23:21):

The Spielberg wouldn’t do that.

Laci (00:23:23):

No.

Matt (00:23:24):

Not because he’s too woke, but because he’s just too prude. Matthew Robbins is like show movie. He

Laci (00:23:29):

Can No. Okay, but this feels more real. I feel like this is an accurate way that what happens to pretty girls, they’re not taken seriously. They’re taken advantage of. I mean, girls are in general, but don’t look like this in a small town.

Matt (00:23:43):

Of course, of course. I’m saying the camera itself, you can feel is also like, oh God,

Laci (00:23:47):

Look. Yes. And there’s even a big role that a camera plays right away. It feels so freaking voyeuristic and wrong, this guy with the camera. And then it proves to be a very shitty thing that these pictures exist. Why don’t we go on from the first scene before we get into the whole

Matt (00:24:04):

Movie? Well, they go off together on this scooter and then a gang of local Tufts pulls up beside them and starts pulling pranks on them. This also happens in Texas Chainsaw Massacre too. I guess it was the early eighties in Texas, and this is what you did.

Laci (00:24:18):

They had a lot of places to drive. Everybody had a car and even as a high schooler for me, we would go drive, that’s a thing.

Matt (00:24:26):

Oh yes, drive. But then pull up next to some other people and harass

Laci (00:24:29):

’em. Oh, right. Yeah. No, we didn’t have the open highway the way Texas does.

Matt (00:24:32):

So they get to this drive-in and Billie Jean goes to get a shake for her brother. And while they’re doing that, these goons led by Huey

Laci (00:24:41):

Fuck the weirdest set of names I’ve ever heard of in this movie. Every now and then you get two weird names, but everyone has a weird name, practically

Matt (00:24:51):

Hue. And he put some gum on Christian Slater’s scooter.

Laci (00:24:56):

He’s very proud of it too. Finds it very hilarious.

Matt (00:24:59):

And Christian Slayer can’t do anything about it. He’s just a puny little guy.

Laci (00:25:02):

I will say at this time though, we don’t know that they know each other. That’s not made clear. And yes, Christian Slayer is sick of being small and he’s going to be a big boy one day, but his dad just died and he’s the man of the house. And you could just tell he’s just fucking pissed. He’s a powder keg and don’t touch my fucking scooter, man. It’s my dad’s scooter in my brain. His sister’s bigger than him. His sister takes care of him. And it’s just like I can’t take it.

Matt (00:25:36):

But he doesn’t seem to have, and I like this, he doesn’t seem to have a chip on his shoulder about the fact that his sister’s the alpha.

Laci (00:25:42):

Oh no, no. They love each other. It’s a really sweet relationship.

Matt (00:25:45):

He’s fine with his sister beating people up for him.

Laci (00:25:47):

Yes.

Matt (00:25:49):

She comes out when she has a strawberry shake. He wanted a vanilla. They have vanilla, and she’s like, gosh, banks, don’t you get

Laci (00:25:56):

Tired of

Speaker 6 (00:25:57):

Vanilla? No. Stop.

Laci (00:25:58):

She says, they’re out. Which is like, God, you lie. You can’t have a strawberry shake without having vanilla base, so you liar.

Matt (00:26:04):

Well, they’re just pushing. I mean,

Laci (00:26:06):

No, that’s not how shake machines work. This is a sonic drive-in or just a regular drive-in. It all starts with vanilla.

Matt (00:26:12):

It occurred to me, I was like, oh, it’s like a sonic. And then I realized, no wait. Sonic is an adaptation of these. They used to have the real thing, a drive-in, and then Sonic’s like, Hey, we’ll recreate that old thing.

Speaker 5 (00:26:24):

Okay,

Matt (00:26:25):

So Huey comes out again, Huey’s the lead goon, and he’s harassing them. And then he attempts to kiss Billie Jean against her will, and now her brother spring to her defense and throws his shake in the guy’s face and they take off in the scooter,

Laci (00:26:37):

But they get far enough to their watering hole here and they’re just going to jump in any body of water fucking scorching hot. And there could be gators in that water, but Billie Jean doesn’t give a shit. And it’s very, they definitely display Billie Jean’s body right away. I mean, luckily her and Christian Slater play it just right. Some fucking how. I don’t know how they managed to not make it look incestuous, but they do it. But I was worried.

Matt (00:27:09):

Yeah. I was like, no, it looks like they’re going to reveal. Actually, we’re only stepsister.

Laci (00:27:14):

Right. That’s where I thought this is going. And

Matt (00:27:15):

Then the porn starts. This is look at them in the sun, just naked and gorgeous together laying next to each other on this raft.

Laci (00:27:23):

But he never once even looks at her butt. It’s right there, Christian.

Matt (00:27:27):

Just do it. Christian.

Laci (00:27:28):

Just take a little look Anyway. And I guess this is a known hole of ordering because the assholes pull up and they start, they take the bike or they start turning it on and

Matt (00:27:41):

Fucking with it. Yeah, they start fucking with it.

Laci (00:27:43):

And they’re in raft. They’re in a raft. So they have to swim a bit to get to the shore. I ache. I ache because I feel like I know where this movie’s going. I’m glad it handled us gently, but I was worried for a while there.

Matt (00:27:58):

But right away, this is four minutes into the movie, and I’m like, no wonder I’m pumping my fist with joy. They’re at a lake. It’s like Friday the 13th. There’s even a raft out in the lake. Somebody pretends to be drowning and then says Gotcha. Which is always a fun prank to do in a lake. We’ve established lakes are creepy. Don’t go into a lake. They’re scary. But then they’re out on the raft and this thing recurs where Binks wants his big sister to take him away from here. Take me to Vermont, Billy Jane.

Laci (00:28:28):

They don’t ever explain why it is that she knows about Vermont, but that’s why I didn’t think they were related at first. I thought she was a friend.

Matt (00:28:36):

Yeah. It’s like, I don’t know. Their world is so small that she read a paragraph about Vermont 10 years ago.

Laci (00:28:42):

I swear that guy, he just saw that poster at a Walmart and was like, that’s hot as shit. I’m going to learn things about Vermont. No, I’m not. I don’t like to read Billy Jean. Could you learn things about Vermont? Then I’m going to ask you about him.

Matt (00:28:51):

But he keeps doing, tell me about Vermont Bailey. Jane,

Laci (00:28:54):

I promise you it’s from the poster now that I think about

Matt (00:28:57):

It. Okay. I mean, yeah, it’s a little of mice and men. Tell me about the rabbits, George. So yeah, she going to shoot him in the back of the head before the event.

Speaker 3 (00:29:06):

Our kid when they were five. Tell me about people getting hurt.

Matt (00:29:11):

No, it was,

Speaker 3 (00:29:12):

Tell me about the time you got hurt.

Matt (00:29:14):

They love to hear us tell stories about times where we got hurt and then it would just be, tell me a story of you getting hurt.

Laci (00:29:21):

Well, I stumped my toe on April 22nd.

Matt (00:29:24):

And then another thing is that same kid when they were much younger, loved us singing the Humpty Dumpty song. But there’s only so many lyrics to that song because the kid was getting really sleepy and just said, just tell me, just talk about Humpty Dumpty,

Laci (00:29:38):

Just his life.

Matt (00:29:39):

Just say Humpty Dumpty stuff to me. Well, I mean, where to begin?

Laci (00:29:45):

That’s where we begin.

Matt (00:29:46):

So he’s like, yeah, Christian’s leader is very excited about Vermont. He’s like log cabin, scale lifts, snowballs and no alligators

Laci (00:29:53):

Basically, as far as we can get from here. He doesn’t realize Vermont has their own problems, but he’s hot. He’s sick of his life here. This place feels small and suffocating and just Vermont, the fresh air,

Matt (00:30:05):

The swimming, they go back to the trailer and there’s their mama and she’s getting ready for a date. And the mom, well, she’s like, well, I’m glad that darn bike is gone. Now it makes sense. Her husband died in a motorcycle accident. Now she doesn’t have to worry about her son dying in a scooter accident. And then her date pulls up and Billy Jean, it honks. Yeah. Billy Jean looks out at him and then says, oh, he looks real nice. And I was like,

Laci (00:30:29):

He doesn’t even come to the door, bill. Jean, what are the standards?

Matt (00:30:32):

I thought it was supposed to be a joke. She’s like, this is a scumbag. And Billie Jean’s an idiot. But later in the movie, they see the mom is happy with this guy, which if we think of this as an Alan movie, like no, things are nice and they’re going to work out well. But Binks, he’s really upset about his bike. He’s like that huby, goddammit. He better not hurt my back. Even scratch it neither. And then he just takes off into the night to go find Huey and get his damn bike back. So Billie Jean goes over to her friend’s houses, Ophelia and Putter. So Ophelia played by Martha Gamon and Yardley Smith plays putter. And again, Yardley Smith, who is 20 years old at the time,

Laci (00:31:13):

You have to stop telling me that.

Matt (00:31:15):

But is playing her like she’s 12.

Laci (00:31:17):

Well, she is playing someone pre puberty and it doesn’t have boobs yet. Apparently they keep saying that or they did once.

Matt (00:31:25):

And it is, I did get over it. But hearing Lisa Simpson doing this country fried accent,

Speaker 6 (00:31:32):

I think they’re gRoth. Cause you don’t have any What a cow. You think you want to look like that I’m hurt.

Laci (00:31:41):

I’m here. But don’t you think that whenever she’s outside of her voice acting she has to do a country accent or else it just sounds like all the things she voice acts.

Matt (00:31:51):

Well, you will see her in live action movies again. City slickers. It was fucking weird. The first, when I was thought 13 years old, she had an accent. No, no, no. I was just making fun of it when I was 13 years old and saw this movie and suddenly, why is Lisa Simpson in this movie? Why does she look like that? And she’ll pop up. She has a one scene role on Mad Men and it’s like, but that’s Lisa Simpson. I mean, she says on the commentary, she’s like, yeah, I thought this movie was going to make me a huge star. Basically all six of the main Simpsons actors thought they would have big live action careers. And instead they got super wealthy doing voices on the Simpsons

Speaker 3 (00:32:26):

Movie.

Matt (00:32:27):

So there’s just watching music videos and eating food outside. And Billie Jean comes over and she’s like, you got to take me to the police station. You got to take me to the police station.

Laci (00:32:36):

And now we see an adult and you feel like, yeah, he’s not taking them seriously enough just yet. But even when you notice it’s the guy from ET who takes Elliot serious, then you know you’re going to be okay.

Matt (00:32:52):

Yeah. Peter Coyote is Lieutenant Ringwald is the cop.

Laci (00:32:55):

Yes.

Matt (00:32:56):

And you’re exactly right. He’s basically playing the same kind of role as an ets. He’s a representative of the state who is my adversary. But you can tell he has a little more empathy and just a better head on him.

Laci (00:33:07):

You know how you can tell right away he is not like the other guys. And you can even see it in the shot. He’s like the only man that doesn’t have a mustache.

Matt (00:33:13):

Yeah,

Laci (00:33:13):

That’s true. Mean the only adult male that does not have a mustache, they comically have one on every other fucking Yahoo, but she’s there in her midd drift with no bra on. And it just clearly looks like a kid, a sexy ass kid. But he’s not being weird. And it’s like it’s such a low bar. But to look like that and not be treated like you’re asking to be commented on, it’s a fucking astonishing feat that he’s being completely dad about it in the best way. And she’s reporting her brother missing her and telling him about the bike. And he’s like, look, we have to give this a couple of days. He’s like, yeah, they really can’t do much for a couple of hours of whatever. No, you don’t understand my brother. This is really serious. Then putter speaks up that Huey, he’s a fucker. The officer can tell like, okay, you’re really serious. I, I understand that this means a lot to you. How about in two days I promise you I’ll go get the fucker. He uses their language. It’s so sweet.

Speaker 5 (00:34:22):

And

Laci (00:34:22):

She feels a bit relieved. She at least was heard albums taken seriously. Even if he can’t really do anything just yet.

Matt (00:34:27):

Yes. When if he ever makes comments about her being pretty girl,

Laci (00:34:32):

It’s

Matt (00:34:32):

Towards saying, because he says, well, you’re a pretty girl. Maybe Huey is just doing this to get your attention.

Laci (00:34:39):

He’s saying it matter. He’s saying it as a way of explaining other male’s behavior. He says it about Huey here. He says it about, he says it too. Huey’s dad later trying to get to the bottom of what is your fucking deal against this girl specifically, especially when it’s the brother that fucking shot you.

Matt (00:34:56):

Now when,

Laci (00:34:58):

Sorry, spoiler alert for later in the episode,

Matt (00:35:01):

But her lack of bra, does it bother you? We all know Laci’s issues with women not wearing brass. I

Laci (00:35:06):

Don’t love

Matt (00:35:06):

It. She thinks women have to wear broad

Laci (00:35:08):

By legal degree. It’s very distracting, but somehow that she’s a teenager, I’m better with it. And she’s hot. They keep constantly saying how hot it is. It’s like whatever. It feels like more of a choice for her for some fucking reason. I don’t know.

Matt (00:35:21):

It

Laci (00:35:21):

Was the age. I tried not to let it, but can you stop talking me into it? I feel how I feel about this. You

Matt (00:35:26):

Like it? Okay. Well, she goes back to her trailer park.

Laci (00:35:30):

It’s so sad. He looks so beat up. He looks bloody in all kinds of ways. Who does? I’m sorry. So banks has returned, his bike is torn all the shit, and she finds him in the bed and she wants to say, dude, you shouldn’t have done that. She turns him over. He is bloody as fuck. He’s all beat up. It’s so sad. It

Matt (00:35:50):

Really looks like Alex Banks, who did this? Who do you think,

Laci (00:35:54):

Did

Matt (00:35:54):

Huey

Laci (00:35:55):

Do this? Bet it was Huey.

Matt (00:35:57):

Well, I got my backpack.

Laci (00:35:59):

He didn’t get his, but I don’t know. It’s just a real believable little moment. He looks properly beat up. It’s not just a bloody nose and a cut acRoth his head. They did really good with the makeup the same way they did. They do good with the sweat. It feels gritty in a good way. It feels like they’re taking this seriously and they look just like brother and sister here. And I don’t know, it’s just a sweet scene, but it is this jarring. You don’t expect this bloody fucking kid.

Matt (00:36:29):

Well, and she’s walking back with Putter and Ophelia. They go their separate ways as Ophelia and putter go into their houses and putter, the younger was supposed to be grounded, so she wasn’t supposed to go to the police station. We just hear her go back into the house and she’s like, hi mama. And then just hear her get smacked.

Laci (00:36:43):

Well, but before she walks in, she gets herself together. She’s like, my mom’s awake. I, and it implies, yeah, you’re about to get punished further, but we don’t really know it yet. And then you just, yeah, you’re about to get slapped the fuck out. There’s a lot of child abuse in this movie and it takes it seriously.

Matt (00:37:02):

Surprising amount of child abuse. A

Laci (00:37:03):

Surprising amount.

Matt (00:37:05):

Yeah. We said this is a wholesome family environment. This trailer park. I’d say of the two moms, one’s good one’s not so good. So it’s kind of a wash, a wash.

Laci (00:37:13):

And then I was impressed at the makeup carrying through. Sometimes in movies, less serious movies, they’ll forget about injuries and just all of a sudden they look normal again. They’re

Matt (00:37:24):

Normal again.

Laci (00:37:25):

I just think it’s a good reminder of, and I even think, look Christian later, looks like he has cotton stuff in his cheek even to give him some swelling. I just think it’s very effective. So it’s the next day. And the sister’s right? Pissed. No, I guess they have some time. They go get an estimate from Auto Place. Yeah, body shop. Body shop. And they get an estimate for how much it’s going to cost to fix the bike. And she walks up to Huey at his dad’s very fucking convincing, awesomely observed sea shitty souvenir shop that’s on the beach. I fucking love the vibes of this shop so much. Very.

Matt (00:38:05):

This is a

Laci (00:38:06):

Beach town. Very Pensacola. So Pensacola.

Matt (00:38:08):

I’ve never been to Corpus Christi, I’ve been to Galveston. It has this vibe. And this is secretly like a good little beach movie.

Laci (00:38:14):

It is, but Pensacola. It is just this way instead of this way. I mean it’s the same lesser expensive mid-class kind of easy vacation area. Not pretentious at all. Anyway, they walk into his store. Well, she makes her brother stay in the car and her friend, she’s going to go handle it. And she says, this is the estimate. This is for the bike. And then she says, this is for you. And then this is one of three nut kicks nut knees just gives it to Huey’s, ball sack. And he’s on the floor always effective.

Matt (00:38:52):

So good. Just slams her knees into those testes and he’s just on the ground. And then the dad comes in, sees the boy on the ground. He is like dad. And he’s like

Laci (00:39:01):

Fucking loser on the ground.

Matt (00:39:02):

Get up dummy. She did this to you, which is this thing. This dad hates this fail son.

Laci (00:39:08):

Well, you know why Huey’s the way that he is,

Matt (00:39:11):

But he’s like, A lady did this to you

Laci (00:39:14):

And he pretends nice and you just know it. It’s covered in slime. You’re like, this fucker is, you can just tell right away. He’s a what’s in it for me kind of guy in every aspect, in every interaction in dealing with any person or item or circumstance,

Matt (00:39:29):

You be immediately says, she says, we owe her money, but she’s trailer trash. Don’t believe her. And the dad’s like you, but get lost. I’m going to talk business. And so the dad poses at first he’s a little sympathetic. He’s like that idiot son of mine. I bet he does owe you the money. Okay, why don’t you come up to the office? I’ll give you the

Laci (00:39:47):

Money. I don’t keep that kind of money down here.

Matt (00:39:49):

He starts walking up the stairs and looks at her and he is like, well, come on. You want the money, don’t you?

Laci (00:39:53):

Yeah, the money can’t come back downstairs on its own.

Matt (00:39:56):

And she’s got the like, okay, does follow him upstairs. And then he pulls out a giant wad of cash. But he’s like, your mom is a whatever her name is, ain’t she? Yeah. Good looking woman. Your mama. You’re real good looking woman too. I bet you drive them boys

Laci (00:40:13):

Crazy lot with you. Smile and your teeth,

Matt (00:40:16):

Then your pretty teeth. I bet you had old Huey running around with his paw sticking straight up in the eye and she’s like, Mr. Pat, I got my friends out in the car. And so he looks like he’s going to give her $608. Instead he gives her $50. He’s like, it’s a layaway plan. You come back to me whenever you want some more money and

Laci (00:40:37):

I will

Matt (00:40:38):

Sexually assault you.

Laci (00:40:39):

You can earn as you go and learn as you earn. And yeah,

Matt (00:40:44):

Also like, and you’re going to love it. She fights him off. It’s fucking fucking disgusting. Yes. At the same time, Binks in Ophelia now have gone into the bottom of the store. There’s nobody in there. So Christmas later, Binks just opens up the cash register and in the cash register a gun. He’s like, hi Walter, where else? And Billie Jean and the evil dad now have come downstairs and he’s still got her by the arms.

Laci (00:41:10):

She’s clearly running away from him.

Matt (00:41:11):

Yes. So Christian Slater holds up the gun. He’s like, let my sister go. He’s like, now son, you don’t want to do anything, you’ll regret. And then Huey runs in, he’s like, what’s going on? And the dad,

Laci (00:41:22):

They’re trying to stick us up.

Matt (00:41:24):

This is when I got super outraged. I was like, that’s what they’re going to say. They’re going to say.

Laci (00:41:27):

He’s

Matt (00:41:28):

Like, they’re trying to rob our store. And she just tried to seduce me upstairs.

Laci (00:41:32):

Yes, like

Matt (00:41:33):

Joe to distract

Laci (00:41:34):

Me. I know.

Matt (00:41:35):

I’m getting so mad at them. They’re going to believe them. They’re like, no. And just Billie Jean threw out the movie. He’s like the injustice of it. No.

Speaker 3 (00:41:43):

Right, right, right.

Matt (00:41:45):

I’m good. So the dad is like, son, you’re not going to do anything with that gun. It’s not even loaded. Christian slate. I’ve

Laci (00:41:56):

Never seen someone respond to someone telling the other person the gun’s not loaded by going to look. I’ve never seen someone go, it feels like it’s

Matt (00:42:06):

The first time I watched it. I thought, wait. So he just like, oh yeah, let’s see about that. And shot. Then the second time accident. It’s an accident accident, but it’s a weird accident. But he shoots him in the shoulder, but they don’t know that they shot him in the shoulder.

Laci (00:42:18):

I know, because I love John Wick. So anytime anyone gets shot in the John Wick locations, I’m clocking it. I know they’re coming back.

Matt (00:42:26):

They go, oh my shoulder.

Laci (00:42:29):

Well, they know they don’t. I just see where the bullet goes, Matt. I got eyeballs.

Matt (00:42:32):

So the three Ophelia, Billie, Jean Binks, they make a run for it. Oh shit. They get in the car and then Huey calls the police and the chase begins, or they have to go on the lamb. They don’t know where to go though. So they return to their homes to pack their clothes.

Laci (00:42:50):

It’s not that they don’t know where to go. So they go home, they need shit. They need their stuff.

Matt (00:42:53):

They drive around for a little while and then go home. No, they don’t. They go straight to the house. No, they don’t. They do drive around for a little while and they’re like, we need gas. Oh, we don’t have any money. So they go home and putter is there scrubbing an oven rack. And she’s like, what you guys doing? They’re like, we’re running away. And she’s like, oh, I’m coming too. So they all pack their bags and

Laci (00:43:14):

Putter brings a lot of weird shit, including lots of marbles,

Matt (00:43:18):

Just dumps. Dumps a

Laci (00:43:20):

Fish tank,

Matt (00:43:20):

Full tank full of

Laci (00:43:21):

Marbles. Marbles

Matt (00:43:22):

And just the scores go nuts at this point. And then the radio host is like, we have reports of a man shot in a store in three dangerous teens, be on the lookout for three dangerous teens out there. Corpus Christi gunned down. Peter Coyote as the cop, as Lieutenant Ringwald arrives at the store and he’s like, he’s going to interview Huey. And they show him Billie Jean’s picture from the yearbook and he says, oh God, I think I blew this one.

Laci (00:43:48):

And I love how he admitted right away and he comes clean. I was warned

Matt (00:43:54):

Yes, because yes, this is now what’s happened. This is Huy. This is the fucker was you are a fucker. But he goes over to Huey and Huey’s like this nice cop’s going to be nice to me. And he’s like, son, I’m sorry your dad, you must be in a lot of distress. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about you and motor scooters. And then it cuts. And so our heroes, they’re going to stay inside an abandoned golf course, mini golf course.

Laci (00:44:19):

I find this all very charming and really, I think it’s all very realistic. I think it takes a while to find somebody, no matter how bad they are at running. I think you would go to a familiar place that you think is obscure. And I think they picked a good enough place. You go far enough, it feels far. I’m a kid. This feels far.

Matt (00:44:42):

And obviously this is a world before cell phones. This is a world before traffic cameras everywhere. And there’s this element where the cops are like, we don’t know how seriously to take this. Is it?

Laci (00:44:51):

Yeah, but they’re putting her picture all over the knee. She’s immediately recognized.

Matt (00:44:55):

But it’s like, do we want traffic stops everywhere? Do we want roadblocks? So you can sort of argue to yourself. Yeah. So they just disappeared into the night. They go to this miniature golf course that is abandoned, I guess now a lot of this movie is sort of like kid wish fulfillment. I wish I could sleep at a miniature golf course. I wish I could have a water slide out of my bedroom window.

Laci (00:45:14):

I wish somebody would buy me a whole bunch of candy and I get to go to a gas station and they say yes.

Matt (00:45:21):

And again, they’re like, well, what should we do now? And B’s? Like, let’s go to Vermont and putter’s like, let’s go eat. And they’re like, stop thinking with your stomach putter, but you got to eat something. But they don’t have any money. So they’re like, well, we’ll just steal. We’ll be like Bonnie and Clyde, that’ll be the rest of this movie. We’ll just go Rob places. And Billy Jean’s

Laci (00:45:40):

Like, no, really? She was like, no, fair is fair. This we are not criminals. We’re just outlaws.

Matt (00:45:45):

So they go into this convenience store and putter has a grocery cart full of crap,

Laci (00:45:51):

Fucking putter.

Matt (00:45:52):

And then these other two teenagers are in the store and they see Billie Jean and they’re like, are you her?

Laci (00:45:57):

Right? And you think he’s going to be troubled, but they’re just so nice and very smart for this girl to want to get an autograph. But they end up taking care of the bill, putting it on their dad’s tab. Another class moment. They ran into the middle class.

Matt (00:46:12):

The girl’s like, my dad’s out there pumping gas, just charge this to his bill. But the legend, we see it already, the legend is spread. This is in the local paper, teen shoots, local merchant Billy Jean, and yeah, they ask her for her autograph. But then the boy says, my dad says you’re going to end up dead.

Laci (00:46:29):

But why is it about Billy Jean? She didn’t shoot anyone

Matt (00:46:32):

Because she’s the sexy girl at the center of it. There’s never a moment where the other three ever get jealous of her, which I was

Laci (00:46:39):

Surprised. I think they’re all just friends with her and know she’s a goddess. And it’s like people don’t look like that. Things are going to happen and people look like that.

Matt (00:46:49):

Then they do find out that from the newspaper that Mr. Payt, he’s going to live, he’s in fact already back at work. So we go over to him at work. Oh wait, first Billie Jean and Company, they call their home to talk to their mama, and the cop is there, Lieutenant Ringwald. And he’s like, guys, come on. What are you doing? Turn yourself in. And they’re like, we think we will turn ourselves in. If Mr. Payt meets us, gives us the $608 and apologizes,

Laci (00:47:17):

Yes,

Matt (00:47:18):

Then we will turn ourselves in. And he’s like, no problem. Absolutely. We’ll

Laci (00:47:22):

Do this. That’s so easy.

Matt (00:47:23):

We will do this tomorrow at noon at the mall

Laci (00:47:25):

At the place of your choosing, I thought,

Matt (00:47:29):

Shall be the mall. And so Lieutenant Ringwald goes over to the store and Mr. Payt is there, and I guess he’s there. It’ll be like, Hey, give me the $608 please or please agree to go make the transfer. But we see that he’s already put up a big wanted poster of Billy Jean.

Laci (00:47:48):

That is a sexy picture he took.

Matt (00:47:50):

Yes.

Laci (00:47:50):

Or Huey’s shit friend took without permission. Yes, exactly. Now he’s put it plastered in the front of his fucking window. It’s a teenager in a bikini with no scandal clad.

Matt (00:48:04):

And so the cop is like, Hey, so this is what’s going to happen. You’re going to apologize. You’re going to give him the money that you owe. And he’s like, are you kidding? I lost two pints of blood.

Speaker 3 (00:48:15):

Wow.

Matt (00:48:16):

And the cop’s like, well, your boy busted their motor scooter, didn’t he? And he is like, yeah, well let them sue me from the penitentiary. So there’s another class thing. He’s like, we can do whatever we want and there might be consequences if they have the resources to try to enforce them, go ahead and sue me.

Laci (00:48:31):

This cop is going to him in good faith with a rational mind of, I know you want him to pay for having shot you or for us to figure out what happened here, but we need them to get here first. We need them here. So why don’t you do what you owe them? Is this money for the bike? And say you’re sorry for that and then we can do the other part. But this guy’s just like fuck it.

Matt (00:48:56):

But then some teenagers come in and like, Hey, that big poster out there, can we buy it? And then this guy gets dollar for the signs in his eyes. And so another thing that’s happening in the background of this movie is him commodifying the descent that’s going on here. The act of defiance is like, well, we will package that and sell that back to you all. So then we have this scene at the mall, this Sunrise mall in Corpus Christi. It looks as gloriously eighties as you would imagine with the big trees and plant life.

Laci (00:49:23):

You’re more classy than you’d imagine. It’s got a lot of shrubbery and a waterfall.

Matt (00:49:28):

The Esplanade Mall in Ken, Louisiana had a lot of that too. And I just miss it so

Laci (00:49:32):

Much. I miss it too. You smell the chlorine and the fountain. The elevator descended into the fountain. That was Mama Mall.

Matt (00:49:40):

We still have Lakeview, but it’s not the same.

Laci (00:49:42):

Lakeside,

Matt (00:49:43):

Lakeside, sorry.

Laci (00:49:44):

Lakeview is a hospital.

Matt (00:49:45):

Lakeview. The hospital’s not the same either.

Laci (00:49:47):

They changed it. I know they just let people die. Alright, so it turns into a little bit more of a kid heist movie. All of a sudden they’ve got a plan where they’re going to go steal some items to make it to where they can. I think the plan is to just make sure it happens, like money apology and then we’ll go quietly. And I think they’re just prepared for if that’s not what happens. So they need walkie talkies. But Billie Jean has made some adorable IOUs that she places they need batteries, but then Binks takes a toy gun. He liked the power the fake one gave him. He thinks it might get useful. I kind of like this. He just sees the other side. He knows he doesn’t trust adults in the way that Billy Jean still kind of does. So I mean, the Officer Ringwald is, doesn’t love this guy. I mean, Mr. Pt fucking douche bag sex offender. I can’t exactly remember what order everything happens in, but

Matt (00:50:57):

Well, so he’s like, they’re having a little discussion while we’re waiting for Billie Jean, and he’s still trying to piece this together. So he says, what really happened at the store, Mr. PT and Mr. PT doesn’t answer. And then they see Billy Jean descending the escalator just as a fucking superstar. And then he says to Mr. Pt, he’s like, she’s a pretty girl, isn’t she, Mr. Pt? So it’s like he’s figuring it out. You tried to proposition her or whatever. And so Billy Jean comes down the escalator to meet Mr. Piet and he’s just like, Hey bitch,

Laci (00:51:29):

You

Matt (00:51:29):

Think

Laci (00:51:29):

He goes off script? Who the fuck does he think he’s not doing what the cop told him to do?

Matt (00:51:34):

He’s like, you think you made a deal? You made a mistake. So he extends the envelope out and she’s about to grab it and he drops it, steps on, and he’s like, nah, Huey. And then Huey and his goon friends jump out and Billy Jean just easily runs away.

Laci (00:51:48):

Up a fucking water. A water fountain, A knee, him and the balls again. Hube loves it.

Matt (00:51:54):

And his father once again, like You dump son of a bitch, what do

Laci (00:51:57):

You have? Balls the wrong way.

Matt (00:51:59):

Billy idol’s rebel yell starts playing for the first time in the movie and just a lot of chases. Yeah, marble, including the marbles now, because somebody drops the marbles to trip all the goons and it works. It works.

Laci (00:52:12):

It’s Billy Jean that does it,

Matt (00:52:13):

And they get away into the car, but Peter Coyote catches up to them and then Christian slate pulls the fake gun on him and he’s like, now son, you don’t want to do that. Please, nobody’s going to hurt you. And they just pull away. Then at this point, there’s news people interviewing kids at the mall and teenagers. What do you think about Billy G?

Laci (00:52:30):

The legend is building.

Matt (00:52:33):

One woman says, I think they’re picking on her because she’s a girl and that’s just not fair.

Laci (00:52:38):

Yeah, they say actually pretty decent shit for an eighties movie.

Matt (00:52:43):

So they’re like driving around, we need food. We have no money. So here’s what we’ll do. Like Robinhood Christian Slater, you might be in a Robin Hood movie one day.

Laci (00:52:52):

You need to take notes.

Matt (00:52:53):

Yes. So we’re just going to drive around the rich neighborhood and look for a house that doesn’t seem to be occupied at the moment. Like the wet bandits. Like look, there’s a house right there. There’s an empty house.

Laci (00:53:04):

This is another wish fulfillment thing.

Matt (00:53:05):

Yes. Just

Laci (00:53:06):

Go into someone’s house and eat all the shit in the refrigerator and they help themselves and they sit down. But Billie Jean is just more of a thoughtful person and just kind of goes looking through the house, not to steal anything, just to see what this house is about. And then here’s a noise upstairs, and I think this movie’s about to turn into a weird fucking magic movie where there’s goblins and shit. I did not know that was a mask. I’m like, what the fuck is this warthog looking man? I dunno. Listen.

Matt (00:53:37):

Okay. So we suddenly cut to security camera footage of them. We see somebody is watching them in the house

Speaker 3 (00:53:44):

And he’s totally fine with it.

Matt (00:53:45):

And then we see that he is wearing a bizarre wolf mask.

Laci (00:53:49):

I don’t know. It is an old man face and I did not know it was fake. It was crazy looking. It’s

Matt (00:53:54):

Funny. That’s what you thought. We both thought of this movie like, boy, this movie’s going to hard pivot into a totally different kind of movie. I assumed now this was the rest of the movie and it was going to be like saw he’s going to be like chicks saw. He’s like

Laci (00:54:05):

Right. Because it was unnerving the way

Matt (00:54:06):

Want to play a game.

Laci (00:54:07):

It was unnerving. The way he’s looking into the camera sees people in his house and he’s amused or even non, we don’t know what his motives are because he’s not acting like a normal person who’s got intruders in their house. We don’t know. He recognizes them. We don’t know. He is a lonely rich kid.

Matt (00:54:23):

Well, he corners Billy Jean in his room. Well first

Laci (00:54:27):

Scares her.

Matt (00:54:28):

Yes. Scares. And she picks up a guitar and thrusts it into his balls. And he’s like, oh, watch you do that. Sinks to the ground. Then he gets back up. He’s like, listen, no, I’m not going to hurt you. And she pulls off the mask and it’s a hot guy and she smiles because she sees he’s hot. Now this is Keith Gordon. You’ll love to see Keith Gordon in a movie. He’s the lead of John Carpenter’s Christine and he rules and he has a bedroom to envy. If you are a kid in the 1980s,

Speaker 6 (00:54:56):

He’s super

Laci (00:54:57):

Confusing.

Matt (00:54:57):

All this movie equipment.

Laci (00:54:59):

He’s got the whole floor it seems like because there’s multiple rooms. He’s bored. He’s got a lot of money. He is an unattended kid. He’s kind of like them in that way. His parent is not always around.

Matt (00:55:11):

Exactly.

Laci (00:55:11):

And he’s been following the news and all of a sudden he’s got Billie Jean up in his fucking room and he is got a camera ready now. She’s been sexually assaulted a few fucking times. So him to be like, you want to be a star is like, you want to fucking die.

Matt (00:55:25):

It’s also wish fulfillment for him. Then the hottest super superstar girl just happens to break into my house and I can be friends with her and he is like, Hey, you want to make a movie together? And it seems like right there, it could go into another disturbing direction. Instead she’s just like, you’re weird. And then the rest of the kids come in and they’re like, Hey, what’s going on in here? And they turn on the news and watch it together.

Laci (00:55:47):

And then they watch Joe. Well first, oh sorry.

Matt (00:55:49):

They’re like, first they interview Mr. Piet and he’s giving him a bunch of bullshit. He’s like, these are some disturbed youths. It’s a real problem going on in our society

Laci (00:55:59):

Causing a moral panic. He knows it’s easy to fucking do.

Matt (00:56:02):

I bet they worship the devil too. And then they talk to other people and this guy’s like they hogtied me and they stole $400 and they burned my gas station. So they’re all getting mad. They’re like, that’s not true. It’s just not true. So they change channels again and they see Otto Preminger in 1857 movie St. Joan where sang plays Joan of Arc and she has this little haircut and Lisa Simpson’s like, is that a boy girl? And so they’re like, what’s the deal? Never have four teenagers in the midst of a life of crime, been so interested in a black and white movie. They’re like, what’s going on with this movie?

Laci (00:56:42):

I don’t know. I think you seek out normalcy when you’re in situations like this. They’re all just watching a movie at this point.

Matt (00:56:48):

So Lloyd, Keith Gordon, if I didn’t say his name is Lloyd, he’s like, you guys don’t know Joan of Ark. Well, I’ll tell you, she was in France in the 13 hundreds and she led an uprising against the English and she was a hero. But then they burned her alive and then seemingly jumps out of his window to his death.

Laci (00:57:06):

He is been dying to do that. Or he is done it a few times. People who don’t know there’s a slide out there. They’re few and far between baby. So he’s finally got some people. He is like, I’m going to make it look like I jumped. I see they

Matt (00:57:15):

Look outside, there’s a water slide down to his pool.

Laci (00:57:18):

There’s no water in it, so there’s no way they’re sliding that fast, but fine.

Matt (00:57:23):

So everybody but Billie Jean goes down’s. Something about Joan of Ark here. Something’s calling to her. And by the way, a her name Jean Billy Jean in French, you e feminize that you add an NE to it and you have Joan. What is Joan of Ark in French? Oc? This is Billy Jean of Ark is what I’m saying. Wow. She goes downstairs and she’s like, guys, Lloyd, get your video camera. I have an idea. And then she goes back and she dramatically cuts her hair and then

Laci (00:57:57):

She perfectly

Matt (00:57:58):

Yes. Comes out. And this is again a movie star reveal. Just pan up first from the

Laci (00:58:02):

Pool. Okay. She’s also put on makeup. She’s also found a wetsuit and she’s cut it into the most hot looking fucking Aquaman shirt thing. I don’t know what the hell it is, but titties are out, but it’s classy and an earrings on and we don’t know where that came from and

Matt (00:58:18):

Well, yeah, it’s the coolest pan up in the history of cinema and the music. I don’t remember if it was the song or the score is going nuts. And somebody’s like Billy Jean, you look and someone else says, fame

Laci (00:58:28):

Famous Lloyd says that he knows what fame looks like.

Matt (00:58:32):

Yes.

Laci (00:58:33):

And now Billie Jean again doing things on her terms, she’s got an knack for it. She puts people at the mall. That’s where she knows the mall and she’s going to make a plan. And now you want to say, fucking lies on tv and I’m a sensation, I’m going to put truth on your tv and it fucking works. Everyone knows her side. Who is this little redhead kid that’s got to be someone’s kid that’s just let

Speaker 6 (00:58:59):

My kid do this weird thing. Please.

Matt (00:59:01):

The only thing we see of the video at first of her filming the video is like, I’m Billy Jean Davy, and I’m going to tell you the truth. And then we cut and it’s the next day. And this little redhead kid is walking to the police station carrying a videotape that he delivers to Lieutenant Ringwald, but he doesn’t watch it. They’re just like, she’s on tv. The girl. And they go, and now the whole, all of Corpus Christi is watching her videotape where she says, I’m going to second the record straight. Mr. Pt, you’re a scum. She cuts a wrestling promo. Basically Nobel lying about us. Mr. PT Fair is fair. Thus begins her slogan,

Laci (00:59:39):

She says it like three times,

Matt (00:59:40):

We’re not turning ourselves in until you pay what you owe. Fair is fair. And then she strikes a hero pose where she flexes her guns.

Laci (00:59:47):

Does Joan Navar say it?

Matt (00:59:49):

Fair is fair?

Laci (00:59:50):

Yeah.

Matt (00:59:50):

No,

Laci (00:59:51):

You know,

Matt (00:59:52):

Did

Laci (00:59:52):

You see the movie recently? Just wondering where she got it. Everything else was inspired.

Matt (00:59:56):

I don’t know. Oh, so in the movie, I don’t know. I haven’t,

Laci (00:59:59):

That’s what I’m talking. No, no. The lady Okay. If you don’t dunno. You dunno. Man.

Matt (01:00:05):

I haven’t seen the movie since high school. I don’t know. But all the kids are watching at the mall and they’re doing the pose too. I mean, the pose is just flexing. But shades here of Catniss

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):

Everdeen

Matt (01:00:18):

Or Batman. Batman. You have to be a symbol to the people. It’s not enough to just be yourself and do something. Do what you’re going to do. You also have to be a symbol, Mr. Wayne.

Laci (01:00:28):

So now we meet the district attorney who is Lloyd’s dad. That’s why he’s not around much. He’s going to be running for office to be

Matt (01:00:39):

Attorney general.

Laci (01:00:40):

Attorney General, right.

Matt (01:00:41):

It’s Dean Stockwell, the great Dean Stockwell. I’ve never seen Quantum Label. Laci, I’m sorry.

Laci (01:00:46):

You don’t have to be sorry.

Matt (01:00:47):

I am though. Even though I don’t have to be. Dean Stockwell from all the David Lynch movies, from Married to the Mob from Battlestar Galactica. He’s the district attorney. Oh my God. This thing’s getting bigger and bigger every second. The district attorney of Corpus Christi,

Laci (01:01:04):

He’s not totally Okay. Well we do. So the kids are leaving Lloyd’s house, but Lloyd first offers, he sees fun when he’s up against it. He doesn’t want Billie Jean leaving him just yet. So he offers to be a hostage so that they have leverage.

Matt (01:01:20):

Yeah. I like his reasoning. He’s like, listen, they’re chasing you, but you have no leverage because you don’t have anything they want. You have to give them something you want. What are you talking about me? Things like you got to tie me up and hog time me and everything. Ooh, awesome. Okay. But also he is like, please don’t leave my house. I just made friends for the first time. And so yeah, Dean Stockwell comes in, he’s talking to Lieutenant Ringwald and Ringwald is looking around his house and he is like, I think these kids, I think they’re just having fun.

Speaker 5 (01:01:53):

I

Matt (01:01:53):

Don’t think this is an actual kidnapping, but he’s like, oh no, my son hates me and he’d do anything to embarrass me. I’m running for Attorney General. This is kind of weird underbid plot of the movie, but the cops even thinking, I think the gun that Christian Slate pulled on me, I heard reports from the toy store that they had some stolen merchandise. I bet that’s not even true. But Dean Stockwell was like, I’m not sure. So sure. We got to take this super carefully because the way you win as a prosecutor when you get elected is you just have to be as tough as possible on crime.

Laci (01:02:25):

Yeah. I mean, can’t not take this seriously and have some kids kill his kid during an election cycle. Be a bad

Matt (01:02:31):

Look. Yes. And then we cut to them filming a hostage video of Lloyd. It’s probably my favorite scene in the movie.

Speaker 3 (01:02:38):

So funny.

Matt (01:02:38):

He starts, he can’t get through anything he says without laughing and everything. He’s laughing at Billie Jean is laughing at too, and they’re mentally boning each other already. And he’s like, daddy, just remember if you gets someone’s ear in the mail, it’s mine. They’re laughing together and then they hear a radio commercial for a local car dealership. It’s like, come on in and get the Billie Jean special marks, the Honda. Where fair is fair. They find out in the paper that the dad, the DA is offering a $10,000 ransom. And I love that. In the same newspaper article, they’re like, and your dad says to remember to take your medication.

Laci (01:03:13):

Oh, right. Well, and this is when we start to see, this is not a great relationship. He’s a very wealthy person offering $10,000 for his son and his son is upset. That’s bullshit. That’s such a low amount. I was trying to see how much you valued me and you don’t even do it.

Matt (01:03:29):

I think $10,000 is a fair amount.

Laci (01:03:31):

Yes. But it was, you did see Lloyd was upset, right?

Matt (01:03:34):

Yes, I did. I think Lloyd’s a little high on himself over at Mr. T’s store. He’s just having all this merch. He’s moving so much Billie Jean merch and he can’t move it fast enough. People want it so badly. And he even has this giant plaster statue of Billie Jean being installed.

Laci (01:03:53):

It is disturbing looking.

Matt (01:03:55):

And the district attorney then comes in, Dean Stockwell.

Laci (01:03:58):

And it’s never rubbing him, right? This is always just that he wanted to sell a picture of her. It was crazy because it’s a picture of her in her underwear basically. But you are just making such a spectacle of all of this. You won’t give them $608, but you will do this. There’s so many shirts, so many hats. How many items do we need here?

Matt (01:04:20):

And then

Laci (01:04:21):

I didn’t need this scene. This scene hurt my heart. I can’t get it out of my head. Okay,

Matt (01:04:27):

What happens?

Laci (01:04:28):

Why does it, I just feel like they could have, I don’t know what they could have done, just shown what it is that Billie Jean means to them. But it does kind of express what I am trying to say about this movie takes children seriously and other children take other children seriously. They know their problems are real. And so a couple of kids see Billie Jean in the car and they just say, I don’t remember the kid’s name, but

Matt (01:04:50):

Kenny.

Laci (01:04:50):

Kenny. Oh, right, perfect name. Kenny needs your help real bad. And it’s like, okay. And they just start walking and they don’t know how far they’re going to go. She has no idea what the fuck he needs help with. And then they just get to the out kids just start joining them.

Matt (01:05:05):

And this is when it gets the most. You just have an army of children just

Laci (01:05:09):

Following her jump out of tree houses, fucking so many kids

Matt (01:05:13):

Roof’s there.

Laci (01:05:14):

And you get up to this not very taken care of house. And you hear the beating just be, I mean, terrible. And she’s disturbed and scared, but walks right the fuck into that house,

Matt (01:05:29):

Stomachs her courage and just goes in.

Laci (01:05:31):

Just goes in, doesn’t knock. Just goes in and sees a man and then sees Kenny in the corner complete again, very realistic. Which is why it was hard to look at, the kid looks dirty in addition to just bruised and old bruises the way an abused kid looks bruises on top of new ones or you know what I mean? And the kid just reminded me of my kid or something. I don’t know. I’m just like, I don’t need this. The kid was being really silent. He wouldn’t say anything. And I just know the reality of inserting yourself on a domestic violence situation this way. I know it makes things worse for the kid, more likely than it doesn’t. I get what this movie’s doing. I know that it’s a kid wish, a fulfillment situation of someone who says, fair is fair is going to take me out of here. But what is she going to do? And only what she decides is that he’s going to go stay with his grandma for a while. Well, that grandma’s always fucking existed. That grandma knows that her son is a piece of shit. There’s no way this is going to end well for fucking Kenny. Kenny’s fucked.

Matt (01:06:37):

Yeah. This is the movie’s biggest miscalculation. They trying to, she’s like, yes, she’s a literal superhero at this point. You have to come up with a less real scenario for her to intervene much because real kids get abused in the world and now we’re just showing it. And that’s not this movie. That’s a different movie.

Laci (01:06:56):

We’re already showing where you can deal with that sexual assault. And at least they did that lightly. They handled that one pretty tastefully. And now everything’s implied. This is just fucking real. The dad looks drunk, or Dad looks like an abusive dad. It’s all, it’s too real.

Matt (01:07:14):

What are we doing? Even he’s like, who the hell are you? Is like, I’m Billy Jean. He’s like, oh my God,

Laci (01:07:20):

You want a Coke or something? Right?

Matt (01:07:22):

Well, he looks outside at first, he’s like, you get the fuck out of my house, bitch. But then he looks outside and he sees all of the kids and he pans, and this is shot for shot a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s the birds, where he step outside and there’s just birds everywhere. And he’s like, okay, I don’t want trouble now. So then Billy Jean leaves with Kenny. She’s like, Kenny’s going to stay with his grandmother for a while.

Laci (01:07:47):

They’re all, and all the kids are like, yay. The thing that’s not well observed about this is that all the kids care about that kid would be a social pariah. That kid is the kid that shits himself in school. And you don’t know why that kid’s, the kid that acts out or comes to school needs not wearing the right clothes for the right season and is dirty. Those kids aren’t fucking rallied around and protected by their peers. That’s not true. So yeah, that’s the one part of the movie where I’m like, we don’t need this part.

Matt (01:08:14):

Yes. And I’m not saying you can’t depict, you can’t have movies that deal with this. It’s just for a movie that’s been so breezy and had striking the right tone of balancing fanciness with serious stuff, this is like sudden swerve into something really, really serious. And it doesn’t treat that

Laci (01:08:31):

Seriously. It doesn’t treat us seriously enough because they don’t stay with him long enough. They don’t make sure he’s okay. They don’t put him in the hands of his grandma. All of a sudden, stupid, there’s a car chase with a guy that wants to shoot out the tires.

Matt (01:08:44):

Yeah. This is insane. So a giant truck passes them by. And now Caroline Williams, who we loved so much in Texas Chainsaw Massacre two, where she played stretch one of, if not the very best final girl

Laci (01:08:56):

Ever.

Matt (01:08:57):

And I recognized her, but I was,

Laci (01:08:59):

They only let her act in Texas met.

Matt (01:09:01):

Yes. I guess this is a one scene role, and it’s in the credits. She’s just listed as lady Passenger or

Laci (01:09:09):

Something. A pickup lady.

Matt (01:09:11):

Yeah, pickup truck. He’s like, is this a cameo or a roll? Confusing. Anyway, she’s like, stop. It’s Billie Jean and her boyfriend’s like It is. Hell yeah. And he pulls out a

Laci (01:09:21):

Shotgun. No, no, it’s not. It’s a down payment on a house or something like that.

Matt (01:09:25):

Now he wants the ransom or the roll board or whatever. So a little car chase happens. It’s a good car chase.

Laci (01:09:31):

There’s real fucking gunshots being fired through the head spaces of the car. This is the first time they’ve been in real physical danger. And that Billie Jean has put her young friends in danger, and this is a turning point for her. This is no much,

Matt (01:09:48):

Just as for a little movie, to have a car chase where you topple over a real vehicle. It’s really

Laci (01:09:53):

Effective. I always forget you. Stuff like that. I don’t notice

Matt (01:09:55):

It. It ends in like 45 seconds and Billy Jean’s freaking out and she’s looking over at everybody, said, everybody okay. She looks over at Putter, you’re shot. She’s like, no, now I’m not. I’m like, well, you’re covered in blood. And then she just gets a smile and they’re like, it’s finally happened. And Putter says, it’s about time she’s finally peering. Wow.

Laci (01:10:16):

And Billy Jean says It’s fricking awesome or whatever. She comes, yeah, periods woohoo.

Matt (01:10:20):

Well, yeah, because Christian s slate is like, Ew, gRoth girl stuff. And then later they’re at a dock and Billie Jean is washing puffer off, putter putter, putter off.

Speaker 6 (01:10:30):

She’s naked and covered in a blanket. It’s like this is a weird reaction to some period blood. But I guess it was everywhere.

Matt (01:10:36):

Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:10:37):

Okay.

Matt (01:10:37):

And so she dries her off and they just look at each other and putter’s like, when can I get a diaphragm? Yardley Smith on the commentary says, people will still come up to her in public and quote that line to her.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):

Oh God.

Matt (01:10:50):

But this is what makes Billie Jean realize her friends are in danger. She has to let Ophelia and Putter, at least they need to go. She can’t see them get hurt that night. She’s a little darkside kiss with Lloyd, and then the next morning she’s like, I’ve decided we’re going to leave those two girls behind. So the next morning the cop Lieutenant Ringwald finds the two of them asleep in their car. And he’s like, wake up. And they’re like, BA. And he’s like, Billy Jean told me you were here now where is she? And they say, everywhere. There’s this annoying moment at a country club where Billy Jean and Lloyd and Binks, they’re like debating, should we steal a car or a golf cart or something? And Lloyd’s like, no, I’ll just pay for it. And Billy Jean’s like, of course you can pay for it. You could pay for anything. Rich boy, just let him. And you only want to do this to make your daddy mad. And he’s like, oh yeah, well, something else. But then some cops start chasing them. So there’s a big foot chase, and this separates the three of them.

(01:11:47):

Billy Jean is running on foot, how’s she going to get away? And then a stranger in a car pulls up and it’s someone who looks a lot like Billie Jean. She’s like, get in Billie Jean.

Laci (01:11:55):

And now it’s where we start to see all the instances of Billie Jean, the whole goddamn country’s cut their hair.

Matt (01:12:00):

Everyone’s turning into Billie Jean, Billie Jean, Billy Jeans are everywhere. It’s becoming a Spartacus situation because Billie Jeans, people will go to the police station, say I’m turning myself in. I’m Billy Jean. And I’m Billy Jean. I’m Billy Jean.

Laci (01:12:16):

And then it becomes, and then there’s this kind of underground railroad thing where the people are just passing. She’s going from safe person to safe person through nightclubs and onto motorcycles. It’s very sweet. They’re all just trying to get her safely to her place where she’s said that she’s going to collect.

Matt (01:12:36):

Well, she’s looking for her brother.

Laci (01:12:38):

Oh,

Speaker 3 (01:12:38):

That’s true.

Laci (01:12:39):

So

Matt (01:12:39):

I guess she’s just going from person to person checking out places. But Putter and Ophelia were taken to the police station and the cop’s like, so I mean that gun’s not real, right? I’m like, ha, no, it’s not real. And then another guy’s like Lieutenant, we got her, we got Billie Jean. And they’re all like, no. And they run in and it’s just some other girl who’s pretending to be Billie Gino. It, it’s

Laci (01:13:03):

Like three girls pretending to be PG

Matt (01:13:05):

At this point. Putter’s mom comes putter and Ophelia are sisters, right?

Laci (01:13:10):

No,

Matt (01:13:10):

They’re not. Okay. It’s kind of weird. They act like, I dunno.

Laci (01:13:14):

They all act like they’re sisters and brothers. They’re all in the same tiny trailer park.

Matt (01:13:19):

I don’t know. It feels like why else is a girl who’s much younger than them hanging out with them?

Laci (01:13:23):

Because there’s only a few kids in that place and they all just hang out because they treat her like, oh, she come to this. She probably shouldn’t come with this. They treat her. She’s younger, but she’s still part of their group.

Matt (01:13:38):

So her mom then comes in, she’s like, mama, and their mom slaps her right there, and she goes to the ground and finds some scissors. And we think she’s going to stab her mom with the scissors and instead she cuts her own hair.

Laci (01:13:49):

That’s right. She does stand up for herself.

Matt (01:13:52):

And yeah, now we see the Underground Railroad thing. And I realized at this point there would be a huge podcast about this in the 2010s about the Billie Jean thing. Well, no, first there would’ve been a big budget movie in the nineties. Then there would’ve been a podcast that’s like, here’s the real story. And then there’d be a Netflix adaptation of the podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:14:09):

But

Matt (01:14:09):

The story is spreading nationwide. It’s now the cover of USA today. But while Billie Jean is just desperately trying to find her brother, everywhere she goes, there’s a hero’s welcome. This is when the Pat Bennet tar song, invincible Plays, and it

Laci (01:14:21):

Started to play a few times throughout the, it’s

Matt (01:14:23):

Just playing

Laci (01:14:24):

Right now. It’s just going,

Matt (01:14:25):

It’s been part of the score, but they just play the song. And this was a big hit at the time of the movie. This was a much bigger hit than the movie itself. This is like, did you know that song is from this movie? It’s like, Hey, yeah, I didn’t know. Did you know Smash Mount’s? All Star was from Mystery Men, not from Shrek. Did you know that she finally finds her brother at the golf place? Yeah, at the miniature golf place. And her brother’s waiting there with Lloyd, and then she and Lloyd go off into a miniature golf house. And then they lay next to each other, and then the camera respectfully pans away before they can have sex.

Laci (01:15:00):

The officer notices inside of the car that they took away from Putter and Ophelia that there’s just a bunch of golf balls and they have the logo on them. So he is very astute forcer of the law. And he goes to that abandoned place and he’s just kind of saying out loud, I hope you’re here. I hope you turn yourself in. Or just trying to tell him, it doesn’t have to be all terrible. I need to protect you this way. This is the only way I can really help.

Matt (01:15:29):

And what he says, he’s like, I’ll fix your scooter. Call me please, and then call me please.

Laci (01:15:35):

Right.

Matt (01:15:36):

It’s nice.

Laci (01:15:36):

It is

Matt (01:15:37):

Nice. He’s like, I just care about your damn kids. I just don’t want you to get hurt.

Laci (01:15:40):

I can tell I read this wrong and I’ve been rooting it right ever since, and you guys don’t deserve that. He just know

Matt (01:15:47):

This has nothing to do with me punishing you. I want to literally protect you. And I know I can’t convince you of that, but they call him the next day and they make some sort of arrangements with him that we don’t hear. We just pick up in the second half of their conversation where he is like, okay, yes, we’ll do all that on your terms. Now I just need to hear that Lloyd is safe. So they put Lloyd on the phone and he’s like, I want a steak. Okay, he’s fine. So what they’re going to do is they’re going to make the handoff of Lloyd at a beach party where they will then be presented the fixed, either a brand new scooter or the repaired scooter. And it’s this giant party. There’s a billion people. There’s an airplane pulling a big go Billy Jean banner. And this just looks like a great time. It does. This is very suggestive of Jaws.

Laci (01:16:33):

Yes. Jaw. Also,

Matt (01:16:35):

Matthew Robbins worked on,

Laci (01:16:37):

Oh, well, also The Lost Boys, just, there’s always a beach party at that place too.

Matt (01:16:41):

Well Jaws with the, when suddenly everybody’s pedaling shark merch and everybody’s at the beach, and it looks like no beach has ever been this fun. And in reality, I don’t like the beach, but I would like to go to the beach like this

Laci (01:16:51):

If there’s lots of bathrooms and things to eat and ways to get the sand off of me.

Matt (01:16:54):

And if sand isn’t even like sand, I could walk on it with my shoes.

Laci (01:16:58):

That’d be nice.

Matt (01:17:00):

Stockwell’s like, I want these beaches closed. And then Peter Coyote is like, you can’t have the beaches closed because then there’ll be riots,

Laci (01:17:07):

Beach riots. Yeah. A lot of competing interests. Everyone’s out to get, you’ve got sleazy ass fucking businessman trying to milk every lesson he can get out of his abuse of Billy Jean. And then you’ve got this Swarmy politician who just wants to be treated like he’s fucking royalty. And to not be embarrassed because he’s royalty and he wants to get elected.

Matt (01:17:32):

And he’s like, I’m calling in SWAT teams and stuff. I have snipers positioned is

Laci (01:17:37):

That is the second time that someone has called in their own muscle over the top of Officer Ringwald PT or whatever. The PI did it with his stupid goons and now it’s sharp shooters. And then the whole, he’s like, you guys don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You’re escalating. This could have been done at the very first moment. You listen to what I said to do. I understand these kids. They’re not bad. You are fucking radicalizing them.

Speaker 5 (01:18:03):

You

Laci (01:18:04):

Keep making them not trust authority because look, I’m associated with you and I’m trying to tell them the truth. And then you make it a lie. And this is how fucking good people become zen ass or turn into not law abiding people. You fuckers. Oh,

Matt (01:18:21):

Very well said. I love that. At the beach, people are getting Billie Jean haircuts at the beach. There’s a stage where hair braid, you’re

Laci (01:18:30):

Like hidden tattoos.

Matt (01:18:31):

Yes. And then Ophelia and Putter, they show up in a car and they get out to a hero’s welcome. People are going nuts. Putter Yardley Smith is posing like Billie Jean or posing like Hulk Hogan basically

Laci (01:18:42):

Has got her haircut. Biggest mistake of her fucking life.

Matt (01:18:46):

And they’re like, I wonder when Billie Jean’s going to show up and putter’s like, I think she’s already here. I was thinking this is just the ending of the beekeeper actually. So yeah, they’ve set up the snipers and then just an incredible shot. Billie Jean, we think it’s Billie Jean and Lloyd coming in over the dunes in the sunset,

Laci (01:19:04):

Wondering if they were going to make use of the fact that the brother and the sister end up looking like each other. Because I’m thinking that the whole time, they’ve got the exact same color hair for a reason. That’s not Christian slater’s hair color. So why is it dyed in this movie? And they’re like, okay,

Matt (01:19:17):

Yeah, we pull in and see it’s Binks in a dress and makeup.

Laci (01:19:19):

I don’t know that he needed makeup.

Matt (01:19:21):

You just

Laci (01:19:22):

Somewhat,

Matt (01:19:22):

It’s like he’s never been embarrassed about how much he worships his sister. He’ll even dress like her and put on makeup and stuff. Meanwhile, the real Billy Jean, she’s in the crowd with a wiggle and oh my God, she’s pulled one over on us. But Huey runs out and he’s like, it’ss Binks. It’s her brother in a dress. And he use as a slur. And so Bink is like, Hey, shut up. And he doesn’t mean to, but he pulls out the toy gun and then the cops, the sniper’s like, oh, he’s got a gun. And they shoot him in the shoulder just like Mr. PT got shot in the shoulder,

Laci (01:19:51):

Right? So hey, fair is fair. A shoulder for his shoulder. You guys are fucking square man.

Matt (01:19:55):

At this point, a legit riot breaks out and people just start swarming. And the most unbelievable thing about the movie is that 15 people didn’t end up getting shot by the

Laci (01:20:02):

Cops. Yeah. Because the first thing you see is a tiny little girl coming out of behind a barricade just to start running. And it’s like, no, there’s tiny little babies here. They’re going to stamp Peter. But they were behind a barricade. It wasn’t like you think, but it is just my worst fucking nightmare being held back by something and I’m trying to get to my loved one, just the crowd, or just I can’t get a past something or people aren’t listening to me. It’s too loud for me to say or for people to hear me and I hate it. So we’re just watching Billie Jean try to get to her brother, and I don’t know exactly where she gives up, but she turns her attention instead to the, she’s

Matt (01:20:40):

Souvenir the ambulance and the ambulance just gets too far away. So she’s like, and then she pulls off her wig.

Laci (01:20:45):

Well, and then she notices that she’s been being made money off of this whole thing is being commodified. Her tragedy is making Rich the person who fucking started it. And she’s just like, bad I’m about to tell you about yourself

Matt (01:21:05):

And just has the most badass stride up to his

Laci (01:21:08):

Intent. Yes. I wish he said, I don’t know. Wish I had workshopped the talk a little bit more. It was fine. It was fine. I just was expecting, I feel like you have to phrase it in such a way to get people to understand what he did to her. It’s nuanced enough that people won’t see how abusive and how fucked up it can make you for the rest of your life and what a creep he is. And especially in this time, it’s just like par for the course. So it’s like, I wish he’d crafted in such a way to make him seem even more as a S sleeve bag, but I guess it works out

Matt (01:21:42):

Well. What she says is the first thing she says is, who paid for the scooter? Was it you? And he won’t say, and he’s like, here, I have the money. Here. You can have the money. She’s like, no, who paid for the scooter? And then Dean Stockwell steps out and he’s like, I did. And at this point, pay hands her money. And he’s like, there’s way more than $608 here. And he’s like, well, let’s just all move on. This is the end of it. And so he’s like, obviously this includes some hush money now at this point.

Laci (01:22:08):

Yes. Because the balance has swayed. He had the power going in and now he sees that that is changed. So now her microphone matters.

Matt (01:22:18):

She has gotten the power of people on her side, the power of collective action. So she shouts at him like, no, I’m not going to take your fucking money. She says, what about the lessons you were going to give me? Lessons you’re going to pay me? He said, how much I was going to love getting touched by a man like you. And he’s like, shut up slut. This is crazy. I won’t spoil anything. But I saw this movie the same day I saw the movie, the Brutalist in Credible four hour movie that might win Best Picture. I don’t know how much I can give away, but the brutalist, brutalist has a very, very similar confrontation involving a father, a son, a sexual assault, and a crowd.

Speaker 3 (01:22:56):

Okay. That

Matt (01:22:57):

Is crazy. I was like, am I hallucinating? This is the same thing that I saw. Do all movies in this way? Did Toy Story four in this way? I don’t remember. I think there was a carnival. So she’s like, no, you’re right. It’s over. I can live with it, but I’m not taking your money. So she throws it at him and then knees him in the balls again, just

Laci (01:23:17):

If it’s not broken.

Matt (01:23:18):

I think this is the first time he’s been knee in the balls.

Laci (01:23:20):

Oh yeah. But her knee is going to get bruise. The knee’s getting tired.

Matt (01:23:24):

And then we cut to Huby and Huby smiles like

Laci (01:23:26):

Stupid Dad. Yes. Which is always the arc that when you are abused by an abusive dad and he finally gets what’s coming, you’re see, I don’t know, there’s hopefully a moment where you start to distance yourself and you been abused too. You don’t have to act like

Matt (01:23:44):

Him. So as he falls over, he knocks a torch or something, and then a fire starts very, very quickly of his merch tent. And he’s like, everybody help me save my merch. But nobody help Hims. What?

Laci (01:23:54):

We’re at a beach. We got the

Matt (01:23:55):

What? Give me my stuff. My

Laci (01:23:57):

Crash is merch. And there’s something powerful about it. Everyone just standing there, including the cop. They’re just watching him and someone gets the idea to take off their merch and put it in the fire and not only not put out his fire, but make it bigger and make it bigger on the shit that he sold to them. So yeah, I took part in this. I was fooled by you, but let me make these flames bigger. You fuck.

Matt (01:24:20):

It’s brilliant. Somebody’s going to make a lot of money on eBay one day. Who didn’t burn their shirt?

Laci (01:24:24):

That’s all I kept thinking about. And that little girl’s fucking autograph is going to be mint. She’s the only one that thought to do that. I just kept thinking of, I hope I bought a hat and a shirt. I don’t want to be like, but I do want to keep it.

Matt (01:24:40):

But see, I started feeling sad for Billie Jean 30 years. Like, Hey, it’s the 30th anniversary. I was like, get over it. Billie Jean, my God. Oh, let me guess. You’re at the Corpus Christi Comic-Con Ooh.

Speaker 6 (01:24:54):

Wearing Super girl outfit for some fucking reason.

Matt (01:24:57):

So now we see the Billy Jean statue up in the sky on fire, like Jon of Var. It’s very cool cinematic image. The Pat Bonar song is playing.

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):

Then

Matt (01:25:07):

The statue falls just like the Saddam Hussein statue. And that’s when I shout, it’s like Saddam Hussein.

Laci (01:25:12):

And I’m like, sure son. The asleep.

Matt (01:25:15):

And then there’s just a tiny brief epilogue of the movie that I don’t think should be here where Billie Jean and

Laci (01:25:22):

Banks, it is weird.

Matt (01:25:23):

They’re in Vermont now and they’re going to hitchhike. And Christian Slater comes out of a gas station and he’s like, Billy Jean, you ride. It is cold up here, Gar. And then he just looks over at a snowmobile and he’s like, huh, nice. And then it just freeze frames there.

Speaker 6 (01:25:39):

It freeze frames on Christian

Matt (01:25:41):

Slavery. And that’s the end of you had this incredibly powerful Jonah Arc statue,

Laci (01:25:45):

But they had to tell us that he was alive. They had not tell us he was alive. I mean, we could assume it, but all we saw was him get shot.

Matt (01:25:53):

Yes. That’s functionally why they do it.

Laci (01:25:56):

Yes. The freeze frame is so fucking bizarre. But just that they’re happy now and they want to do something they like. I mean, I know. Yeah. It’s more cinematic to not do that. It’s more eighties to do it.

Matt (01:26:09):

It’s so 80. Yes. Hey, Billie Jean, wait for me while we hitchhike anyway. You want it. That’s the way you need it. That’s Billy Jean, the legend of Billy Jean. Yay.

(01:26:32):

What a picture. Had a great time with this movie. I’ll go ahead and give my final thoughts. I think this is a blast. I think it looks incredible. I just love movies looking like this and feeling like this. That has the tone. So Right. That looks so specific. Captures the time and a place. I feel like I’m there in southern Texas in the 1980s on this beach town. Poor as hell. Hot as shit. I mean, the heat is getting to me. I feel like I’ve got very little, very few clothing items on and no one,

Laci (01:27:02):

Oh, I hope you’re only covering your nipples. And that’s it. Just a little crop shirt.

Matt (01:27:06):

Donald Duck below. Yes, Helen Slater. Great. I think Yardley Smith is a lot of fun. I wish she’d gotten to have a live action career and said she’s a billionaire and also a very successful true crime podcaster these days.

Laci (01:27:19):

Oh, what’s it called?

Matt (01:27:20):

I don’t remember. She and

Laci (01:27:22):

Her husband, the Scotland Yardley.

Matt (01:27:25):

That’d be good. She and her husband host it.

Laci (01:27:27):

Cute

Matt (01:27:29):

Cat. Helen Slater wished she’d had a cooler movie career, but that’s okay. Like Peter Coyote, like Dean Stockwell, like Keith Gordon. And I like Matthew Robbins about

Laci (01:27:42):

Why are you skipping Christian Slater?

Matt (01:27:44):

I mean, I’m fine. He’s fine. Binks is fine. I think Ophelia and Putter could maybe have combined into one character.

Laci (01:27:52):

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know that it is.

Matt (01:27:53):

The other one’s kind of superfluous, but I was like, something about this Yardley Smith. She’s popping putter’s. Popping,

Laci (01:27:59):

Popping.

Matt (01:28:00):

I’ve never seen Demon Slayer or batteries not included, so I might check those out. I think this is a really well-directed move.

Laci (01:28:05):

I thought battery’s not included was just like a poor man’s fucking,

Matt (01:28:09):

Have you seen it?

Laci (01:28:09):

Nope. Well, maybe it has one of those twin movies and I can’t think of what it is.

Matt (01:28:15):

Yeah. Not

Laci (01:28:17):

Cocoon Johnny Five Alive The Fuck’s it called Short Circuit.

Matt (01:28:24):

Short Circuit,

Laci (01:28:24):

Yeah.

Matt (01:28:25):

Oh, I do grew up those movies together too. For some reason.

Laci (01:28:29):

I think they’re nothing alike, but there’s sci-fi, like et, there’s some more moving thing.

Matt (01:28:36):

So yeah, I give it four out of five stars. I think it does run a little bit out of steam in the second half of the movie. And I think that that child abuse scene doesn’t need to be there. And I feel like Christian Slaters can’t really live up to the power of his sister, who’s not his sister. Four stars out of five. See this movie, Laci, what do you think?

Laci (01:28:54):

I also gave it a four. I can’t remember the last time you and me matched stars. It’s like touch and tips is what we just, I don’t know. We touch tips. Our dick tips are

Matt (01:29:05):

Touching. You pulled out your tip and I pulled out mine.

Laci (01:29:06):

Yay. I can’t believe I’ve ever seen it before. I love the way it treats kids. I like that it gets to some kind of undeniable truths about life, but keeps it to being fun minus the child abuse scene. So that’s the only thing keeping it from a five is the child abuse scene.

Matt (01:29:26):

And yeah, things will work out for you if you’re hot as hell. If you are a beautiful person,

Laci (01:29:31):

You just have to know someone that’s hot as hell. You just have to be with them and they’ll be fine.

Matt (01:29:36):

So you have to at least know them and glom onto them and be the puppet master. And then you two can win.

Laci (01:29:42):

No. Okay, fine. You just have to be their brother. That’s all I’m saying. Lucky for my brother, huh?

Matt (01:29:47):

Thank God. Alright, coming up on the show next week, we have our Patreon episode, our bonus episode for February where we’re covering what Lisa

Laci (01:29:55):

The Truman Show.

Matt (01:29:56):

Why?

Laci (01:29:57):

Because we are obsessed with severance right now and it reminded us of the Truman Show.

Matt (01:30:02):

Yeah. Yeah. I just Googled why, what movies are like Severance and the data list, all the ones you typically think of The Matrix and Inception. But the Truman Show, I think a very good movie. And I said, let’s just cover it. There’s a lot to talk

Speaker 6 (01:30:15):

About. Just do it. We’ll just do it. Just get out there

Matt (01:30:17):

Then we’ll have done it. So The Truman Show coming out February 11th, you can get this by subscribing for $5 a month to our patreon patreon.com/ Load-Bearing Beans, where you will also get our other bonus episode, which this month will be on the Spice Girls VHS from 19 97, 1 Hour of Girl Power, our main episode coming up in one week, our Valentine’s Day special on Twilight starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

Laci (01:30:41):

It turns me into, for our freaking bonus question, I looked up actors that I hate, or actors that annoy people. And they are on every list of, fuck you. Fuck y’all.

Matt (01:30:51):

Fuck you. Yeah, I think K Stew especially. It’s just all the facing all of the faces. And then she cheated on him like a

Laci (01:30:58):

Dog. No, he’s higher on the list every time.

Matt (01:31:00):

Really? Yeah. He’s got a lot of business too. But I love these too. And we already recorded this episode with our friends from the Fiction Fixation Podcast. Podcast. It is our longest episode ever.

Laci (01:31:10):

Oh really?

Matt (01:31:10):

It is more than two and a half hours. We all have a lot to say about Twilight.

Laci (01:31:13):

We are knowledgeable.

Matt (01:31:15):

So please tell a friend about Load-Bearing Beam. Subscribe to us on YouTube relative at Load-Bearing Beams Pod. Yeah. Tell a relative too,

Laci (01:31:22):

You’re feeling divided by politics. Unite with our podcast

Matt (01:31:27):

Where you’ll agree with everything we say.

Laci (01:31:28):

Thank you. Yeah, no, totally.

Matt (01:31:29):

I’m on Letterboxd @MattStokes9. Laci’s on Letterboxd @LoadBearingLaci. My band is Rural Route Nine, we do the music for the show, including the song you’re hearing now. Our album The Joy of Averages is available on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever else you get your music.

Laci (01:31:45):

Okay.

Matt (01:31:46):

And that’s all. Thanks everybody.

Laci (01:31:48):

Okay, I love you, goodbyeeeeeeeee!