High Fidelity (2000)

Matt (00:00:20):

Oh, hello. This is the 1-Week Rental podcast. We are a movie podcast where we spend the week with a movie and then take you along on our journey. I am Matt Stokes. I am a film snob. I judge you for your opinions, but you like it. That’s why you come to me.

Laci (00:00:34):

Tell me what movies I need to rent, Daddy. And I am a Nostalgia Hollow Cue who you will not ask what movies to rent, but you’ll rent them anyway because we all love them.

Matt (00:00:44):

Who are you?

Laci (00:00:45):

Oh, I’m Laci Roth.

Matt (00:00:48):

What is our relationship to each other?

Laci (00:00:50):

We’re husband and wife.

Matt (00:00:51):

Yeah.

Laci (00:00:51):

Keep the questions coming. I know all the answers.

Matt (00:00:53):

All right. Well, each week on this program, we dive deep into a movie, spending the week with it, researching it deeply, reading interviews with the people who made the film.

Laci (00:01:02):

Then we discuss the movie, talk about what works and doesn’t work and do some irresponsible psychoanalysis of the people who made the movie and the characters in it.

Matt (00:01:10):

If you’re watching or listening to 1-Week Rental, we assume you have seen the movie we’re talking about or you don’t care if it’s going to get spoiled. We spoil everything that we talk about.

Laci (00:01:19):

Alert.

Matt (00:01:20):

So we spent the week with high fidelity. Our show was known for a long time as load bearing beams. The concept of load bearing beam being this movie, I love it so much that I’m scared to revisit it because it might not be as good as I remember. It might be rotten. Right. And what would that say about me?

Laci (00:01:38):

Well, that you’re fucked because it’s a foundational movie, hence the load bearing beam of it all. And this is one of those rare times, Matt, where I’d say we both think of this as beam.

Matt (00:01:50):

So we’re not as married to the idea that we have to discuss load bearing beams anymore. High Fidelity, the novel by Nick Hornby is a load bearing book of mine. I have been truly afraid to revisit it because of how many times I read it when I was like 18 to 21 and how afraid I’ve been like, oh, the sexual politics of that book, it’s going to be like, oh God, I am so scared.

Laci (00:02:12):

I felt the exact same way because I would say that this is a load bearing movie for me. And I had an identical response. Like, oh, this is going to be like say anything all over again, which I haven’t revisited that one because the problematicness of nice guys. John, I need you to stay dear in my heart. I need it.

Matt (00:02:30):

John Cusack is a load bearing beam figure for you though. You

Laci (00:02:33):

Love

Matt (00:02:33):

The man.

Laci (00:02:34):

Love.

Matt (00:02:35):

Yeah. And I don’t know. I’ve seen this movie four or five times. Always liked it. It had been a long, long time. So I read the book again. I watched this movie again. Turns out they’re both great. I was surprised. I was totally … Yeah. Everything that I thought that would age poorly had aged beautifully. This movie worked so much better for me than it ever had before. I discovered new things about the book that I’d never noticed before. So what a pleasant journey this has been. I’m going to take you along with us on our high fidelity journey. So plug in your headphones and get those turntables of spinning.

Laci (00:03:09):

Creak it up to 11, my man.

Matt (00:03:12):

There you go. Nick Hornby. Laci, when we got together as a romantic couple, did I have you read Nick Hornby books?

Laci (00:03:43):

I feel like I did. Oh yes, you did. Yes. And I think I went straight to High Fidelity.

Matt (00:03:47):

Any memories of High Fidelity, the book?

Laci (00:03:49):

I remember really liking it and feeling very smart that I read a book.

Matt (00:03:52):

Yeah. I don’t remember how I found out about him, why I should read him, but as an 18-year-old who was … I’ve always been obsessive about the things that I love. I was obsessed with my twin interests, movies and music, but I was never more fanatical about music than I was at 18 and 19. And reading a character, a grown man who’s also obsessed like I am. Wow. It’s like this book was written just for me. So Nick Cornby, a British bloke writing career took off in 1992 when he published his memoir about being a fan of the Arsenal Football Club Fever Pitch 1992. This was later turned into a movie in Britain starring Colin Firth and Ruth Gemmel. And then again in 2005, Remade in America with Jimmy Fallon.

Laci (00:04:40):

A book’s so nice they made it twice.

Matt (00:04:42):

And Drew Berrymore, but they did baseball and it was Fever Pitch Baseball, Boston Red Sox.

Laci (00:04:46):

That seems to make more of a sense, but I guess there’s a pitch on a football field.

Matt (00:04:49):

Yeah.

Laci (00:04:50):

All right.

Matt (00:04:50):

The field is called The Pitch.

Laci (00:04:52):

Whatever. I don’t want to hear it.

Matt (00:04:53):

Did you ever see that movie?

Laci (00:04:55):

Of course.

Matt (00:04:56):

Yeah. Do you like it? Isn’t

Laci (00:04:57):

It a Fairly

Matt (00:04:57):

Brothers movie?

Laci (00:04:58):

I don’t know. This is when I like Jimmy Fallon, so I liked it. And of course I always have and probably always will like Drew Berrymore.

Matt (00:05:05):

Yeah, noth to dislike about Jimmy Fallon. You go sit next to him on the sofa, no matter who you are, it gives you your hair a tussle like, oh, you.

Laci (00:05:12):

He’s a stinger and he makes you won and he’ll throw you those softballs.

Matt (00:05:18):

Mr. President, you’re doing fascism right now, right? Right. This is incredible. I don’t know. Yeah. High Fidelity he published in 1995. Now I often use oral histories for my sources on this show and I have to say the oral history of High Fidelity, which was written by Andrew Buss for the publication Consequence is the published last year. Best oral history I have ever read. I

Laci (00:05:43):

Did

Matt (00:05:43):

Saying

Laci (00:05:44):

Something from Matt. Matt has read some oral.

Matt (00:05:47):

This is so in depth. They got everybody important on the record. They talk to everybody they have and they went in depth about stuff like the arbitration for who gets the writing credits. I was riveted. Okay. So we’re going to start with a quote from Nick Hornby.

Laci (00:06:00):

Talk legal to me.

Matt (00:06:03):

How the idea for High Fidelity began. And he said, “My first impulse was to write about a romantic relationship from the guy’s point of view. I had read quite a lot of fiction by women and that was my favorite kind of fiction.” But at that time it occurred to me that there was a book from the guy’s perspective about that side of life and certainly not one that was plain spoken, I suppose. And what I started with was the shape of a relationship that was busted at the beginning and was sort of fixed by the end. And it was really the end of the book, the end of thinking about it that I thought, “What’s this guy going to do? ” And I thought, “Oh, he could work in a record store. I know stuff about music and record stores, and then that kind of played more importance than I thought it would be at the beginning.” Nick Cornby is like an obsessive music fan.

(00:06:43):

He’s written music criticism. He’s also just an obsessive fan of arsenal, so he understands fan culture, but I think there is some sort of remove he’s able to set himself at that I think plays so beautifully in the book and in the movie. The book is told in first person and what’s interesting is when you watch the movie because you have an actor delivering the lines, you get more of a sense right away of, “Oh, this guy’s kind of an idiot.

(00:07:09):

This guy’s wrong.” The book is more convincing like, “Yeah, you’re right about women. You’re right about the way that they treat us. It’s not fair.” And you’re right that when he says things that are, it’s more important what you like than what you are like, kind of buy it more in the book. And the book’s neat trick is, no, this guy’s wrong. Everything he thinks is wrong, everything is incorrect. And I think, I don’t know, I admire that Nick Cornby, as a person who’s able to know all this stuff that he can credibly pass as a fanatic about music or whatever it is, can also know that this can’t be the single most important thing about your life.

Laci (00:07:50):

Right. And even the lines that or the part in the music store where one of the patrons who actually can keep these guys on their toes was calling them snobs and I don’t know the exact lines, but he basically gets the people that work there to admit that they’re mean because they think they know everything and they’re mean because they’re mad that everyone doesn’t know they don’t. I don’t remember. Do you know the line I’m talking about? It sums up this whole idea of like having an obsession. You get to feel superior but no one thinks it’s cool. It’s like, “Well, fuck, I need an environment where someone will think all this useless information I have in my head makes me a God.”

Matt (00:08:31):

So interesting to see this world captured right before the internet when the idea of gatekeeping really solidifies and obviously is only intensified since then. I certainly, as an 18 year old, thought if you have inadequate music taste that does indicate poor character and I don’t know that I can be friends with you, I don’t know that I can date you. And it seems stupid to say like part of maturing is realizing that doesn’t matter.

Laci (00:08:59):

Yeah, you can just shove it down their throat when they meet you when they’re 27 or however old I was. They make me mix tape after mix tape after mixed CD.

Matt (00:09:08):

The book was optioned by Disney through its touchstone label and they hired director Mike Newell, who had made four weddings and a funeral, but the project didn’t really go anywhere for a few years. So let’s go through the rest of Nick Hornbeat’s career. He has written a lot of books that were turned into movies. About a boy he wrote in 1998, A Long Wa Down was turned into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan and Aaron Paul in 2005 or no, he wrote the book in 2005. Juliet Naked was turned into a movie. He wrote that book in 2009. I think that’s the book that’s most similar to High Fidelity because it’s also about music obsessives and the tension between living your life defined by fandom versus living your actual life and caring about the people in it. But yeah, a lot of books turned into movies.

(00:09:53):

He also started screenwriting. He wrote movie In Education, the Reese Witherspoon movie Wild and Brooklyn starring Sir Sharon, he’s been nominated for two Oscars for best screenplay, but who would direct the film? Well, they hired Mike Newell, but Mike Newell’s not the guy who directed it. Steven Freers is, but how did that happen? What a rollercoaster.

Laci (00:10:13):

Wow.

Matt (00:10:14):

There was an executive at Touchstone or maybe at bigger Disney, Disney owned Touchstone named Kathy Nelson and she had come from the music industry who’s now moving over into movies, but she was a very key figure in the movie and in the final movie she’s credited as the music supervisor. And I think what that means is she secured the licenses for the songs that are in the movie, which I think are why the movie has a budget of $30 million, not huge, but like for a movie this size, that’s

Laci (00:10:41):

A

Matt (00:10:41):

Lot and it’s tons of licensed music. But she really pushed the movie, the project. She said, “I had done Gross Point Blank with John Cusack and Johnny and I had been friends for a very long time. So I called Joe, Joe being Joe Roth, the executive at Disney, the head of Disney’s film studio, and said, Joe, you know this would be a perfect project for John Cusack. He actually is this guy. So Joe said, go ahead and send him the book. It sounds like a great idea.” Gross point blank, a movie I have never seen. I wish I had seen it before doing this. It’s good. It’s good. Remember it came out I think the same day as Rome and Michelle’s high school reunion and it was like two high school reunion movies or in theaters at the same time.

Laci (00:11:22):

They’re very different.

Matt (00:11:23):

Or maybe it wasn’t the same day because that was also a Disney movie. So no, it must have just been … No, wait, this wasn’t a Disney movie. Was this a Disney

Laci (00:11:30):

Movie? I don’t know, but they’re talking about Disney movies.

Matt (00:11:32):

Yeah. Okay. Anyway, so Gross Point Blank was not all … It starred John Cusack, but he also was a co-writer and co-producer of it. John Cusack had two buddies who were his producing and writing partners and they’re basically put in charge of high fidelity. Here’s what John Cusack said. “Initially what happened was I had made Gross Point Blank with Joe Roth and Kathy Nelson over at Touchstone. Okay, that’s where they made it. “Get a little

Laci (00:11:54):

Touchstone label of mine.That

Matt (00:11:57):

Should have been our clue.

(00:11:58):

And we had sort of just finished a film where music was super important. We got Joe Strummer, we managed to get David Bowie and Queens Under Pressure. And so we had gone through the process of making a cool soundtrack and Joe and Kathy knew how important music was to me to the movies that I was producing and so we were sort of primed up. So Kathy knew that they had high fidelity as a property and said,” Why don’t you give it to John to write? “And so that’s how the story came up. I mean, thinking about licensing music, it seems like it’s a boring business thing, but it’s like they are talking about the songs in the movie.

Laci (00:12:32):

Oh, right. So even talking about them has to be licensed?

Matt (00:12:35):

Well, I’m saying you have to … It’s key that you get the songs

Laci (00:12:38):

Because

Matt (00:12:38):

They’re going to be talking about them. It’s not like it’s like, we made the movie and then let’s just go find whatever’s affordable that will sound cool over the footage. Kuzak and his team, we have DV, Devin Chentis and Steve Pink. The three of them wrote the screenplay, then got in touch with Mike Newell who gave them some notes, but then he ultimately left the project and Kuzek suggested Steven Freers. Here’s what he said about Steven Freers. “I did a film with Steven when I was 25 called The Grifters, and that was an intense cool film. So I had a good understanding of how he worked. I don’t know if everybody else did, but how could they? I sort of knew what he was up to and how to deal with it, but it was great. He’s a very intense creative guy. Well, John Cusack, what’s his deal?

Laci (00:13:19):

He’s the best. He’s tall and I want to climb him.

Matt (00:13:23):

Was there one particular John Cusack movie for you?

Laci (00:13:26):

Well, say anything and then the sure thing and then I just went into everything else after that. But yeah, my ideal John Cusack, the one that I wanted to be my boyfriend was say

Matt (00:13:35):

Anything. I mean, Chuck Glosterman has that essay about Lloyd Dobler ruining women for

Laci (00:13:41):

A

Matt (00:13:42):

Whole generation. Yeah.

Laci (00:13:44):

Better off dead and then-What

Matt (00:13:45):

Is it about? I mean, do you know?

Laci (00:13:47):

He’s so accessible. There’s something so he’s super attractive and sweet and lovable looking, but not so handsome that he would be mean to me or laugh me off out the room. I always liked the way he dressed. He seemed to always kind of go for this grungy, not crungy, but cool. There’s something hip about the way he dresses. I don’t know if he gets any say in that.

Matt (00:14:10):

He does. He was skeptical about taking the say anything role, but when they told him,” You can pick what T-shirts you wear. “He’s like, ” Oh, I’ll wear the Clash.

Laci (00:14:19):

“I love dark hair on men and I like them tall.

Matt (00:14:22):

Never noticed how much he looks like Miles Teller. It’s really striking to me.

Laci (00:14:26):

Teller.

Matt (00:14:28):

No.

Laci (00:14:28):

Yes, he does. Not even a litle bit. Yes,

Matt (00:14:29):

Not even a little bit.

Laci (00:14:30):

Not even a litle bit. The eyes are so important.

Matt (00:14:33):

John Cuzak is from Chicago, from the Chicago Cuzek family of actors. His dad was an actor.

Laci (00:14:39):

His

Matt (00:14:40):

Sisters Ann and Jon are also actors. He has small role in 16 Candles in 1984. Breakthrough movie was the sheer thing from Rob Reiner in 1985 also Better Off Dead that same year and then say anything the big one in 1989. All right. So in the 90s, he’s a big star. The Grifters in 1990s where he-

Laci (00:14:56):

I have seen The Grifters. Stephen

Matt (00:14:58):

Freers. Con Air in 97, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for Clint Eastwood in 97. Voice in Anastasia, which folks, I have a video about that. Check out my TikTok, Matt Stokes nine. Being John Malkovich in 1999, things are going great. Things are also great in the 2000s. He does this. I have

Laci (00:15:18):

American sweethearts. You know why? My man, Billy Crystal’s in there.

Matt (00:15:21):

So we’ll probably cover it one day.

Laci (00:15:22):

Hey, that’s him working twice with Catherine Zada Jones.

Matt (00:15:25):

That’s right. That is. I noticed the same

Laci (00:15:27):

Thing lately. Who’s the lead in serendipity? I remember like …

Matt (00:15:31):

Kate Beckensale.

Laci (00:15:32):

Oh, okay. Also, that movie’s very romantic too.

Matt (00:15:35):

Kate Beckensale is the actress I find it impossible to remember.

Laci (00:15:40):

I am right there with you. Because

Matt (00:15:41):

There’s so many Kates and there’s so many bees and I know she is from Pearl Harbor and the Underworld movies, but I

Laci (00:15:49):

Couldn’t tell you what she looks like. That’s where she was born in Pearl Harbor. I remember watching Must Love Dogs, but it was not a big deal for me. I remember very much liking Runaway Jerry and I don’t remember liking 2012 and being disappointed that I didn’t like it. I think I just wasn’t used to seeing him as an action person.

Matt (00:16:06):

Well, but he’s mixing these rom-coms with the sort of big budget spectacle movies like 2012 where you can … It’s like John Cusack is the lead of 2012. That seems like maybe you need a bigger star, but it’s like, I don’t know, he’s kind of like a bargain star. He’s a big name. People like him.

Laci (00:16:23):

Yes. It’s the only reason I saw it.

Matt (00:16:25):

All right. And then in the 2010s, Hot Tub Time Machine, which was directed by his producing partner, Steven Pink. I believe this is true. The only Hollywood movie he has appeared in the past 13 years, is Hot Tub Time Machine in 2012.

Laci (00:16:40):

What is this picture you have of him with a falcon? That’s him in the

Matt (00:16:42):

Raven. You know what? Maybe The Raven came out after Hot Tub Time Machine.

Laci (00:16:46):

You sure that’s a Raven, not a Falcon?

Matt (00:16:47):

Well, it’s from the movie The Raven.

Laci (00:16:49):

Oh, odd to have a different bird in your movie.

Matt (00:16:52):

He has done acclaimed work like David Kronenberg’s Maps to the Stars. He was in Spike Lee’s Shyrak. He played Brian Wilson in Love and Mercy, but I don’t think he has worked for a Hollywood movie studio since then. And the straight to video era of Cusack began. He makes a lot of movies in China. He will be the American in a Chinese movie, like play an American military guy who’s the bad guy or whatever. There are American filmmakers who have done a lot of work in China too as their domestic industry expands and then in Eastern Europe. But unlike Nicholas Cage, I cannot find any evidence that he has financial difficulties or anything. So what’s going on here?

Laci (00:17:32):

He just likes to work, but can’t get any work here, I guess.

Matt (00:17:35):

That’s strange.

Laci (00:17:37):

That is strange. He’s a name. I’d go see something he was in. Why are you being mean?

Matt (00:17:42):

Me?

Laci (00:17:43):

No industry.

Matt (00:17:45):

So what happened to John Cusack? Why did he stop appearing in Hollywood movies? He was always very outspoken about disliking Hollywood. There’s a Guardian article from 2014 where you just talking about how shitty things have gotten. He said, “When people would look after you when I was a kid, there were good people in the business. When I came to LA, Rob Reiner said, come stay at my house. He taught me. I worked with Pacino. Pacino would talk to you and mentor you. Now it’s different. The culture just eats young actors and spits them out. It’s a hard thing to survive without finding safe harbor. My friend Joe Roth ran Disney. He made things like The Rock and Con Air to make shareholders happy, but then he also gave six or seven slots to people he liked. I got to make high fidelity and gross point blank.

(00:18:29):

Spike Lee got to make summer of Sam West Anderson got to make Rushmore. I had that memory of film and that’s gone.

(00:18:36):

I mean, yeah, totally. Disney, just losing touchstone was a blow for getting those kinds of movies made. He’s not really talking about why that might be the case, which is like bigger capitalist forces, everything is consolidating and the small movies just don’t exist anymore. But I don’t know if it’s … He’s also been a very outspoken leftist, like more left wing than your typical polite Hollywood liberal. In that same Guardian article, he didn’t directly criticize Barack Obama, but he said,” The government’s surveilling us right now. “This was after the Edward Snowden Revelations and that wasn’t a cool thing for liberals to say at the time.

Laci (00:19:23):

So

Matt (00:19:23):

Point out anything that Barack Obama was doing that was bad. And then maybe the thing that I find most plausible is for a long, long, long time, he’s been outspokenly pro- Palestinian. And as we see with the woman from the Scream movies, Monica Barrero getting fired, it does seem plausible that maybe you just are not going to get work so much after that if you were being so vocally pro- Palestinian.

Laci (00:19:50):

And then you got to go to

Matt (00:19:51):

China. Stephen Freers, the director, directed dangerous liaisons, went on to direct The Queen on a lot of movies, starring old ladies, Florence, Foster Jenkins, Victoria and Abdul, Phil Omina.

Laci (00:20:04):

Just because they’re old doesn’t mean their names are weird. You don’t have to read them like that. Philamena.

Matt (00:20:09):

Phil O’Mina.

Laci (00:20:10):

Philip Weirdo.

Matt (00:20:12):

On the growth of John Cusack, he worked with John Cusack at age 25 and then again at age 35, he said,” John was sort of grown up by this point, “meaning high fidelity. “When I did The Grifters, he’d be very good for about two hours a day, and then you’d eventually arrange that day shooting around those two good hours. By the time we did High Fidelity, he was able to take responsibility for the whole film. So he’d grown up. He’d become much more adult.” For somebody who has not thought that much about John Cusack, I like John Cusack. I am astounded that he carries this movie on his back. This is a movie star performance. He’s in every single shot basically. He’s talking directly into your eyeballs and he’s great. He’s

Laci (00:20:50):

Wonderful. It’s dynamic. You don’t expect him to be so limber and then he jumps over something.

Matt (00:20:56):

One giant change that they were always going to make was the movie’s going to be set in Chicago. The book is very specifically in London, is set very grounded in time the early ’90s of London, just after Margaret Thatcher, that era of Britain. Steven Freers was very skeptical because he read the book and he was friendly with Nick Hornby and seemed to think like, well, the Englishness is such a core part of this book. But Nick Hornby said, “That seemed to me a ridiculous thing to have any objection to. I just started going on tour with the book and whether I went to New York or whether I went to Hamburg, no one ever said to me, Oh, that’s what it’s like to be English.” They always said, “Well, I’m like this and my brother’s like this and my boyfriend’s like this. ” And the nationality of Rob really had no bearing on anything.

(00:21:44):

Man, I love to hear stuff like that.

Laci (00:21:46):

Well, and the music scene, right? It is the same way everywhere.

Matt (00:21:49):

Yeah. The bands could be different if the genre could be different, but that you’re going to find Barry’s and Dicks and Robs in any record shop and you’re going to find gatekeepers and snobs and people who don’t know it’s dorky to ask this question wherever you go.

Laci (00:22:05):

And it makes sense to put it in his hometown because he’s going to be the most confident and comfortable in his own scene.

Matt (00:22:11):

And man, this is a good Chicago movie. Beautifully shot. I love him on the bridge in front of the skyscrapers in the Chicago River, but then just all these little neighborhood clubs that are

Laci (00:22:23):

Really

Matt (00:22:23):

There in Chicago. It’s so great that they filmed on location in Chicago and that they had these people who are from Chicago who know the area and know the scene.

Laci (00:22:31):

Right. Now where an apartment that he could afford in the right neighborhood and different, how people live and where if they’re cool or if they’re in this class

Matt (00:22:40):

Maybe. I’m skeptical that you could own a record store and like have this big apartment and his girlfriend was paying for the apartment, but still. How do

Laci (00:22:49):

You make her living? He lived in there before he met her.

Matt (00:22:52):

Okay, then that’s insane. Even in the booming ’90s economy, how did

Laci (00:22:56):

You- You do not know that this is like a nice part of Chicago. There are plenty of parts of Chicago where you can afford an apartment.

Matt (00:23:02):

No.

Laci (00:23:02):

You keep saying how nice it is. It’s only one bedroom. It’s like one

Matt (00:23:04):

Of the most expensive cities in the world and was back

Laci (00:23:07):

Then too. In the ’90s?

Matt (00:23:08):

Yeah.

Laci (00:23:09):

You don’t know. Well, you have a book.

Matt (00:23:11):

I know things were different. I mean, yeah, the economy was much better.

Laci (00:23:15):

Well, he doesn’t ever seem to think he’s doing very well in any part of his life. How can we think he’s a dependable narrator to tell us he’s broke? He’s running a whole store. He’s doing it. Maybe he’s always been a little better off than he really thinks he is because he’s got these ambitions and fantasies.

Matt (00:23:32):

Like we said on the When Harry Met Sally episode, like class is invisible to you if you come from

Laci (00:23:37):

Privilege.

Matt (00:23:39):

Okay. If you read the book, the book is told in first person. It is so much a guy talking at you, unloading his thoughts at you. And I don’t see how you could do this movie without doing voiceover or it’d just be a very different story because it’s so much about the tension of what the guy thinks versus what’s actually happening in the world. But in the script, they had him just doing classic voiceover, which they said, I know the rule says you don’t do voiceover. Voiceover is really cheesy. You don’t do voiceover, but we couldn’t think of how to do it. And Steven Freer said, “No, no, no, don’t do voiceover. Have him directly adress the camera.”

Laci (00:24:13):

Right. Yeah. Such a good

Matt (00:24:15):

Idea.

Laci (00:24:15):

Very Ferris Bueller.

Matt (00:24:17):

He’ll do it all in all kinds of different locations and it always is in a kind of suspended magical kind of moment where there are even moments where it’s like, can people hear him or not? Can’t really tell. From the second that they read the book, John Cusack and his friends, they were aware of Jack Black. They assumed Jack Black is going to play this role of Barry. John Cusick said, “So I already knew he was a great musician and singer and a great comic actor who was about to explode, but I felt like I had this secret weapon because no one really knew that he could rock that much.” So the book was perfect and I thought this is the perfect role for him. Yeah, we’ve seen Jack Black sing a billion times now, but unless you knew Tenacious D at the time, it is supposed to be a joke at the end of the movie like, wait a minute, that guy can sing like that.

(00:25:03):

But Jack Black was very nervous to take the role. He had like worked steadily in movies and TV. He was not a star yet, but Tenacious D was really taking off and he thought like this role is perfect for me and I am afraid of what that might do to my career because I kind of like where things are and where they’re going right now. And that might take it into a bigger direction than I had really anticipated.

Laci (00:25:28):

Yeah. I mean, once you become a superstar, you don’t have any say on whether people know you or not and he’s right, that’s interesting. He liked his smaller life. I hope he likes his bigger one too.

Matt (00:25:42):

Well, and maybe like he wants to be a leading man eventually, but like maybe had a map to it and it’s like that’s years and years from now. Whereas he does this movie and then within two years he’s leading, he’s shallow how and then School of Rock. The producer De Vincentis said, “It was very mysterious. We were getting all this pushback and he asked if he could audition and Steven was like, I don’t want to do that. That’s a joke. I want him. He’s the guy. I don’t want to fucking audition him. I’ve already hired him. This is crazy.” But Jack Black said it was really, really hard to get Jack to do it. And you’re thinking, “This is the role that can change your whole life. You could feel it. ” And then we came to realize, or I did it anyway, oh, he’s frightened of doing this because he knows this is a role that is going to change his life.

Laci (00:26:25):

And who said that?

Matt (00:26:26):

The producer.

(00:26:27):

So Jack Black said, “If I’m being really honest with myself, I was terrified of failing. I was terrified of being bad in this movie and also terrified of working with Steven Freers. I had seen dangerous liaisons 12 times, mainly because I was obsessed with John Malkovich. I really wanted to be John Malkovich, that’s interesting. But he was clearly a master and I was intimidated that I wasn’t good enough as an actor to pull it off. So I said, I’m going to pass.” But Steven called me in, even though I had passed. He said, “Get in here. I want to talk to you. ” We talked about it a little bit. I told him about my fears and he just thought it was funny that I was passing because it was obvious to him and to anyone in my life that this was a no-brainer and it would be a mistake to bail on it for any reason other than I just didn’t like it.

(00:27:06):

And that was not the case. I loved the script. I realized that I was just passing on it out of fear and that is not a good reason. And so I said, “Okay, I’ll do it. “

Laci (00:27:15):

How old was he? He does look like a baby.

Matt (00:27:18):

He was 30. Wow.

Laci (00:27:20):

Well, men get a longer career.

Matt (00:27:23):

Others considered for the role Philip E. Moore Hoffman.

Laci (00:27:26):

Definitely.

Matt (00:27:26):

And it was offered to David Arquette who-

Laci (00:27:29):

I see that too, actually.

Matt (00:27:30):

Oh, sorry. This was for the Dick role for the other guy.

Laci (00:27:33):

I could see that as well.

Matt (00:27:35):

They did say Philip Seymour Hoffman could play either of them, which yes, absolutely. David Arquette was offered the dick role was offered to David Arquette. He passed. It went to Todd Luiso. A character actor went on to be a director, directed the Philip Seymour Hoffman movie, Love Liza, but they said he was perfect because he provides the perfect counter to Jack Black because he can maintain his credibility because he knows so much about music and he just has his heart sort of open even though he’s kind of like a monotone guy, but he doesn’t back down from anything.

Laci (00:28:12):

Right. Well, he’s got that autism confidence and that’s what he is. He knows exactly what he’s talking about. You’re not going to tell him he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say and he’ll say it to you five different ways.

Matt (00:28:23):

But there was a lot of difficulty finding an actress for Laura because what they said is all the actresses who seem like they would be with John Cusack, who’s such an immature oath would either be a lot older than him or seem a lot younger than him, that’s what they said. I don’t totally understand why they thought that either of those things. Women are with immature men all the time and then realize I got to get out of here.

Laci (00:28:49):

Yeah, but a woman that’s too young, you wouldn’t totally buy her passing him up maturity wise or it would make him seem even more silly and then someone too much older and then they wouldn’t wait for him at all. So you need someone right on the brink and someone who fell in love with him while she was building her own career makes total sense. But I don’t know why … I mean, she looks completely young to me. What I thought you were going to say was hard to fill this role is because he does so much describing of what is his level. So you have to actually cast people who aren’t as pretty as Catherine Zeta-Jones, which seems already like a slap in the face, but then they do it with two people.

Matt (00:29:35):

So they cannot find an American, but Steven Freers meets the Danish actress Eben Yala at a film festival and he says to her, this is what she said, quote, “So you think you can act in an American accent?” And I say, “Absolutely, sir.” And I had no idea. And he said, “I think I have a part for you in my next film. Can I please call you? ” And somebody gave him my number on a matchbox. I didn’t expect to hear from him ever again.

Laci (00:29:57):

Does she live in Dane? She

Matt (00:29:59):

Lived in In Denmark.

Laci (00:30:00):

Yeah. No, she lives inside of a Great Dane.

Matt (00:30:03):

And she talks in that oral history about I was the first Danish actress to be in a Hollywood movie in a hundred years, which that can’t be right, but yeah, I guess so. It’s a tiny country.

Laci (00:30:14):

I mean, I knew that she had an accent. Something was going on with her speech and I liked it, but I couldn’t place it.

Matt (00:30:21):

They say they make references to her being Scandinavian in the movie.

Laci (00:30:26):

Yeah, because of the mom’s accent.

Matt (00:30:28):

Okay. Okay.

Laci (00:30:29):

Yeah.

Matt (00:30:29):

I think it’s a great performance. It did take me a while to feel like she’s trying. She doesn’t really have a handle on the American accent, but I get used to it and I think she’s just, especially when she gets back with John Cusack for the last 20 minutes of the movie and you can tell how much she likes him, she’s just so charming.

Laci (00:30:47):

Oh yeah. She just smiles through everything. And she knows him so well. She knows where to push him and when to not.

Matt (00:30:53):

The movie was a modest hit. Very well received. It got some awards. John Cusack’s only big award nomination got nominated for The Golden Globe for this movie. I think that’s his only Golden Globe. He’s never gotten an Oscar nomination. But it was a home video classic. Nick Hornby was ecstatic with the movie. He said, “What I was shocked by wasn’t how much different it was from the book, but how much the same it was from the book because of the fourth wall thing. When John is addressing the camera, so much of that is sort of verbatim from the book. That felt quite surreal to me. ” I read the book this week. It is jarring to read a book and then watch a movie that is so directly adapted from the book. It is so faithful. It might be the most faithful adaptation. And I’m not saying that as like, that means it’s the best because I don’t

Laci (00:31:37):

Think that- Right. It just is.

Matt (00:31:39):

Correlates to quality. But it’s a great book. It’s a great movie, but it’s strange. Anyway, they made it into a TV show in 2020. That’s crazy.

Laci (00:31:49):

It is crazy.

Matt (00:31:50):

Gender

Laci (00:31:50):

Swapped

Matt (00:31:50):

Though.

Laci (00:31:52):

Oh, Zoe Kravitz is the Rob.

Matt (00:31:56):

She’s Rob. I think she’s Robin AKA Rob. And Zoe Kravitz is the daughter of Lisa Bonnet who plays the musician, Marie Desal.

Laci (00:32:05):

Who’s quite captivating. I always find her so just not magnetic, hypnotic. Yeah. The way all three of those guys are staring, the main guys are staring at her when she’s singing, that’s how I feel when I’m looking at her when she’s talking or doing anything. Yeah. I don’t know what it is. She’s captivating.

Matt (00:32:23):

Which is why it’s so good that she is just a person who broke up with a guy and she’s like, “Yeah, that’s kind of consuming my life right now.” But you’re like a goddess.

Laci (00:32:34):

Right.

Matt (00:32:35):

And then also if you look at her CD and you see it’s all covers and it includes songs like Mmbop, My Heart Will Go On, Ghostbusters. So I love the … And they do with this with Catherine Zeda Jones too is these people who you think of as gods among men, it’s like they’re also just like dumb asses too.

Laci (00:32:55):

Right. They are trying very hard to stay that cool.

Matt (00:33:01):

Yeah. I think I always, without ever looking into it, just assumed like, oh, Zoe Kravitz must be … Are they saying she is his daughter that on this one night stand with Marie De La Salle, he knocked her up because … But no, that’s not the case. It is canceled after one season. I don’t know. That’s high fidelity.

(00:33:17):

Love the movie. And now we shall talk about the movie scene by scene line by line impeccable analysis. So high Fidelity. I like this movie a lot. Opens with John Cusack, looking into the lens of the camera saying, “What came first? The music or the misery.” That’s a chorus of a Fallout Boy song. He’s sitting next to his enormous stereo cabinet. If he wants to listen to music, I mean, this is the way to listen to music. I could do this, but I don’t. But if you had to do it, you would do it. You just sit next to your giant thing and you just let it engulf you.

Laci (00:34:22):

Well, he seems to be an audio snob purist. Sorry the way that you are and that he seems to only want to listen to music in his apartment if he’s wired to the cabinet. He puts the cans on so he could fill the room with it, but his preferred way is your preferred way, which is to be all encompassed by it. I think that’s interesting. I don’t think that’s everyone, but he is like you this way.

Matt (00:34:46):

No, because I have my AirPods, which means I can go anywhere and do anything, which means I’m not paying attention. This is specifically, I have to go sit down, plug in and just focus on this, which I never do with music. I wish I did.

Laci (00:34:58):

You’re saying even in this time when your only option to hear, because you’re always talking about the sound of movies, the way we should be listening to TV, the way we should be listening to anything, you have an opinion about the sound. So you’re saying back when there would’ve been the option to hear something the way it was intended to be heard, you wouldn’t have chosen to do that some of the time You would’ve chosen to do your dishes instead? How do you know? You’ve never lived in a world where you had to be plugged into a cabinet because that’s a strong thing that you feel about sound. So if you could hear something perfectly, I think you’d spend some time doing that. I guess you can’t answer. You were at least born when you could be mobile with a thing on your head, even if it was attached to a Walkman.

Matt (00:35:44):

Right. Even when I was a teenager and I was the most into music I ever was, I would always think I should be able to just sit down and focus on the music and I’ve never been that way. I have to be driving or I have to be doing something else.

Laci (00:35:56):

That’s interesting though. The idea of having to plug in headphones, it made you make that choice. Either bring what you want over here or just focus on the music if you care about … You are a musician so you do care about the intended way that the musician meant for you to hear it. So I think you would want to hear it through your … What the fuck are they called? Headphones. Headphones. I don’t know. I never thought of it that way, that it used to make you make the choice. Come hear a music purist.

Matt (00:36:26):

Like all things, I mean, in the same way that going to the video store made you just put a little more investment in your choice and made

Laci (00:36:33):

You feel

Matt (00:36:33):

Like you had a little more attachment to it. You had a physical human interaction with somebody and you got a physical object.

Laci (00:36:40):

And you know what also just that I picked it, because I was definitely somebody who would just go and pick something off of the way that the cover looks, because I wasn’t accessing reviews or anything like that. Or if I had heard someone liked it, then that was a huge indicator I’d be renting it, but that hardly ever happened. I went off vibes. So I think that it also works in the other way where I kind of forced myself to be more invested in it and give it more of a chance and like it anyway, even if it wasn’t good. You know what I mean? Rather than like, “Oh, let me be really, really careful here because I don’t want it to not be good.” The fact that it was mine for two nights made it good.

Matt (00:37:16):

Yeah, but everything is good and everything is bad. Good doesn’t mean anything. It’s just like if you trick yourself into something being good, it is good and that’s good. You should

Laci (00:37:25):

Like things. I’m agreeing with you. Just the act of selection and going out, having to get in the car, having to make my mom take me, the whole thing.

Matt (00:37:35):

And I know people will say like, “It’s bullshit. They used to force you to, but you only wanted one or two songs on the CD, but they made you pay $20 for all the songs.

Laci (00:37:43):

I miss that.

Matt (00:37:44):

Yeah. It made you do the work of convincing yourself that you liked all the songs, which

Laci (00:37:48):

Was

Matt (00:37:48):

Better.

Laci (00:37:49):

Well, it’s collecting. It’s just collecting in my brain. And then music I can commit to memory in a way that I can’t commit anything else to memory. So I’m very appreciative of those few CDs I had that where I know an entire album that’ll never happen again. Or the mix tapes you made me where I know all those songs by heart and I would have never if you hadn’t given me something to do. You made something mine.

Matt (00:38:14):

Yeah. And I could consume music this way, but I don’t. Of course I don’t. Spotify is a frictionless experience so I consume it in the shittiest way possible, which is I just find the same 10 songs that I like and just listen to those because it’s so easy.

Laci (00:38:32):

I get paralyzed with decision fatigue. I have to go in there with an idea. And God forsake me having two in a row, that’s why those damn playlists are so … Someone else already made this. Some John Cusack already curated

Matt (00:38:46):

This for me. Oh, usually just an AI though. They sold it on like, “It’s going to be John Cusack, but tons of John Cusicks are curating music just for you. ” Oh,

Laci (00:38:55):

I thought these were lists made by people. People who listen to this usually also listen to this and then … I mean, that’s AI, but it’s also selected by users. Yeah, but then you

Matt (00:39:06):

Find out like, oh, and Spotify.

Laci (00:39:09):

You’re giving me a much darker now than I thought I had, Matt. It’s even worse.

Matt (00:39:15):

Yeah. I mean, and Laci and I argue all the time about, was the world better back then? And I’m like, yes. And she’s like, no, and we’ll just keep having it in all these different ways.

Laci (00:39:24):

Okay. But to be fair, I wasn’t talking about the equipment or the experiences. I am definitely on the record as missing the mall, even though interior malls. Outdoor malls, it’s so much easier. I only want to go to Ulta. Ulta was always buried in the middle or Victoria’s Secret. They purposely put that in the middle because people will go there and go out of their way to go there. And it’s a pain in the ass. But if I’m going to the mall, I was making a fucking day of it.

Matt (00:39:53):

Yes. And

Laci (00:39:54):

Now I just drive up to fucking Victoria’s Secret, go in, spend too much money and sadly go back to my car and put on a bra. That’s right. I put on my bra

Matt (00:40:03):

In the car. Yeah. Although even that sounds like one day you’ll be pining for the days when I drove to Victoria’s Secret

Laci (00:40:07):

A night. Yeah. They fitted me. They take their little measuring thing out and they go, “Your boobs are this big.” It’s a

Matt (00:40:12):

Luxury that

Laci (00:40:13):

You talk.

Matt (00:40:13):

Yes. And again, talking to a human being.

Laci (00:40:15):

Well, that’s why their bras are so fucking expensive and I only go every three years, but yeah.

Matt (00:40:20):

So high fidelity. Which came first, the music or the misery. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable or did the pop music make me miserable? And the thing about right away in a way that the book doesn’t do makes you understand this guy is incorrect. He is wrong. He’s kind of dumb. He’s

Laci (00:40:42):

Immature.

Matt (00:40:45):

It’s like a 14-year-old boy thing to say that people are so concerned about kids watching violent movies and playing violent video games, but nobody cares that they’re listening to thousands of hours of songs about heartbreak.

Laci (00:40:56):

Also, you’re obfuscating the obvious thing, which is that Marilyn Manson and different artists were absolutely thrown into those categories whenever someone was violent. So yeah, okay, maybe it doesn’t come up when there’s a suicide. I bet he was listening to sad music, but why would it matter that he played a violent video game?

Matt (00:41:16):

They did do that though. I remember Blink going into his Adam song got

Laci (00:41:21):

Blamed

Matt (00:41:21):

For a

Laci (00:41:23):

Guy

Matt (00:41:24):

Committing suicide.

Laci (00:41:24):

Yeah.

Matt (00:41:25):

And

Laci (00:41:26):

It’s like, John, you’re wrong.

Matt (00:41:28):

He is wrong and the lesson of the movie and the book is this is the incorrect way to think about life. Later he says, “Me and my friends agree. It’s not what you are like. It’s what you like. That’s what matters about a person.”

Laci (00:41:41):

Well, then pointedly, we meet his friends and I don’t think we’re supposed to be super impressed. So it’s him and these two guys, these two fucking guys who you end up loving, but none of them are in relationships, none of them are in fulfilling careers.

Matt (00:41:55):

But his growth is realizing, oh no, we’re wrong, we’re

Laci (00:41:58):

Stupid. It

Matt (00:41:58):

Doesn’t matter what you like. It matters what you are like.

Laci (00:42:01):

And he has been in this suspended animation arrested development thing for, he went from his mom to relationship, relationship, relationship. And I think he ended up with women who either he meshed into what they wanted him to be or he just kind of coasted. So it seems like he needed to be alone and he’s the kind of person where even just a little bit of comfort is enough for him to not feel like doing anything different where he needed to be made uncomfortable to make that pearl.

Matt (00:42:33):

And he gets his discomfort from music. He’s like, he likes living in the emotional world of music. I mean, he asked the question, did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? And of course that’s why. And there are people who get super into music. They’re gravitating it toward it because they are emotional sieves and they want to feel something. It’s not that the music is making

Laci (00:42:56):

Them feel that way. No, of course not. And it’s proven as soon as Jack Black enters the room. He puts Walking on Sunshine on because we’re not who we like. We put on things to make us feel away and you weren’t feeling like you’re walking on Sunshine. John Q said that’s why he put the song on. So you would elevate your mood and his music changes the entire movie in the store depending on how he’s feeling obsessing over that one artist and then he sleeps with her and then all of a sudden that music isn’t on anymore and it just, of course you’re wrong.

Matt (00:43:31):

What’s interesting about the movie now, it is such an artifact of a pre-internet age. It’s such a Gen X movie because there’s no internet at all and now our online selves are defined almost entirely by what we like and that’s most of the ways people interact with us. And I think that most people would agree it is not what you like, but it is what you are like that defines you. But we’ve all internalized actually it is what you like. It doesn’t matter what you are like. If you vote a certain way, watch certain movies. If you still read Harry Potter, even though she’s transphobic, that means you’re bad.

Laci (00:44:05):

It’s so hard though because yeah, stuff like … And you and me avoided the apps. You were on the apps a little bit, dating apps. But yeah, all we’re doing is putting our likes out there. That doesn’t all tell us if we’re going to end up having … As Walter White would say, “I’m classical and you’re jazz.” The interview process, any kind of questionnaire, it’s not enough and it doesn’t actually tell you is someone easy to work with? Do someone have your same intuition? Do they compliment you in some kind of way that you didn’t even know you needed? There’s nothing that can be a shortcut to just be in the same room with somebody and it doesn’t even have to be that long. Although my opinion has been changed through being with someone for a prolonged amount of time, that has happened. But generally I can tell if I’m going to get along with someone.

Matt (00:44:58):

Well, I think that the best way to get to know someone is to work on

Laci (00:45:02):

A

Matt (00:45:02):

Project with them.

Laci (00:45:03):

Yes.

Matt (00:45:03):

That’s where you learn by far the most about a person. But even if you take it away from like, “Are we compatible? Are we going to get along? Are we going to be friends? Are we going to date?” It’s just, are you a good person? I think most people, even I have it as internally like, “Oh, but if you make this thing that is basically a consumer choice, even who you vote for is a consumer choice.” I’m like, “Oh, well then you’re bad.” But I know it’s not true.

Laci (00:45:25):

But I guess I do have certain Lipman’s test. Litmus tests. Litmus tests. I do too. I don’t force the topic of trans rights or anything like that ever out there in the open because it matters to us in our lives.

Matt (00:45:40):

See, then that I would say the reason I said who you voted for versus like, what is your opinion about an issue?

Laci (00:45:46):

Right. Because someone might hate Trump or something and have said that. But then if something happens in my life and I want to say, “This has me scared because of blank,” and they don’t get it and they’re not curious about it, it’s the lack of curiosity that I’m like, “Okay, nevermind. You’re not open. I understand you don’t have this personal experience with this thing, but I’m telling you I do and I need to be friends with people who just trust me and care when I’m sad, even if they don’t get it yet.”

Matt (00:46:18):

But because I think, especially if you’re super into any sort of subculture, any like music, if you’re just like, “Yeah, I read music publications or us, we consume so much movie content.” When you influence the taste in that world, you have to assume that this is more important than it actually is and then everyone ingests that because you have to assume then if you consume the right movies or listen to the right music, it’s going to make the world different or better.

Laci (00:46:48):

Yeah. We end up trying to curate people like, “Oh, you have these holes in your movie watching Checkoff Sheet or whatever.” It’s like, you’ll be better shaped if you can just go the Quentin Tarantino route and then maybe come back Ingrid Bourbon.

Matt (00:47:03):

Oh, Quinn Tarantino problematic. He’s got bad things to say about feed in Israel. So I don’t know if you’re a good person.

Laci (00:47:09):

That’s not my point. My point is we’re not talking about what makes a good person. We’re talking about what makes an informed movie person now. We’ve shifted, right? It’s just funny, you just move it a little bit over and you’re like, “Oh, now I have different requirements for you. If you want to know what you’re talking about, you’re going to need to have seen this, this and this rather than voted for this, this, and are nice to this.

Matt (00:47:33):

” But if you’re so in this world, I think there are people who think if enough people listen to the right music, the world

Laci (00:47:37):

Will get better. No.

Matt (00:47:38):

There are people who

Laci (00:47:39):

Think- I mean, that’s so stupid. People think that about The

Matt (00:47:41):

Wire, or at least they did. If people just watched The Wire, things would get better.

Laci (00:47:45):

Yeah, I can see why they would think that. I guess watching something is a little bit different than listening to something, but even-

Matt (00:47:51):

They’re both insane.

Laci (00:47:52):

All empty because if you’re wired to not want to think that way about policing and who gets arrested and who doesn’t, then you’ll just say, “Oh, this is just a show.”

Matt (00:48:05):

More basically than that. It doesn’t

Laci (00:48:06):

Matter what you think. Right.

Matt (00:48:07):

These things aren’t happening because you have opinions

Laci (00:48:09):

About them. Right, right. What I’m going to write my fucking mayor. Dear mayor.

Matt (00:48:13):

All right, so the movie John Cusack is Rob Gordon. It’s my fault. Okay, so the movie, John Cusack is Rob Gordon, Eben Yela, Danish actress I had to write out phonetically, Eben Yela is Laura. She unplugs his headphones. They look very defeated. She is moving out of their apartment. He is retreating into his music so he doesn’t have to deal with it, but she makes him. Here, look at me. You don’t have to go right this second. You can stay tonight. She says, no, we’ve done the hard part.

Laci (00:48:40):

That line always guts me. I’ve been there and her eyes are … They’ve been crying. I don’t know. This movie’s really good at showing the exhaustion of being in the middle of a fight in the middle of not knowing if you’re going to break up or not and in the middle of making some mistakes. She hasn’t slept with this Ian guy yet. Oops, spoiler, that’s coming. But she knows she’s done more than she should. So even just for this propriety of the relationship at all, she needs to break … They need to have a break if not a breakup. When she says that we’ve already done the hard part, it’s like, oh God, it is the hard part, isn’t it? Just saying it. You’ve been on the fence and then you just let it out of your mouth and you’re like, “Well, I can’t put that fucking back in the bottle.”

Matt (00:49:24):

And it would be easier if I had never said anything

Laci (00:49:28):

And we just

Matt (00:49:28):

Kept going.

Laci (00:49:29):

Right. But she knows she’s crossed some line with her attraction to Ian. Why am I even being able to be pulled over here? I need to tell Rob I’m not fucking happy.

Matt (00:49:41):

The apartment, it’s his apartment and he decorated it with all these cool band posters like Pavement. Did you know our 15 year old and all 15 year olds love pavement? Yeah. This blew my fucking mind

Laci (00:49:56):

Because

Matt (00:49:57):

When I was driving with our 15 year old, let me put on a song. It’s a pavement song. I love pavement. I had never heard this song. This was a-

Laci (00:50:06):

But you can understand why kids would like it, right? Harness

Matt (00:50:08):

Your hopes.

Laci (00:50:08):

Yes. It’s so good. It’s so quirky.

Matt (00:50:11):

So Pavement only has ones until recently, has only one song that even comes close to having mainstream awareness to cut your hair. Our kid pulls up this song, Unsure Hopes. I’m like, I’ve never even heard the song. They know every

Laci (00:50:28):

Single word to the song. And it’s an elaborate song. I

Matt (00:50:30):

Then look in Spotify. It is their number one song. It has hundreds of millions more listens than

Laci (00:50:35):

Cut

Matt (00:50:35):

Your hair.

Laci (00:50:35):

It’s just going to bum you out to know why though. No,

Matt (00:50:37):

I found out why.

Laci (00:50:38):

But

Matt (00:50:38):

This was unbelievable to me because this song was a B-side from the late ’90s.

Laci (00:50:43):

Yes, but that’s what’s so amazing about TikTok sounds or whatever sounds go viral on YouTube shorts. It is the most random shit, but if it can give you a good transition, there’s no rhyme or reason. It’s just like, why are Birkenstocks a thing? The right person wore them twice.

Matt (00:51:02):

What’s heartening about it is it’s beyond just a gimmick sound like pavement. I’ve read an interview with Steven Mochmus, the singer of pavement about how this is reinvigorated

Laci (00:51:13):

The day.

Matt (00:51:14):

Now there’s young people at our shows. He said he heard the song, he wasn’t even aware of the trend. He heard the song at an ice cream chop and didn’t even realize at first it was him. He’s like, “What is this? ” Because again, just a B side.

Laci (00:51:28):

From when?

Matt (00:51:29):

From 1999.

Laci (00:51:30):

Oh my God, I had no idea. Because it sounds like that other trendy Berman, Mark Berm. There’s a trendy guy that’s known for just kind of quirky, interesting, thoughtful songs. It just sounded like that.

Matt (00:51:43):

I don’t know.

Laci (00:51:44):

Bob Burm.

Matt (00:51:46):

Mark Furman, the LAPD cop who-

Laci (00:51:49):

Yeah, Mark Ferman. His Spotify is lit.

Matt (00:51:52):

But this is Rob’s apartment, is filled with vinyl records. I mean, it’s cool, but when we come to find out she’s like a successful corporate lawyer in her 30s, she does not belong in this place.

Laci (00:52:02):

All I can think about is, oh, what a pain in the ass to be into vinyl. They don’t have a spine. How do you fucking know what … It’s not satisfying to see on the shelf. I love it. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of records he has there. I can only think of two things. Where is anything? How do I find it? And oh, that’s two things. Or three things. And that shit looks really heavy. It’s going to go through the shelves. It’s heavy.

Matt (00:52:28):

It’s better though because you have to go look. You have to pull it out and look and he’s like, “Oh, this isn’t what I’m looking for, but oh hey, Jefferson Starship. Okay.”

Laci (00:52:36):

Yes. But then what do you put like a little bookmark where you left it so you-

Matt (00:52:41):

That’s where the fun comes in.

Laci (00:52:43):

And it’s double slipped because he puts it in a protective plastic where someone else’s record collection a little more accessible because it’s color coded, right? Even if there is no spine, you still see color. So if I know I’m looking for the Barbie record, I’m looking for a pink sliver, not for him. Shit’s in a goddamn body bag.

Matt (00:53:05):

He speaks directly to the camera. He’s doing a lot of fourth wall breaking. My Desert Island top five list of worst breakups in my life. And he lists them and he is proud that Laura, his most recent breakup doesn’t even make the list because he’s too old. She should have gotten to him when he was younger. He felt more strongly about things. So we’ll come to find out he’s totally lying.

Laci (00:53:24):

Of course he’s lying. As soon as he starts with the one from fucking when he was 14, like, “Oh, give me a break.” Although- I’ve had a pretty bad wound. I was 14, but it wasn’t like this.

Matt (00:53:36):

He goes in chronological order. The first breakup was a girl who he was just smooching in the park. They kissed for three days in a row and on the fourth day she kissed another boy and it gutted him and I have a lot in common with Rob. I would say, yeah, one of the biggest pains of my life was my 13 year old girlfriend who I never kissed, but we AIM chatted and then eventually she’s like, “I just

Laci (00:54:00):

Want to be friends.”

Matt (00:54:01):

And yeah, one of the great pains of my life. Do

Laci (00:54:05):

You ever cry in the mirror, watch yourself cry?

Matt (00:54:09):

I don’t … Is

Laci (00:54:10):

That weird?

Matt (00:54:12):

As Elliot Smith plays. I don’t

Laci (00:54:14):

Think I did that. I just remember several young breakups. I’d go in the bathroom, I’d look at my stupid face and I’d hit it and I’d cry.

Matt (00:54:23):

You’d hit it. Well, what I would do is I’d play guitar and watch myself in the

Laci (00:54:26):

Mirror. Just slap yourself. And pretend I’m in a music

Matt (00:54:28):

Video.

Laci (00:54:29):

No, I just wanted to hate myself. I know.

Matt (00:54:32):

I’m sorry.

Laci (00:54:33):

It’s okay.

Matt (00:54:33):

All right. Top five breakups, Laci, go. You know what’s not

Laci (00:54:37):

Fair? Oh, am I naming mine?

Matt (00:54:41):

And you could have been lying about this. You’ve always said you never got broken up with, you always did the breaking up.

Laci (00:54:45):

Yeah, but that … The guys are sneaky and this is what they want. They’re doing what Rob did. They’re breaking up with you too. They just make the relationship so miserable that neither of you want to be in it. Now, did they all beg for me to stay? Yes, but I think it was only … They probably only wanted to make things stable long enough for them to be able to break up with me. It just was like a soft breakup. They’re just letting, like fucking usual and is the dynamics and every one of these relationships, I did all the hard stuff including the breakup.

Matt (00:55:16):

Which is what he … One thing that’s great about this movie is he’s monologuing and he’s like, “I’d hope that now I’m 35 fucking years old now. You’d hope things would be different. Relationships more meaningful. Females, less cruel.” Now as we will come to find he’s so wrong about his own life and his own memories.

Laci (00:55:33):

And it’s immediately obvious from breakup number two.

Matt (00:55:35):

Yes.

Laci (00:55:35):

He

Matt (00:55:35):

Doesn’t even remember. Wait, oh, I broke up with her. I

Laci (00:55:38):

Remember- Well then he’s telling us the stories, telling it exactly as it happened, still doesn’t see that he …

Matt (00:55:43):

So yes, never seeing his own agency or role in any of these

Laci (00:55:47):

Things.

Matt (00:55:48):

The second breakup, he was an older teen. He dated a nice girl and she wouldn’t let him touch her boob. He was desperate to have sex, constantly pressuring her. And we see John Cusack as a teenager and I love in movies when they just liken when Harry Metzally, just whatever.

Laci (00:56:03):

Put a hat on.

Matt (00:56:04):

Yeah,

Laci (00:56:04):

He’s

Matt (00:56:04):

Playing younger. It’s fine. She goes in to kiss me. He’s like, “What’s the point of goes anywhere?”

Laci (00:56:10):

And that rings so true to me, you with no vagina. What? Just this, this stage of fucking Adelaide. You didn’t do anything, but this is what it was like to be a girl. It fucking sucked. Now people don’t have to put out. They still can go on dates or be a girlfriend. Kids are cool now about sex in a way that they weren’t.

Matt (00:56:34):

I don’t know about that, but

Laci (00:56:35):

Okay. A lot of kids are into waiting now, but not in a Puritan way and they don’t slut shame as much. I have no idea what I’m talking

Matt (00:56:43):

About. Yeah, I know. Just as always, you’re talking about a slice of teens that you have

Laci (00:56:48):

That you see. I don’t know about that. Okay, fine.

Matt (00:56:53):

You’re talking about theater kids.

Laci (00:56:55):

No, I’m talking about stuff from YouTube.

Matt (00:56:58):

Yeah, I know, but you are watching theater kids. So the camera lingers on her hurt face. He doesn’t even know it in the monologue. He broke up with her right here. It was not her heartbreak. But the thing that guts him is that he found out three weeks later she went and put out for another guy. Put out.

Laci (00:57:16):

Put out. Yeah. And then she explained so rawly later I was forced because I had just gotten broken up with for not putting out. So when I was pressured again, that’s the straw. This is how people lose their virginity in these days by feeling like a piece of shit if you don’t put out.

Matt (00:57:35):

He owns a record store in Chicago, championship vinyl. It was the late ’90s. Everything was great. You’re an adult. Here’s your record store. You own it. Your parents, he just gave him a small seed loan of $50,000 to get this record

Laci (00:57:49):

Store work together. You watch them long enough that the owner dies and hands you the keys.

Matt (00:57:53):

And this should be an absolute paradise of an existence for him. It is wonderful. He works with his two best friends who he cannot say are his friends. He has to talk about them as if they are not his friends, even though he does all his socializing with them too.

Laci (00:58:10):

And clearly has no others, except for Laura’s friend.

Matt (00:58:14):

And it’s an incredible store and he’s like, “Yeah, I mean, we get by because there’s some hardcore collectors who come in on the weekends.” Still, one of the best cities in the world, most expensive cities in the world, I’m able to get by, but I’m so shit at all.

Laci (00:58:26):

What came broke? The poverty or the poor mouthing?

Matt (00:58:29):

So his two employees. We got Todd Luiso as Dick, the neurodivergent, but a very nice young man comes in and tells him about the music he acquired over the weekend. He says, “I found the first licorice comforts album. Never released here, Japanese input only. I’ll tape it for you. ” And he’s like, Rob’s like, “No, no, that’s okay.” And he’s like, “But you like their second one. The one with Cheryl Loud on the cover. Oh, but you never saw the cover. I’ll make the tape for you anyway.” So I’d never heard of this band, tried to Spotify them, couldn’t find them. They’re a fake band. It sounds so plausible.

Laci (00:59:01):

Cheryl Ladd too. That’s Matt Candy right there.

Matt (00:59:04):

Then Jack Black as Barry comes in wailing on an imaginary guitar and he just absorbs all the energy in the room and takes off the sad music they’re playing and puts in his own mixtape that he made

Laci (00:59:14):

Starting

Matt (00:59:14):

With.

Laci (00:59:15):

And I love that fucking song. I’m walking on sunshine.

Matt (00:59:19):

And that song shows you they are snobs, but they like all kinds of

Laci (00:59:23):

Music. Yes.

Matt (00:59:23):

Yeah. So they’re not just pure rock guys.

Laci (00:59:26):

And then when he’s naming his death songs, he says Leader of the Pac, which is like a song I totally love and know of. Ha ha.

Matt (00:59:33):

Yeah, they’re music omnivores. Even that is like a way of lurting over like, yeah, people like these popular songs, but they don’t understand why they’re great like I do. Right.

Laci (00:59:42):

You have to do all the work around these songs to really be able to play this and not be embarrassed.

Matt (00:59:48):

I wanted to play this clip from the movie.

Speaker 3 (00:59:50):

Okay, buddy. I was just trying to cheer us up, so go ahead. Put on some old sad bastard music. See if I care.

Speaker 4 (00:59:58):

I don’t want

Speaker 3 (00:59:58):

To hear old sad bastard music Barry, I just want something I can ignore. Here’s the thing. I made that tape special for today. My special Monday morning tape for you special. What’s fucking Monday afternoon you should get out of bed earlier. Come on, dude. Play it. Don’t you want to hear what’s next?

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):

What’s

Matt (01:00:16):

Next?

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):

Play it. Say it. Little Latin loopy loo.

Speaker 5 (01:00:23):

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit wheels?

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):

No. The righteous brothers.

Speaker 5 (01:00:29):

Well, nevermind.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):

No, not nevermind. You tell me right now, what’s wrong with the righteous brothers?

Speaker 5 (01:00:33):

Nothing. I just prefer the other one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:35):

Bullshit.

Speaker 4 (01:00:36):

How can it be bullshit to state a preference?

Speaker 3 (01:00:39):

Since when did this store become a fascist regime?

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):

Since you brought that bullshit tape in.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):

Oh man, that’s great. That’s the fun thing about working in a record store. You get to play crappy pap you don’t even want to listen to. I thought this tape was going to be a fucking conversation stimulator, man. I was going to ask you for your top five records to play on a Monday morning and all that, and you just had to fucking ruin it. We’ll do it next Monday. No.

Speaker 5 (01:01:01):

We’re

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):

Going to do it

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):

Now.

Matt (01:01:05):

This is half of the text messages I have with Patrick. Is him being Jack Black to me? Being

Laci (01:01:12):

Mad at your preferences?

Matt (01:01:14):

Guess my top five whatever songs. Guess what song this lyric is from and I only respond to like one eighth of them and with no … And I feel bad. He wants me to be … You used to care about talking about stuff like this and be on the wavelength and I get it from both sides. Rob used to-

Laci (01:01:34):

Yeah, you do.

Matt (01:01:35):

Rob used to be a guy who would want to do a bond over a Monday morning playlist.

Laci (01:01:40):

He’s got shit on his mind. He just got broken up with. That’s something you can do as an unencumbered man. Not cumbered.

Matt (01:01:48):

No. Rob says he can’t fire them. He only hired them part-time, but they still come on their days off.

Laci (01:01:54):

For three days a week, right? But they come every day.

Matt (01:01:56):

And again, he doesn’t acknowledge it, but they are his best friends.

Laci (01:02:00):

Everything bad happens to Rob. He’s a poor, poor man. Poor, pitiful boy.

Matt (01:02:04):

Right, right. Even-

Laci (01:02:08):

Even Laura has to tell him would owning a record store be on your top five things to do as a profession? I guess. Okay.

Matt (01:02:18):

So there’s something so special about this movie that we keep calling it an anti-rom-com. I think a staple of rom-coms is like, you just need to find your calling. And that usually just means I get a job and it’s like, “Oh, I like this job. Now I’m finally me. ” And this movie knows that’s not it. You can have a job that’s wonderful and you love and it doesn’t actually, it doesn’t matter.

Laci (01:02:38):

If you have a hole in you that you feel needs to be filled, that’s in you that lives inside of you. You can fill it with nothing.

Matt (01:02:47):

Later-

Laci (01:02:47):

Get a job.

Matt (01:02:48):

This guy comes in asking for a record. I just called to Stay I Love You by Stevie Wonder and Jack Black yells at him for having bad taste.

Laci (01:02:55):

Is she in a coma?

Matt (01:02:57):

And he’s like, “Hey, how about this? Top five musical crimes committed by Stevie Wonder in the 80s and 90s. Subquestion, is it fair to blame artists for the late career sins?” We call this the weezer question. But yeah, once again, he’s like, “You used to baby indulge me and we’d have a really deep conversation and you just don’t even have time for that anymore.” He’s

Laci (01:03:15):

Going off of an N of one. This is just this morning. I’m sure he was doing this Friday.

Matt (01:03:22):

Right. We see later in the movie he’s more indulgent. Okay. So going more through his list of breakups. Number three on the breakup list, Charlie Nicholson, Katherine Zada Jones, the coolest, most exotic girl he’d ever met. The coolest girl he’d ever known. She talked a lot and she liked me. At least I think she liked me. I mean, she is very cool.

Laci (01:03:45):

She’s cool.

Matt (01:03:46):

She wears cool clothes and this is the-

Laci (01:03:50):

She’s impossibly good looking.

Matt (01:03:54):

They dated for two years too, but the entire time he felt like-

Laci (01:03:58):

An imposter.

Matt (01:03:58):

Yeah. I can’t actually be in here. She’s so above me in every single way.

Laci (01:04:04):

She doesn’t seem like a person that would date anyone for two years.

Matt (01:04:07):

Right. Two years. Yeah. And in college.

Laci (01:04:10):

Right. Prime Charlie time.

Matt (01:04:12):

And he always

Laci (01:04:13):

Assumed. No, she loves her ass kissed. She likes to be the most important thing in her room. So maybe she only dates people who don’t think they deserve her.

Matt (01:04:21):

Right. And as we find out later, well, it’s because she’s nothing. I don’t know. She’s

Laci (01:04:26):

A

Matt (01:04:27):

Dumb dumb.

Laci (01:04:28):

She’s self … She’s used to being treated like she’s the only person in the room and so she forgot how to pretend there’s other people in the room.

Matt (01:04:36):

Well, it’s just that the way she talks, when he’s older, he realizes like, “Oh, she’s not saying anything.” But when you’re so enamored of her and you’re young, like, whoa.

Laci (01:04:44):

True. And you value the give and take of a good conversation. And he’s had a million of them in the record store and he’s watching her chitchat with some of her best friends at this fucking dinner party and she’s not listening to any of them. She’s not walking away with any new information or absorbing anything and that’s fucking useless.

Matt (01:05:02):

They dated for two years the whole time he was worried she would leave him for a cooler guy, which she did for the dreaded Marco.

Laci (01:05:07):

He didn’t look cooler. He looks slightly more attractive, but I’d still date John Cusack.

Matt (01:05:11):

And then we see John Cuzek standing in the rain outside of her apartment

Laci (01:05:14):

Yelling. This is the most rain. I mean, this movie’s doing it on purpose, right? This is crazy amount of rain on John Cusack. There’s five rain scenes.

Matt (01:05:22):

It’s a lot.

Laci (01:05:22):

It’s a lot. He’s hardly ever dry. I feel like he can probably … He might’ve gotten some kind of fungus from this movie.

Matt (01:05:29):

It is a strange amount of rain. I think that here it

Laci (01:05:33):

Is

Matt (01:05:33):

Supposed to be like, yeah, we know Lloyd Dobler.

Laci (01:05:37):

Well, okay. Also, it probably wasn’t even raining, right? We’re trusting his memory. Right. Right. And to him, sadness follows him. It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault that he feels miserable right now. I didn’t make the rain happen. Maybe you kind of fucking did by deciding to walk in it for some reason, not bring an umbrella, even though this happens to you more than anyone else. No,

Matt (01:05:59):

That’s exactly … No, you’re right. That’s a good … If it is literally raining, he’s like, “Oh, it’s raining. Okay. I’ll go

Laci (01:06:05):

Out there and be miss

Matt (01:06:06):

Out

Laci (01:06:06):

On it. ” Let me not change my behavior at all.

Matt (01:06:09):

But you could definitely read this as like, this isn’t … He’s standing below their apartment and she’s beautifully naked with a bedsheet and then the big hunk comes up behind her. No, this didn’t happen. This is a fantasy.

Laci (01:06:20):

It’s no fucking way. Right. And of course you’re in the rain. Of course you’re in a fucking leather jacket. It’s all shiny. Yeah, this just makes me look like I’ve earned my sadness. How could you do this to me? I’m in the rain.

Matt (01:06:30):

But do you think this is an intentional-

Laci (01:06:33):

Call back?

Matt (01:06:33):

Here’s what Lloyd Dobler is actually like in real life, like sad and pathetic to be

Laci (01:06:36):

Doing that. But would you have been aware of that at the time?

Matt (01:06:39):

Of course.That was his most iconic role.

Laci (01:06:41):

Oh, Matt, that it’s dumb that Lloyd Dobler is not the hero we think he is. Would this movie have known that?

Matt (01:06:48):

Why not? I think that the read Nick Cornby’s book, and it is entirely like a deconstruction of the way we consume romance through pop culture versus the way it actually is.

Laci (01:07:01):

Then I say yes.

Matt (01:07:02):

Okay.

Laci (01:07:02):

This one is that.

Matt (01:07:04):

Thank you. You’re

Laci (01:07:04):

Welcome.

Matt (01:07:05):

What he learned from this is you can’t punch up above your weight. I’m middleweight. She’s a heavyweight. I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’m not the dumbest. And it is interesting to watch a movie about a guy who’s not a train wreck. He’s not a total immature clown. He’s just like a little fucked up and just has to learn to be a little less fucked up.

Laci (01:07:24):

A little stalled. He’s not introspective at all until something makes him sad or feels a big feeling. He’s never thinking about what can I do to be better or am I good as a partner? Am I being a good employer? Could I be doing more? It’s only when things go wrong that he’s like, “Now I want to think about me and what’s happened to me. “

Matt (01:07:48):

If you’re always just finding songs to represent how you feel and never generate the feelings on your own, you probably feel like, “What are you talking about? I’m a very introspective person. I think about the way I feel all the time,

Laci (01:08:00):

But

Matt (01:08:01):

It’s not actually true. You’re just using stuff that already exists in the world to represent how you feel.

Laci (01:08:09):

You know how we often, and it’s obvious what … We all have these magic years of when we bake in certain artists. And I don’t know what that’s like now when there’s such variety, but it’s still got to be true that there’s this window of your life where you have the time and space and no car or just got a car or you don’t have a lot of power in your relationship, but you want to be in one. There’s these times of moping and not having any power and everything is elevated during this time and it’s definitely late teens to mid to late teens. And that’s when all the music bakes in. And some people are music lovers forever, but I think all of us have this experience of like, no, that’s my band because it baked in at this time. He, however, stayed in the baking process.

(01:09:01):

He goes out nightly to clubs so that he could continue to bake. So we could be the first one to bake something. I mean, he’s made it his business to always know the music scene and to know it better than anyone else. And I could see someone like that not saving any space because music is emotional, not saving any emotional space or feeling like you’ve done a lot of emotional work today. When you’ve done none on your relationship or in your personal growth, you’ve just been spending it with a media that is kind of emotional.

Matt (01:09:30):

And like most music synobs I know are way more like technical about it. They’re into the instrumentation and the production and he barely ever talks about any of that stuff. He’s just about how the songs make you feel and what they represent.

Laci (01:09:46):

And just knowing them, knowing they exist, knowing of a band, owning them, having them on the shelves.

Matt (01:09:52):

So he needed to find somebody who is exactly on his level. A rebound Sarah played by Lily Taylor.

Laci (01:09:59):

I just find it so interesting when a movie states the kind of person that you’re about to see. It’s bold. You’re about to see someone exactly equal to John Cusack and then show him. I mean, luckily he’s very attractive, but accessible and so is she attractive, accessible. Yeah.

Matt (01:10:17):

I think you could always like mousey up somebody. It’s like in Home Alone-

Laci (01:10:22):

That’s as good as she gets.

Matt (01:10:22):

When Kevin looks at Buzz’s girlfriend’s picture, oh, buzz, your girlfriend.

Laci (01:10:26):

She’s got on head gear.

Matt (01:10:27):

Well, it’s a boy with a girl’s wig on because they had the dilemma of exactly what you’re saying. “Oh, we don’t want to make some girl feel bad about herself.

Laci (01:10:34):

“That’s why Shallow How is the worst fucking movie in the goddamn world. Jack Black.

Matt (01:10:39):

They are social matches and she was consumed with her. She was dumped by a Charlie of her own. She’s like, ” I don’t ever want to be in a relationship again. Yeah, me neither. “And then they just start kissing by Michigan.

Laci (01:10:51):

Because they both have the same issue of not being able to be alone and wanting to wallow. I want to spread this and you already have your own, so it’s not mean to me to do this.

Matt (01:11:04):

And then she eventually meets somebody else and leaves the relationship and he’s like, ” But that’s not what we do. That’s counter to the agreement we had.

Laci (01:11:11):

“But you never said the agreement, right? He’s all just feeling things and I think we’re on the same page, but actually talking about it would be doing the work and maybe stringing her along a little too much. It’s like he’s keeping everything with one foot out, one foot out with Charlie, one foot out with the girl. He couldn’t get his hands in her shirt, one foot out with fucking Laura.

Matt (01:11:31):

That’s probably true, but even they could have literally said,” We have an understanding. “I don’t know what that

Laci (01:11:37):

Would have sounded like. People never break up because we’re the breakup couple, right? But

Matt (01:11:40):

He is the kind of person who’s like, ” But we had a pact. And it’s like, who gives a fuck? That was two years ago. I’m different now.

Laci (01:11:46):

“Right. I’m better.

Matt (01:11:47):

As Laura says later in the movie, it’s a great line. The problem is I’ve changed since then and you haven’t.

Laci (01:11:51):

Right. That’s what I mean.

Matt (01:11:53):

That’s what real people do.

Laci (01:11:54):

The shit that you talk about when you first meet Rob is the stuff everyone talks about when they first meet. Here’s a list. Let’s talk about that. What does that song make you feel? Tell me what your dad listened to. Just random shit all around what do you like? And then two years later, and that’s still what you’re talking about. That’s fucking boring. And it’s a cop out. This is the illusion of a conversation. It’s even an illusion of depth and yet we’ve gone nowhere, no nothing more.

Matt (01:12:20):

And you are talking about it in one of the least interesting ways you can talk about it.

Laci (01:12:26):

Right. What does this mean about me that I so much relate to this song or like play this when I’m happy, this when I’m sad. We’re not talking about that. We’re just talking about, that song’s perfect for when I’m happy.

Matt (01:12:38):

Yeah. If he were in the movie, he would be … He’s Mike. He’s Mike Hanlin. He’s the one, the keeper of the pact, and he’s mad that the others aren’t respecting the pact.

Laci (01:12:49):

Mike never gets mad, but fine.

Matt (01:12:50):

So back in the present, he is reorganizing his record collection because that’s what he does in moments of intense emotional trauma.

Laci (01:12:57):

He does have an amazing memory. I mean, this character, if he exists, it’s phenomenal for him to have such a photographic memory of when things happened and at least even his version of what happened on those days.

Matt (01:13:12):

But this is why I gravitate-

Laci (01:13:14):

This is like magic to me. …

Matt (01:13:15):

To this book because that is me. I know. I

Laci (01:13:16):

Have

Matt (01:13:17):

That. It

Laci (01:13:18):

Gives and a curse.

Matt (01:13:20):

When he says,” I could tell you I have Fleetwood Max Rumors because I bought it as a president in 1983 and then didn’t end up giving it away as a president. “I know every single movie behind me, I can tell you when I bought it and where I bought it. I can tell you that about every book I’ve ever read. Most movies I’ve seen, I don’t know. My memory is getting worse as I age, but these things stick with me.

Laci (01:13:42):

Right. Rather than other things that could be getting in that could help you form tighter bonds and longer relationships with certain people. It’s like

Matt (01:13:50):

A hard drive.

Laci (01:13:51):

You

Matt (01:13:51):

Got to delete, you got to make room.

Laci (01:13:52):

Yeah. And you’re filling and it makes you feel fulfilled. It makes you feel like you’re doing something.

Matt (01:13:57):

No, it doesn’t. I’m just saying no, I’m aware. It’s not valuable stuff to

Laci (01:14:01):

Remember. It also makes you overconfident in your memory because there’s been a handful of times where I am remembering something the right way and you’re not. But you still, I don’t think, believe it even after proof, you’re just like, no. I

Matt (01:14:13):

Think-

Laci (01:14:14):

There’s a glitch in the matrix.

Matt (01:14:16):

I think almost everyone reacts that way is like, I accept that what you’re saying is true on certain plane of reality. It just doesn’t feel real to me. And I have no more defense.

Laci (01:14:29):

Don’t you think someone like me though, someone who’s used to being wrong and I’m almost always wrong about like how long ago something was and don’t you think I accept it pretty easy?

Matt (01:14:37):

No, I think

Laci (01:14:38):

You find- Whatever.

Matt (01:14:39):

And you turn it into a, maybe afterward you will accept that you were wrong, but in the moment-

Laci (01:14:45):

Is that not satisfying?

Matt (01:14:46):

No, it’s not.

Laci (01:14:47):

But I come to you and I go, turns out you were right. I give you that moment. You don’t

Matt (01:14:51):

Do

Laci (01:14:51):

That. You don’t do it.

Matt (01:14:52):

You don’t do it.

Laci (01:14:53):

You don’t do it.

Matt (01:14:54):

Neither

Laci (01:14:54):

Do you. That’s not true. I

Matt (01:14:56):

Don’t

Laci (01:14:56):

Think anyone does. You’re fucking idiot. There’s always someone who does something and I’m going to point it out. I’m going to show you how rewarding it is when I’m wrong. That’s right. Look forward to that. Why did I sound like a Muppet just now? That.

Matt (01:15:11):

So he’s explaining, here’s how I’m organizing my records, autobiographical, the order in which I purchased them. And Dick is like, oh my God. Oh my God.

Laci (01:15:21):

And he just goes, that sounds … And then Rob says, Comforting? It is. And he’s not fucking comforting at all. It sounds horrible.

Matt (01:15:29):

Oh no, it sounds great. I used to do this with my movies.

Laci (01:15:33):

You only had 12, so it was correct. I’ve

Matt (01:15:34):

Only ever done alphabetical, but I’d buy a new shelf and so I’d have to take them all down and then put them all back up again.

Laci (01:15:42):

Okay. Now that I love, but that’s different. That’s alphabetizing. And I used to do that too. This was before fast furniture too. I mean, there were shitty shelves at Walmart maybe, but I mainly just had to take hand-me-downs of like shifter robes and like China cabinets and random giant furniture that had shelves on it so I could make my quote unquote blockbuster. I had like two or three China cabinets at one point, these huge things that just had rows behind glass. Anyway, I was just thinking that was hard to move.

Matt (01:16:14):

Always the most hard, difficult thing for us to move is just all my fucking-

Laci (01:16:17):

Mine were VHS.

Matt (01:16:18):

Movies and my books. And I don’t even read physical books anymore, but I always buy

Laci (01:16:24):

The book of what I read. It’s about the physical it existing. It can’t be taken away from you if it’s physical.

Matt (01:16:31):

And it feels stupider and stupid.

Laci (01:16:32):

Well, that’s a stupid thing to say, but you know what I mean? Digital rights and all.

Matt (01:16:35):

Right. No, exactly.

Laci (01:16:37):

Anda won’t hesitate. Am I doing it? Because a lot. Am I doing it? Yeah. So I’m just like won’t wait. Sorry. She’s impossible to impersonate because there’s something magical about her.

Matt (01:16:53):

Lisa Bonnet.

Laci (01:16:54):

She’s like hypnotic.

Matt (01:16:56):

It’s Marie Desal who Rob and his two best friends are going to see at a club doing a sultry cover of Baby I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton. And Rob hears this coming into the club and he’s like, “This is that Peter fucking Frampton Ugh.” But then he goes in and he sees her and he goes up to his pals and he’s like, “Peter Frampton, I hate this song. Now I kind of like it. “

Laci (01:17:20):

Because it’s not about what you like. It’s about what you’re like. And she’s proving it right here in song form.

Matt (01:17:26):

Yeah.

Laci (01:17:26):

She’s soultry and evocative and mysterious and she’s making this song sound so much more meaningful and means and sexy that it’s like, okay, now yes, yes, this song is hot.

Matt (01:17:41):

And they fantasize about … I’ve always weared a musician. They’d put an inside joke in the liner notes, but it’s notable none of them are musicians though, which is always- Who

Laci (01:17:52):

Can’t do.

Matt (01:17:54):

Interested me about hardcore music fans who don’t play anything.

Laci (01:17:59):

Fuck you.

Matt (01:18:00):

Because-

Laci (01:18:01):

We’re not in competition with them. We can just idolize them. You think of them as your peers.

Matt (01:18:07):

That’s

Laci (01:18:07):

Fucking weird.

Matt (01:18:11):

It’s interesting for somebody to be so … You aren’t obsessed with music as these people are.

Laci (01:18:17):

Of course I’m not.

Matt (01:18:18):

So it’s interesting that they never thought I should try to learn how to play guitar. Because guitar is

Laci (01:18:22):

So

Matt (01:18:23):

Easy.

Laci (01:18:23):

Wait, no, it’s fucking not. It’s a very accessible instrument. It’s the thing everyone’s tried. Everyone’s bought the $150 guitar from Walmart when they think they want to do that. It’s not easy. It’s the easiest thing to realize, oh, you have to do this every day. Fingers don’t do this. It takes a lot of pressure, especially for a girl. So I’m pretty sure that it’s the most quit instrument of all time.

Matt (01:18:44):

Probably, but-

Laci (01:18:46):

You don’t think it’s weird that we are obsessed with movies but aren’t actors.

Matt (01:18:50):

A much higher barrier of entry to movies. You can buy

Laci (01:18:54):

A guitar. Not acting. Yes. You have to do it in front of

Matt (01:18:58):

People. A guitar, you can do it by yourself.

Laci (01:19:01):

Okay. But you could be in an improv class or just go to a community theater.

Matt (01:19:05):

That’s terrifying. A guitar you can do by yourself.

Laci (01:19:09):

It doesn’t make you … I guess it does. You can appreciate Georgio O’Keefe and not know how to paint a vagina.

Matt (01:19:14):

That’s fair.

Laci (01:19:15):

That’s fair. You could paint a vagina in the dark. You don’t even have to see yourself do it.

Matt (01:19:19):

Of course you can. No, I’m not saying-

Laci (01:19:21):

You know what I would do? I’d put paint all over my vagina and teach myself to do the splits. Boom. Vagina painting. It’d be a perfect gina. That sounds

Matt (01:19:28):

Really hard.

Laci (01:19:30):

Yeah, but I could do it alone.

Matt (01:19:31):

But all I’m saying is it’s interesting that they did … And maybe each of them did have a

Laci (01:19:35):

Moment where they

Matt (01:19:36):

Tried to play guitar.

Laci (01:19:37):

Also, Rob’s a DJ. Don’t you think he thinks of himself as in the music industry?

Matt (01:19:41):

Yeah.

Laci (01:19:41):

So then calm down. DJing is an art if you do it right.

Matt (01:19:45):

Yeah, I agree.

Laci (01:19:47):

But yet you don’t call him a musician. Would you say Spinderella is not a musician? Would

Matt (01:19:51):

I call a

Laci (01:19:52):

DJ a

Matt (01:19:53):

Musician?

Laci (01:19:53):

Did you say DJ Jazzy Jeff is not a musician? No,

Matt (01:19:56):

He’s a musician, but a DJ

Laci (01:19:57):

At

Matt (01:19:57):

A club. I don’t know if that’s a musician.

Laci (01:19:59):

How’s it different? One got a break and one didn’t. One’s doing it alone.

Matt (01:20:03):

If you’re doing it to incorporate … If you’re DJing and working on creating new songs, then you’re a musician. If you’re just playing music for other people, that is an art, but I would not call that a musician.

Laci (01:20:16):

That is what a good DJ does is mixes together the songs from one to the next, knowing which ones transition best into the other. They all are doing a bit of what Spenderella and DJ Jesse Jeff do.

Matt (01:20:27):

Yeah. And I’m not saying it has no value. It has value. But

Laci (01:20:30):

You’re not a musician, ladies and gentlemen. Yo heard it here first.

Matt (01:20:33):

Yeah. It’s the same argument we had about if you … Is your vocals an instrument? No, because words have meanings. It doesn’t mean you aren’t talented. It doesn’t mean you’re not a musician if you sing. Jack Black is a musician in this movie because he sings.

Laci (01:20:45):

And yet no one, none three of them were musicians. And he’s plays guitar too.

Matt (01:20:53):

Not in this movie. No. Oh right,

Laci (01:20:56):

Because he’s looking for guitars. But you’ve said none of them are, and you just realize two of them are. So I just think you’re a snob. But I’m specifically saying- A guitar is the only way to be a musician.

Matt (01:21:07):

It’s interesting that if you define your life by music, it’s weird that you never tried to play an instrument.

Laci (01:21:14):

And again, we have no way of knowing that. We have no way of

Matt (01:21:16):

Knowing that they didn’t

Laci (01:21:17):

Try it. So glad we had this straw man argument. Yes. This big fight. I was thinking while I was peeing, I’d love to work in a music store with you.

Matt (01:21:26):

No, you wouldn’t. You don’t like doing anything with me.

Laci (01:21:28):

The fuck, Matt. Yes, I would.

Matt (01:21:30):

Why?

Laci (01:21:30):

Just doing this all the time, just giving each other shit or just talking. That is the thing I like to do with you. Talk. Hello.

Matt (01:21:42):

Okay.

Laci (01:21:42):

Podcast.

Matt (01:21:43):

Yeah.

Laci (01:21:45):

Did that not give it away? I’ve had relationships where I actively avoid long periods of being alone because I don’t want to the talking part. Not with you.

Matt (01:21:54):

That’s nice. Sometimes I avoid you because you’ll hit me or tickle me or something.

Laci (01:21:59):

Only in a sexy way.

Matt (01:22:01):

Not always. No, I don’t avoid those times. The most dad thing about me, there are a lot of dad things about me that are getting revealed. There’s this persistent cough. And one of them is just like my tolerance for silliness. Sometimes you and the 15 year old, I’m like, “You’re being too silly. Stop it. Let’s be serious

Laci (01:22:18):

Here.” You don’t even allow me my silly allowance anymore. I used to get away with a couple of dances. You’d give me a pity smirk. Now I dance and nothing. Just nothing. I

Matt (01:22:30):

Allow it.

Laci (01:22:31):

I know, but it used to let me at least kind of have a piece of me that thought he likes it.

Matt (01:22:38):

Gets a voicemail from Jesse the cowgirl. Sorry, Joan Cusack was Liz. And she’s like, “Rob, I’m not taking sides in the breakup, but just yeah, I hope you’re doing okay there.” And then next day, Laura comes over to get some of her stuff. She said she was going to come by while he was at work, but he took the morning off so that he could

Laci (01:22:56):

Be there. That’s some fucking dirt back shit, man.

Matt (01:22:58):

Yeah. And immediately just, “Do you still love me? ” She’s like, “That’s not really a shoe. What should I have done to make you happy?” “Nothing. Make yourself happy. “She says,” The problem is you’re the same person you’ve always been and I’m not, and all I’ve done is change jobs. “And he’s like, ” No, you’ve changed clothes and hairstyles and you don’t even like your job. “She’s like, ” It’s not true. I do like my job.

Laci (01:23:18):

“That’s the thing, he doesn’t like things. He can’t imagine liking a job and he certainly can’t imagine being an attorney and being happy so he’s not right. And that’s the point. He applies his sensibilities to fucking everything. And you think she doesn’t feel it whenever he thinks that her outfit isn’t as cool as it used to be. We can’t all look like that all the time anymore. Her hair’s cool as shit. I love her hair, but it must be hard being with someone who gets to look exactly like they want all the time and be entrenched in the coolest and newest music. You’re always going to feel like a mama compared to them. When they’re the ones that are not changing or doing anything interesting, you are, but you’re the fucking sellout, especially for Gen X. They’re all about the don’t sell out bullshit. But how do you move on?

(01:24:04):

How do you bring kid into life if you don’t get a fucking job in this world?

Matt (01:24:11):

It is though becoming … Going from I’m a legal aid attorney to I work in a corporate law office, that is an enormous change. That definitely does change a person. And I think it is valid to say like, ” When I met you, you were not like this

Laci (01:24:29):

And

Matt (01:24:29):

Now you are different. Even if you don’t think it, now you’re like, well, I move in professional circles and I

Laci (01:24:34):

Go to conferences. “That’s a shitty relationship. If it can’t withstand change, that means it’s not real. It can’t sustain. All that is for sure is change. On the phone call with Liz is when it’s revealed that there’s an Ian guy. It didn’t even occur to Rob that there could have been another guy and this allows him to focus solely on that. Ian is why. Ian is how she was able to take a break and why she maybe realized it was time to do it. Sure, he’s the catalyst, but he’s not why Rob. But for someone like Rob who wants to focus his shit on a thing, on an event, this is perfect for him.

Matt (01:25:16):

Of

Laci (01:25:16):

Course. And now he’s obsessing and making himself miserable, thinking about her fucking him when even in that moment hardly matters the way he thinks it does. The sex being so important to him is annoying.

Matt (01:25:29):

It didn’t even seem like it was important to him until it could be a thing he could feel inadequate about or fixate on.

Laci (01:25:35):

And it’s emotionally immature when he finds out that they have not had sex yet and he thinks he won. It’s like, what did you win? She still thought about it. She’s still living with him right now. All the worst shit’s already happen, I promise you.

Matt (01:25:49):

And then she does. And what difference did it make? It didn’t make any difference at all.

Laci (01:25:53):

Well, and she wasn’t even attached to him, right? Ian just was this idea and then the reality of him was a whole other thing. That’s just what

Matt (01:25:59):

Happened. He had sex with somebody else while they were together too.

Laci (01:26:04):

Sure. Sure. But then Ian is so much likes Laura that he goes to Rob’s place of work and is talking about how, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her. And it’s like, you’re about to in like two days. None of you know Laura.

Matt (01:26:19):

So he calls off Joan Cusack. We see she too works in a big skyscraper. She’s a grownup. Everyone’s a grownup but him. And she’s like, ” Yeah, I don’t want to take sides, but I’m just not crazy about that Ian guy. “And he’s very funny because he hears that Ian guy and then they’re like, ” Rob, Marita Sells in the store. “So he has to put that aside for a second. And as she comes into the store as Lisa, when I comes into the store, they’re listening to her CD. And he turns it off, he’s like, ” Oh, nothing. “She’s like, ” No, that’s a good CD. “He’s like, ” I could turn it back on. You should turn it up. “Okay, cool. Then he goes off by himself and screams in the camera. “What fucking Ian guy?” Well, I like this. Who does she know Antian?

(01:26:55):

She doesn’t know anybody named Ian. He’s so

Laci (01:26:57):

Confident she’s never met an Ian. Would you work at her work?

Matt (01:26:59):

I know.

Laci (01:27:00):

It’s an office.

Matt (01:27:01):

Yes. Her world is, it’s thousands of people that you’ve never met, but oh wait, no, it’s the guy who used to live above us and we used to hear him have very loud, vigorous sex.

Laci (01:27:11):

Based on an initial, man, he got it right. Based on an initial.

Matt (01:27:15):

I think he must have remembered. Oh, that guy’s name. We called him Ray because his name is Ian Raymond. I never thought about his first name, but yeah, his name is Ian and it’s Tim Robbins.

Laci (01:27:24):

In the worst wig. It makes it so funny.

Matt (01:27:27):

It is hilarious and suddenly they heard him having vigorous sex and they’d make fun of him. It was just a little joke me and Laura would have a guy going on it up there.

Laci (01:27:37):

I should be so lucky. Yeah. And then they laugh.

Matt (01:27:39):

Yes. Ha ha ha. Can you even imagine? And now he’s imagining them having tantric sex in like a David Lynch red draped curtain room and he just puts his head under his blink. He’s like, “No.” And then he says, “Fine. Number five on my breakup list, Jackie Alden. Not a bad breakup at all. I just put her in the list to keep Laura out. Fuck it. Laura’s in my top five.”

Laci (01:28:02):

What a freeze frame. Joan has never looked so good.

Matt (01:28:06):

Because she comes into the store and everybody’s like, “Oh, hey, Liz.” And she just goes up to Rob and she’s like, “You fucking asshole.” And she just turns around and leaves and Rob looks at the camera and he’s like, “Yeah, I am an asshole.”

Laci (01:28:20):

But I mean, the list of things that happened, there’s one that’s bad, but I don’t know. I’m just like, “Wow, what’d he do? ” And then he explains them and it’s just like …

Matt (01:28:32):

It’s just stuff.

Laci (01:28:33):

It’s just life. It’s stuff, right?

Matt (01:28:34):

But he’s told his entire story and been like, “I don’t get it. Why does she want

Laci (01:28:40):

That

Matt (01:28:40):

Ian gun?” And he’s like, “You idiot.” This

Laci (01:28:42):

Has been a long time coming.

Matt (01:28:44):

The entire issue with you is that you’d never see your own

Laci (01:28:47):

Role in things.

Matt (01:28:49):

Life is happening to you. You are not a participant in it.

Laci (01:28:51):

The fact that you cheated on her and made her and she was pregnant at the time when she found out, so decided to terminate the pregnancy and you had the gull to be like, “What right do you have? That’s my baby too.” Bitch, you’re the one that fucking cheated. All

Matt (01:29:07):

Of that and also smartness to say, I know that was wrong and bad to

Laci (01:29:12):

Say. Right. But still, let’s shame her. Let’s make sure to say the absolute worst thing that might haunt her forever when you don’t even know her fucking politics around this or her moral stuff around this. And you don’t know until you do it how you’re going to feel about an abortion.

Matt (01:29:27):

He’s like, “Okay, yeah, I am an asshole. Liz was informed by Laura to possibly four of the four bad things I did.” And even this is like, well, so Laura didn’t even tell her best friend about these things. We don’t. Look how invested she is in you guys as a unit. I don’t want my friend to know some shitty things because she likes him, don’t want to pollute the way she views him or whatever.

Laci (01:29:51):

That’s a very recognizable human thing to do.

Matt (01:29:55):

We met when I was DJing at a club. It was the happiest I had ever been. That’s when I met Laura. She was this cool Ooh, young punk lawyer. We’re good at a legal aid click. I like that they have a way because she can be a cool lawyer.

Laci (01:30:05):

Making no money.

Matt (01:30:07):

And she says like, “Hey, I love this song.” And whenever somebody is told in this movie, that’s a great song or I love this song. They always say, “I know. ” She’s like, “What is it? Where can I get it? ” And he’s like, “Tell you what, come back next week. I’ll make you a tape.”

Laci (01:30:18):

Yeah, that sounds way less fucking inconvenient than you just telling me right now, asshole. Come back to this club that you may or may not have been coming to. Well,

Matt (01:30:28):

She asks, “Where can I get it? ” But no, she knows what she’s actually asking. And then goes into the intricacies of making a tape. So there’s two super unpopular things I’ve said on this podcast. The first is that art can’t change the world. I’ve already reiterated how true that is on this episode. The second thing is it’s annoying to receive a mixtape and people are like, “No, it’s intimate and beautiful. It’s the kindest thing you can do for anyone.” It

Laci (01:30:53):

Just depends on who’s giving it to you and when. If we were breaking up and you decided to give me a, this is our divorce mix tape, like fuck yourself. If you think I’m going out with homework- Here’s my

Matt (01:31:04):

Divorce

Laci (01:31:05):

Pick. You can lick my fucking asshole in an unfun way. But when we were courting and I was falling in love with you and you gave me a roadmap to your heart, then it was awesome.

Matt (01:31:16):

Yeah. Fine. Yes. If you had done that for me, I too would’ve been like,

Laci (01:31:21):

Oh. I don’t do that.

Matt (01:31:22):

I

Laci (01:31:22):

Know. Also, you would’ve just judged it.

Matt (01:31:24):

No, I would’ve been like, “It’s so special because it’s from her.” And you know what? I remember we were just texting, I just asked you like, “Her, what’s your favorite challenge?” I know.

Laci (01:31:33):

I remember.

Matt (01:31:34):

Okay. Why

Laci (01:31:34):

Is that my memo’s

Matt (01:31:36):

House? See, you do remember.

Laci (01:31:37):

Oh, do remember. And the best thing you could say to me was, “That’s eclectic.” Yeah, I guess it is.

Matt (01:31:44):

That’s a cluck.

Laci (01:31:44):

That’s a lot of different things. You know what? It is.

Matt (01:31:47):

Those are some compositions.

Laci (01:31:48):

Wow, thanks.

Matt (01:31:49):

Oh, interesting choice.

Laci (01:31:51):

You’re a fucking- Goes through

Matt (01:31:52):

Some

Laci (01:31:52):

Of the- Record store snob without the record store.

Matt (01:31:54):

Goes through the intricacies of making a mix tape. You know, you got to start off with a banger, but then you got to take it up a notch. I think I got to take it down a little bit. Not a lot. And in the book, he’s like, “You can’t put the song she asked for at number one because then she just might turn it off after that. You have to bury it in the middle of the mix and you’re using other people’s art to express ways that you feel.” And yeah, I used to do tons of making mix tapes and then CDs, ones iTunes, once I figured that out. And now I can see it was probably super annoying to people. And

Laci (01:32:26):

Just people- Who old did you give these to?

Matt (01:32:27):

Patrick. Girls too. My dad also. Okay.This led to them getting together, they’re dating, and then her lease was up, so just move into his apartment.

Laci (01:32:40):

You could have ended up marrying your dad on accident. You’re just whipping those things around.

Matt (01:32:45):

He will still joke like, “Hey Matt, you got a mix volume

Laci (01:32:51):

One.” Still waiting on that volume too.

Matt (01:32:53):

And they had an age appropriate existence. The cool people in the 20s, they live in this vinyl record apartment. But then-

Laci (01:33:00):

Now they’re 25. The clock’s a ticking.

Matt (01:33:04):

She becomes a little bit more grown up. The four things he did, infidelity, he had sex with another woman. An abortion. She had an abortion. Well, she was pregnant and he didn’t know about it and she had an abortion. And then he found out she had an abortion. She said, “How dare you? It’s my child too. You can’t make that decision.” Number three, he borrowed $4,000 from her. The

Laci (01:33:22):

Way she put it was he cheated on me while I was pregnant, which is a very different way. It wasn’t about the abortion. It was cheated on me while I was pregnant.

Matt (01:33:29):

And she says it directly led to the decision to terminate the

Laci (01:33:33):

Pregnancy. It’s

Matt (01:33:34):

Even worse.

Laci (01:33:35):

We

Matt (01:33:35):

Might’ve had the baby.

Laci (01:33:36):

Right.

Matt (01:33:37):

I never even thought about

Laci (01:33:38):

That. They could have had a baby together. Wait, but she’s not the best narrator to this either because these are things she’s saved up and she’s framing them in such a way that makes her not the bad guy for wanting a break or a breakup from Rob with a mutual friend. And that’s not a totally … Now the bottom line is he fucking cheated on her and that is the one thing he did that’s like, that is fucking no thank you, bye-bye.

Matt (01:34:00):

But Laci, when we see her telling this, this is his imagination of those conversations. So this is his memory of what

Laci (01:34:07):

Happened. Oh, okay.

Matt (01:34:08):

And each thing she says, Joan Cusick is very funny. Asshole, that is shocking. That is shocking. Borrowed $4,000 from her. It’s like, what? She’s a corporate attorney. You guys are in a relationship. What is

Laci (01:34:22):

It? I know. That part I’m always like, gives a fuck.

Matt (01:34:24):

Yes. It has always confused me couples who are like, they have, that’s her money and this is my money. I get it, but it’s all both your money. I don’t

Laci (01:34:33):

Know. They’re in a more casual relationship. I mean, if it’s casual enough that he can cheat and they’re going to stay together.

Matt (01:34:39):

In Laci and I’s relationship, we can’t cheat. That’s like a rule we have. Do not do that.

Laci (01:34:43):

Don’t do it. That

Matt (01:34:43):

Would really upset me.

Laci (01:34:45):

Hated it.

Matt (01:34:46):

And then the fourth thing is, I maybe suggested I want to get out of the relationship.

Laci (01:34:52):

Okay. No

Matt (01:34:52):

Wonder she fucking broke up with you.

Laci (01:34:54):

Yeah, but that’s not even … She fucking baited him. She said that, of course I think about it. Then he was like, “Oh, okay, of course.”

Matt (01:35:02):

This I don’t totally get. So she’s like, “You ever think about breaking up?” And he was like, “Oh, I don’t know from time

Laci (01:35:07):

To time.” No. Do you ever think about seeing someone else? And he goes, “I don’t know, do you? ” I mean, of course, because she’s thinking about Ian. And then he goes, “Okay, yeah, of course.”

Matt (01:35:17):

Then why does he think that this is one of the four horrible things he did? Because

Laci (01:35:22):

It’s his framing. She actually was giving him the clue and so she’s like, “Damn it. She used it as a way to get away from me.

Matt (01:35:30):

” So now he realizes-

Laci (01:35:32):

That he could talk to Bruce Springsteen.

Matt (01:35:33):

He is an asshole and he decides he needs to get closure with past girlfriends. Again, a pre-internet thing, no Facebook. So I have to open up my address book and go see, can I get in touch with all these old girlfriends? See what I did wrong? Folks never ever do this. Why would you do this? Nobody wants to

Laci (01:35:51):

Have

Matt (01:35:52):

This done to them. He calls up his

Laci (01:35:54):

Junior high- And find out no one remembered you too. God, there’s so many boys that could call me and be like, “You did the what now? Who are you?

Matt (01:36:02):

” So calls up his junior high, three day girlfriend. Her mom answers and he’s like, “Who’s this? ” And he’s like, “Oh, I was her first boyfriend.” I was like, “No, she married her first boyfriend.”

Laci (01:36:13):

It’s so convenient for the mom to have this intimate information. You ask my mom who my first boyfriend is. She will get it wrong. But because she married him.

Matt (01:36:22):

Because yes, she married

Laci (01:36:23):

Him. So it’s a thing they’re

Matt (01:36:24):

Always telling, “Oh, my first boyfriend.” And he immediately was like, “It’s not true. I was her first boyfriend. Technically. I got in there right

Laci (01:36:31):

At the very beginning. You want to know Rob? You want to know something? You never asked. You just thought kissing meant this. You thought living together meant this. You thought you looking like that meant this. You thought you being broken up with and her being broken up meant this. He spends his entire life just assuming that there’s an understanding and it’s just his understanding of the situation even down to the very first person who he thought was his girlfriend when that was never locked in.

Matt (01:36:55):

This is why the parallels between Rob and me continue. That girlfriend, the girl who broke my heart when I was 13 did marry the guy she ended up with right after me. Isn’t that nuts? I don’t know if they’re still together, but they did get married.

Laci (01:37:10):

Wow.

Matt (01:37:11):

What? What?

Laci (01:37:12):

Wow. And I’m

Matt (01:37:13):

Also bad at asking questions to clarify.

Laci (01:37:15):

Yeah. And you do it for the same reason. Number one, you don’t want to know the answer. I don’t want to know yet. And number two, you don’t want to put it in stone because maybe you don’t feel that way. Maybe if you know that they do feel that way, you’ll like them less. No. There’s a part of you that likes the uncertainty.

Matt (01:37:27):

That was never me. That’s not true. You’re wrong.

Laci (01:37:31):

Okay. I don’t like being-

Matt (01:37:32):

I always liked the person. I always wanted to marry them.

Laci (01:37:36):

Until you got to know them and you’re like, “This person’s dumb, but I still want to marry them.” Here I am. Just

Matt (01:37:42):

Gave her a little look.

Laci (01:37:43):

There I

Matt (01:37:44):

Am. No, I never had a … I

Laci (01:37:48):

Don’t have 20

Matt (01:37:48):

Million boyfriends like you. I only had a couple. Only a

Laci (01:37:52):

Couple boyfriends.

Matt (01:37:53):

So this makes him feel great because it was fate. She was destined for this guy. I’m just a footnote. It’s fun. I feel terrific. I need to do this again. He gets addicted to the feeling of closure. The

Laci (01:38:03):

Advocation. Yeah.

Matt (01:38:05):

And he’s like, “This is going to be like, it’s like

Laci (01:38:06):

A

Matt (01:38:07):

Bruce Springsteen song,”

Laci (01:38:08):

He says. This is why he sucks though. It’s one-sided all the way through. He fucks up all four of these women’s day life. He interrupts them again. It’s not good for the person. Yeah, that’s

Matt (01:38:18):

Why it’s great.

Laci (01:38:19):

On all four accounts, I mean, to the very least extent to the mom, to this very first one, because she’ll forget about the phone call, but he didn’t make her day better. He’s just barging in and especially with the second one, he pisses me off every time. He just leaves that like such a shit. Doesn’t say anything about her, doesn’t fucking console her or say, “Holy crap.”

Matt (01:38:40):

Yeah. So with the second one, the one who he said, “What? Kiss me, never goes anywhere.” And then she put out for the next guy she dated. So he’s like, “Hey.” And they’re having a nice evening together and he’s totally not being like a. But then he becomes a pathetic little bitch and asks and she’s like, “Are you serious?”

Laci (01:39:02):

You ruined my life through college. What

Matt (01:39:04):

She says is, “I did want to have sex with you. I just wasn’t ready. I wanted to later.”

Laci (01:39:10):

I was obsessed with you.

Matt (01:39:11):

And he’s like, “This blows his mind. He had no idea that this could be a

Laci (01:39:14):

Possibility.” But it’s the only thing that matters. He’s like, “Do you want to suck?” There’s nothing about her as a person in this at all, except for that she’s pretty, pretty and wanted to put out eventually. That would have been enough.

Matt (01:39:26):

Yeah. And this is a separation between the objective reality of the world and the world as Rob sees it because he doesn’t see-

Laci (01:39:33):

He sees people who will have sex with them and people who will not.

Matt (01:39:36):

But the camera is giving her the sort of agency of being a total person. Says like, “I did want to have sex with you, but not then.” And then you broke up with me and I was devastated. And the next guy who came along, he pressured me and I didn’t have the-

Laci (01:39:55):

I didn’t want to go through that again.

Matt (01:39:57):

It wasn’t

Laci (01:39:58):

Rape because didn’t say no. She said it wasn’t

Matt (01:40:00):

Rape because I technically said yes, but it wasn’t far off.

Laci (01:40:02):

Right. And that is huge. That should be a bombshell to him. And then she says the even worst thing, which is like, I had problems with sex all the way through college because of this interaction I had with this guy. And this guy was a direct result of you breaking up with me.

Matt (01:40:18):

Yeah. And you

Laci (01:40:19):

Want to talk

Matt (01:40:19):

About why you feel so she had fuck you and she storms off. And then he’s like, “This is

Laci (01:40:24):

Great.” Like we should go after her. He just dug up some fucked up shit and again, he doesn’t give a fuck. It’s annoying. It’s bad. You’re bad. At this moment, you’re not good.

Matt (01:40:36):

This is also directly from the book. This is from a book from 1995, probably written earlier than that. The insights

Laci (01:40:42):

We

Matt (01:40:42):

Have

Laci (01:40:42):

Into-

Matt (01:40:42):

What’s

Laci (01:40:43):

Your point on that, Matt? What point are you making about that? Earlier times and sex.

Matt (01:40:50):

That the author understood a sort of complex thing about consent, even though it was the early ’90s. These aren’t new ideas.

Laci (01:40:58):

But even understanding it, only so far as like, yeah, we probably owe that broad some consent. What I think is understood now is that in a way that it wasn’t before is like women are not having good sex with these interactions, these one night stands, unless they are seeking them out or they are pursuing them, men like Harry Met Sally, think they’re leaving with a fair trade sex for a sex. When the guy has a power in the way that the woman that he can’t understand, even though he thinks the woman has the power because she gives it up there, she doesn’t. And that’s not true. There’s all kinds of fucking baggage around that. Even now there would be.

Matt (01:41:40):

I’m just saying he has the understanding because he writes her as a full character with these things.

Laci (01:41:45):

I know. And he’s allowing Rob to stay flawed, right? We don’t want an angel here. This makes him more realistic. I’m just saying.

Matt (01:41:51):

She storms off and he’s like, “She’s right. I broke up with her. How could I have forgotten this? I feel great. I should have done this 10 years ago.” Not ready to revisit Catherine Zana Jones yet. So he goes to Sarah, the partner in Rejection who rejected him, played by Lily Taylor. I mean, what a cast in this movie. They have a sweet little dinner date and it’s clear she would get back with him in a second right now. She immediately asked, “Are you seeing anybody?” “Oh, okay. I don’t know why I ever broke up with you. Jesus Christ. “And he’s like, ” How are you doing? “”I’m not good. I’m not good at all, to be honest. Yeah, the medication I was on isn’t working. They’re trying new things. It’s nice because I’m a guinea pig, so I get paid a lot of money.” And he’s like, “Yeah.” You

Laci (01:42:28):

Got a lot going on. You’ve got some stuff that’s not being fixed and you need money. So okay.

Matt (01:42:34):

So he says, “I realized I didn’t have the heart to ask why she rejected me. There’s no bitterness here. And in fact, I could have sex with her tonight if I want to. “

Laci (01:42:43):

With that being the thing, that’s what bugs me about him the whole way through is that sex is the indicator you’re good with this person. And that’s my point. It’s not.

Matt (01:42:51):

No.

Laci (01:42:52):

Sex does not equal relationship.

Matt (01:42:54):

Yeah, I know, but I think that the movie and the book understand that he’s wrong about that. I definitely felt this way when I was young, the one year I was single, I was dealing with a bad breakup and I thought, if I just go have sex with a woman, I’ll immediately forget about my old girlfriend. And I had one one night stand and that did not happen at all. The next day I had a big argument on the phone with my ex- girlfriend. I think there is some sort of social conditioning for guys from writers like Bill Simmons that you need to just go out there and hook up and that’s how you’ll get your self worth. Looks up Charlie’s phone number, Katherine Zada Jones. She’s in the fucking phone book. She should be living on Neptune because she’s just been this goddess that’s lived in his mind all this time.

Laci (01:43:36):

Funny line. I always like that line.

Matt (01:43:39):

I love the scene where we see them on one of their busy Saturdays and all the people are coming in and we see the different sales tactics that they have or Jack Black’s approaches to just dawn a customer like, “You don’t own blonde on blonde, you fucking idiot okay,” and just hands him stacks of records and says like, “Dude, it’s going to be okay. Just stick with me and you’ll be okay.” And the guy’s like, “Yes.” And spends hundreds of dollars on albums and I could totally, I would like to have this happen to me. I would love to go be told about how there’s tons of movies I haven’t seen and they may be a bad person for having

Laci (01:44:09):

That email. Yeah. Someone to curate something. You’re the one that always has to choose what to watch. That takes total sense that you would want someone else to choose and to tell

Matt (01:44:16):

You. No, but I want somebody to tell me I’m bad and disgusting for not having done it. And then Dick on the other hand is like, “I’ll learn about your tastes and I’ll be sort of a Pandora radio to find out some adjacent things you might like. ” And he’s talking to Sarah Gilbert as Anna and finding a record she didn’t even know about by stiff little fingers. And then Laura that night comes to Rob’s apartment to pick up some shit and he’s immediately like, I guess he asks very blunt questions, but he’s unable to ask them when he’s in a relationship with a woman, but when he’s out of a relationship, he can be like, “Hey, are we going to get back together? Do you like me? Why don’t you love me anymore? Are you fucking that guy? Why are you fucking that guy?

(01:44:56):

Do you think we’re going to get back together? Do you think there’s a chance?” And she says, “Well, there’s always a chance.” He’s like, “Okay, can you give me a number on that? What percentage chance do you think there is that we get

Laci (01:45:03):

Back together?” She gets a funny number, which is eight or

Matt (01:45:05):

Nine. 9%. It’s like nine. Okay. And sex with Ian, how about that? And she says, “We haven’t done it yet.” And this makes him feel so much better that he goes out that night and shags Marie Deselle. “What? “Because she also is getting over a very bad breakup and they have sex, but the next morning realized this is kind of awkward and yeah, we just did that because we wanted to feel something. Lisa Bonnet says,” I feel like I’m heartbroken, but that shouldn’t get in the way of me in a fuck, “is what she says. It’s

Laci (01:45:40):

Just casual. I don’t think they regret it. It’s just casual sex. And he didn’t go seek it out. He just went out and it naturally happened between them.

Matt (01:45:46):

And so he has what he would have assumed would be a magical night. “Oh, I got to have sex with this cool sexy musician lady.” And then immediately as he’s leaving the apartment, he just goes right back to fixating on Laura. What did she mean by, “I haven’t had sex with him yet.”

Laci (01:46:02):

That’s when he goes into the record store and he’s drilling his employees, his friends for … If I were to tell you that I wasn’t going to watch fuck this movie yet- Evil Dead too, he says. And then Jack Plack can’t get over the exact question, the specificness of the question, but it’s like, Rob, just tell him why you’re saying that and then he’ll just answer it and the way you’re at least trying to frame it.

Matt (01:46:30):

I feel like this is every fucking day of my life is this interaction on both ends. I am also bad at hearing the actual question people want to ask

Laci (01:46:39):

And

Matt (01:46:39):

I’m sometimes bad at asking them or just I can’t get them to be on the same page as me. I tell you, you were a liar. You saw evil dead too. I saw it with you. But I hadn’t seen it yet and he’s so funny. He’s like, “Oh, it seems like you don’t want to see it. ” But wait a minute, you said

Laci (01:46:53):

Yes. He said yes. Yes. And now we’re getting to the thing I was … It’s like you could have saved so much time, Rob.

Speaker 4 (01:47:00):

But from that one sentence, would you think that I was going to see it?

Speaker 3 (01:47:05):

I’m sorry, Rob, I’m struggling here. You’re asking me what would I think if you told me you hadn’t seen a film that you have already seen? What am I supposed to say?

Speaker 4 (01:47:13):

Listen to me. If I said to you-

Speaker 3 (01:47:14):

I haven’t seen Evil Dead too yet. Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:47:17):

Would you get the impression that I really wanted to see it?

Speaker 3 (01:47:20):

Oh, well, you couldn’t have been desperate to see it, otherwise you’d have already gone.

Speaker 4 (01:47:26):

Right. I’m not going to see that movie.

Speaker 3 (01:47:32):

But the word yet … Yeah, you know what? I get the impression that you wanted to see it, otherwise you’d have said you didn’t want to go.

Speaker 4 (01:47:43):

But in your opinion, would I definitely go?

Speaker 3 (01:47:44):

How the fuck am I supposed to know? Probably.

Matt (01:47:47):

Because he doesn’t talk about personal stuff with them because he feels like they’re beneath him.

Laci (01:47:53):

I don’t think he talks about it at all.

Matt (01:47:56):

Yeah, I don’t think he talks about it at all.

Laci (01:47:57):

He talks about it with

Matt (01:47:58):

Women. Right. Again, he’s like me. I’m comfortable talking to women, but he has been harassing Laura and Ian on the phone calling them repeatedly.

Laci (01:48:09):

From right outside his house. Yes. So I don’t know if this is a Lloyd Dobler thing. This seems to be a rob thing. Is it in the book?

Matt (01:48:15):

Yeah, it is. I don’t think the book specified. I was standing outside her house in the rain. We have to make this sort of cinematic.

Laci (01:48:22):

I got you, but him calling from a phone booth near the house where they can see him- I don’t remember if he does it near the house. It’s very different than just doing it. They’re both bad, but one’s fucking creepy as shit.

Matt (01:48:33):

Yes. Although again, in the movie, you can’t tell if this is actually real, that he’s actually standing outside their apartment.

Laci (01:48:39):

He says you were there this morning.

Matt (01:48:41):

Oh yeah.

Laci (01:48:42):

Ian says that.

Matt (01:48:43):

So Ian comes into the store and this is like our one real Tim Robbins scene. It’s so funny. We get three different versions of how Ro can get the upper hand on him like, “You get out of here, but surely freak.” And Tim Robbins runs scared and then one, they all start beating the shit out of him and Dick pulls the air conditioner unit out of the wall and slams it down on him. But the real version is like Tim Robbins is just like, “Yeah, so maybe just cool

Laci (01:49:10):

Down.” I’m just like my stepdad. That’s all I can think about.

Matt (01:49:14):

Oh, hi, Bibi.

Laci (01:49:15):

Stop.

Matt (01:49:16):

And John Cusack is just frozen and can’t say anything. So he’s just totally humiliated. It could not go worse. All right. Charlie, Captain Zana Jones now returns Rob’s phone call and the way she talks is very strange. It’s like Bonjour Jellybean. Oh, it’s the Rob Gordon.

Laci (01:49:35):

So are you in or are you out?

Matt (01:49:37):

He’s like, “What the … ” Well, first Charlie, so what’s your life like? Do you have kids? And she’s like, “Kids are too, I don’t know, time consuming, I guess is the word that I’m looking for. ” And what he says to the camera is like, “She always talks this way. It’s incredible.”

Laci (01:49:51):

She’s the first person to have ever a conversation about having kids.

Matt (01:49:54):

She’s, “Are you in or out? I’ve been getting all these ex- boyfriend phone calls lately. They want to go back on old wounds and I don’t have the energy to do that with you, Rob. So if we can just be friends,” he’s like, “Yeah, let’s just be friends.” She’s like, “Great, come to a dinner party tomorrow night.” So he does. He goes to the dinner party. She is a total yuppie with her total yuppie hipster friends and he observes them all and says like, “Why do I feel so jealous of them? I don’t like them. I don’t want the lives that they have, but they’re just living the markers of conventional American success and prosperity that I am not, even though it’s not what I want. ” But

Laci (01:50:27):

He’s missing the point, isn’t he? I think he imagines that if he were at this dinner party, invited to this dinner party because he’s a friend, that he’d in Laura’s eyes look like he was the adult thing that she’s looking for, that he had had some growth, not because it’s Charlie, but because he was invited to something like this and makes enough money to go to it when it’s like you’re still thinking about the things and Laura is specifically talking about you as a person able to go deep and to think about yourself in a different way and about the future. The future really. That’s what’s missing is you just live in the now, you always have and not in a fun … I live in the now. No, this is just this and you don’t like it and you don’t not like it. And that’s fucking frustrating because do one or the other.

Matt (01:51:16):

What do you think the future … What future though is she talking about? I get it, but this is because she is not saying you need to change your job, you

Laci (01:51:25):

Need to do

Matt (01:51:25):

Anything.

Laci (01:51:26):

No, you need to make yourself happy. So he needs to change how he talks about his job. He needs to change how he talks about the two employees at it. Either fire them or admit they’re your best friends and that you enjoy them. Either do more than just the record store or admit that you like it and that you’re content. Having one foot out, everything is not being put on you, you have agency, you’re deciding to do these things.

Matt (01:51:49):

Yeah. And if you go to a social function with Laura, with all these corporate lawyers and you feel inferior, you kind of are in charge of, “I don’t need to feel inferior. I can just be content and confident about my life.”

Laci (01:52:03):

You could tell any of these people what you do and they’d be like, “That’s fucking cool.” And they’d mean it.

Matt (01:52:09):

Yeah. I like this moment with Katherine Zada Jones and she too is very, very funny, very early role for her and Rob says, “I realize listening to her to talk that she’s like an airhead. She doesn’t have anything interesting to say and she’s so self-obsessed and only talks about herself and doesn’t listen to anybody.” But we see she does something kind of observant. Rob is lingers while everybody else is gone. He’s sitting on the sofa. She strolls up to him and gets his jacket and is about to toss it to him saying like, “All right buddy, time to go. ” And then she sees not, he wants to dig in now and she doesn’t say anything, but then she just sets the jacket right back down

Laci (01:52:46):

And

Matt (01:52:46):

Sits down on the sofa and then he’s like, “So what’s your name? Charlie. Why’d you dump me for Marco?” She’s like, “I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. ” Well, Marco just seemed more glamorous, exciting, fun, bigger dick. Healthier, good to live longer, definitely.

Laci (01:53:03):

All right. It was exactly what he thought. He was an upgrade and Charlie is shallow and Charlie knew the doting I’m not worthy thing got old for her. So then she wanted something a little more challenging. It’s not any deeper and it’s exactly what you thought, Rob.

Matt (01:53:19):

She broke up with that guy too. It’s like Tim Blake Nelson says in minority report, “Go digging through the past chief. All you get is dirty.” Jack Black, he has an ad up in the store looking for a band to hire him as a singer, singer seeking a bassist to drummer and a guitar player. And a guy comes in and he’s like, “Hey, you want to come jam?” And Jack Block’s like, “Yeah, cool.” And

Laci (01:53:41):

They’re like,

Matt (01:53:41):

“You’ve had this ad up for years and you’re just being so nonchalant about it. ” And then at the same time, Dick, the neurodivergent young man, he has a new girlfriend, Sarah Gilbert. John Cusack, he’s the one, he’s not even … His life sucks. Everybody’s moving up in this world except for him.

Laci (01:53:58):

Everybody knows what they want to move on and he doesn’t know that. Right, exactly. Because he got Laura on and she’s so laid back, cool, pretty. She’s all the right things, but so low maintenance and none of the intimidating things that he can’t stand about a relationship until she does move up in the world a little bit. And then the power dynamic changes.

Matt (01:54:22):

He makes his list top five things I miss most about Laura. One of them is the feet. If you said

Laci (01:54:26):

That, you

Matt (01:54:27):

Always think about

Laci (01:54:27):

That. Because I do it. What

Matt (01:54:29):

Is it?

Laci (01:54:31):

She moans and then rubs her feet together in equal amounts on each side when she can’t sleep. I don’t do it then, but I do rub my feet together before I go to

Matt (01:54:40):

Sleep. And then another one is her smell, just smells like home. And smells are very big for Laci.

Laci (01:54:46):

Very.

Matt (01:54:47):

He’s standing over a bridge over the Chicago River. It looks beautiful. And then he gets a phone call from Laura. My dad died and she hangs up.

Laci (01:54:57):

Like a gut-riching cry. Yes. And there’s this familiarity, there’s this comfort between them that she knows she just wants to tell him this. I need you to know this. I need you to hear me crying. You’re going to understand this in a way that Ian will not and you’re going to handle it in a way that’s not going to drive me insane because I know exactly what you’re going to do. I’m in no mood for something new right now. And so she gives him just a litle bit of information and hangs up and then he’s devastated for her. He’s actually feeling something from her point of view, which is like, that’s the growth. That’s the difference.

Matt (01:55:33):

And then gets to see these things mean different things to different people. Jack Black’s like, “What’s up?” And he’s like, “Laura’s dad died.” And he goes, “Oh, bummer.” It’s like he is getting to look at a version of himself in

Laci (01:55:44):

A

Matt (01:55:44):

Way.

Laci (01:55:45):

There’s two ways I could approach this. The Dick Way or the, what is Jack Box character? Barry? Barry Way. Yeah.

Matt (01:55:51):

So Barry’s like, all right, top five songs to play at a funeral. Or no, top five songs about Death. A Laura’s Dad tribute list. It’s very nice. Let’s tribute this list to him.

Laci (01:56:00):

Right. That’s at least a little less.

Matt (01:56:03):

And I like that.

Laci (01:56:03):

Cruel.

Matt (01:56:04):

It starts as songs that are about death and then morphs and do songs you would play at a funeral without them even saying

Laci (01:56:09):

It. And it’s just like,

Matt (01:56:10):

Ooh, bring the house down. It’s like, I didn’t know if we were singing this at the funeral. So Laci, songs, you’d like play it at your funeral. Go ahead.

Laci (01:56:16):

I forgot we were doing this. The only one I’ve ever known for sure is that song, Hallelujah. And I can’t think of the version of it or even if it matters, it’s just I love that fucking song.

Matt (01:56:28):

What? The Leonard Cohen song?

Laci (01:56:30):

Hallelujah.

Matt (01:56:32):

Okay.

Laci (01:56:32):

Yeah, that one. I’ve told you that a few times.

Matt (01:56:35):

I always remember it as being taken to church. I live my life like a song of a

Laci (01:56:39):

Bitch. How would that be a funeral song? I don’t

Matt (01:56:41):

Know. I mean, hallelujah, I understand.

Laci (01:56:45):

It’s not even religious and that’s what made me like it. It’s even more that one. And I can’t help falling in love with you, Elvis. I know it’s hard. Can we appreciate the art without the artist?

Matt (01:56:59):

Oh, I don’t care about that.

Laci (01:57:00):

Oh, then what the fuck, Rooner?

Matt (01:57:01):

Lame.

Laci (01:57:02):

It’s not about you.

Matt (01:57:06):

A question. Can I record a version that we played?

Laci (01:57:09):

No. Oh my God. Is that my funeral? That’s so fucking weird. What are yours?

Matt (01:57:16):

Because-

Laci (01:57:16):

What are yours? At the

Matt (01:57:17):

End of the conjuring two, Patrick Wilson sings it. We could get

Laci (01:57:20):

It from that movie.

Matt (01:57:20):

What? Fields of Athenai by Dropkick Murphy’s has a lot of bagpipes, very bagpipe forward. That’s what I want. What?

Laci (01:57:29):

It’s too rock.

Matt (01:57:31):

No, you don’t know this song. It’s about a man who gets sent to Australia for stealing corn from the Nobles house. It’s a cover of an Irish folk song.

Laci (01:57:40):

Okay.

Matt (01:57:41):

It’s very pastoral.

Laci (01:57:43):

Well, it helped me mourn. Okay.

Matt (01:57:44):

Well, it helped me morn. So the funeral. He

Laci (01:57:52):

Sits in the back, which I think is respectful. He’s there if she needs him. It’s not about him. But then at the after thing, the after funeral thing, we’re …

Matt (01:58:00):

The after party.

Laci (01:58:01):

Where two people, the sister and the friend are talking about Laura. He assumes that they’re talking about him too and he makes it about him and they both go, “It’s not about you. ” And that’s the point. That’s the thing he’s supposed to learn here is like, this is not about you. You’re doing this for selflessly. It’s going to be awkward for you and the way that it should be awkward for you because you guys are down on the best terms and we know that because we love her. But you still need to do it.

Matt (01:58:31):

But he is technically right because they’re like, she’s been through a lot of changes lately. And he’s like, “Oh, you’re talking about me like I’m not even here.” And she’s like, “We are not talking about you, but it’s like, okay, I could see why he would think that

Laci (01:58:41):

Because- ” Yes, because he’s a part of Laura’s story, not because she’s a part of his. And that’s the whole fucking problem with him.

Matt (01:58:46):

So he goes up to Laura and he just says, “Laura, I’m so sorry.” And then walks away. “Oh, it’s raining outside. Hell yeah.

Laci (01:58:51):

“Yeah, this is my fucking jam. I’m going to go in mud too.

Matt (01:58:55):

And then Laura’s like, ” Sir. “And goes outside, gets into her car and follows him.

Laci (01:59:02):

Finds him.

Matt (01:59:03):

Follows him, turns the

Laci (01:59:05):

Headlights

Matt (01:59:06):

Off so she can’t see him,

Laci (01:59:07):

So he can’t see

Matt (01:59:08):

Her. She’s like, ” Hey. “You’re

Laci (01:59:10):

Going to just keep laying in that flower bed because he sees her and he hides in mud.

Matt (01:59:15):

And he’s like, ” Laura, I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could I do anything for you? “And she’s like, ” Just get in the car. “I don’t know why, weird accent. And she’s like, ” Listen, Rob, I would like for you to have sex with me. “And he’s like, ” Yeah, okay. “And so they do have sex right there in the car because she says,” I just want to feel something-

Laci (01:59:33):

Other than this, so it’s this or put my hand in the fire unless you want to stub cigarettes out of me. “So all in this moment they show their sense of humor, their rapport, what’s great about them, he trusts her, she just says something very sweet and afterward he thinks that this was just a quick thing, not a big deal. So he wants to let her off the hook, which is really nice. He’s like, ” Hey, go be with your mom. “And that’s when she’s on her terms up to her,” I have no energy But to just go home with you. And what about Ian? No. I think it’s so sweet.

Matt (02:00:06):

I’m too tired not to be with

Laci (02:00:08):

You.

Matt (02:00:08):

And he’s like, “So if you had more energy, we’d stay broken up.” And he’s like, “Yeah. I know it’s not romantic, but you’ve made clear you want me back.”

Laci (02:00:17):

Right. What are you fighting for?

Matt (02:00:18):

Right now I just want to go home with you. That’s why this is a great anti-romantic comedy and this is what life is actually

Laci (02:00:24):

Like. It

Matt (02:00:25):

Is romantic.

Laci (02:00:25):

It is romanceic. And it is what makes them special is that you are home to me. It’s not perfect and we need to work on it. You need to work on yourself, but it is still what I want and it’s still what feels right.

Matt (02:00:36):

You and I have a very successful marriage. We love each other deeply. Been going at it a long time.

Laci (02:00:42):

You and me.

Matt (02:00:42):

You and I,

Laci (02:00:43):

Laci

Matt (02:00:43):

And I. How did we decide to get married?

Laci (02:00:46):

Because- Was there a

Matt (02:00:47):

Proposal or anything like

Laci (02:00:48):

That? No, it’s just that we needed it on paper. It was

Matt (02:00:50):

Kind of like this. We

Laci (02:00:51):

Were just

Matt (02:00:52):

Like, so we should just get married,

Laci (02:00:53):

I guess. Well, it was because we didn’t want it to look bad that my kid was around you and living with you. I couldn’t just live with you. I cohabitate for legal reasons it looked better for me if I were married to you and you understood that and that was what was romantic about it is that you’re like, “This is how much I want to commit to you and don’t want to get in the way of you and your custody.”

Matt (02:01:15):

The reasons were entirely practical. We had the practical conversation, then I got down on one knee. Okay, stop it. I’m kicking your boss. My mom is mad at me for never having gone up to my parents. Oh, she’s so, still so bitter that I didn’t go, “Mom, dad, I want to marry this girl.”

Laci (02:01:33):

And she made fun of us when we did tell her why we wanted to get married. There’s nothing

Matt (02:01:37):

Good we could have done.

Laci (02:01:38):

You need permission to get married, not permission from my dad or something. I

Matt (02:01:42):

Showed her I went and got married anyway. So we got back together and it was great. It was great except I don’t know. I still, he’s got this fucking crumb in his brain. He’s got some Dorito crumbs in his-

Laci (02:01:56):

Fantasy, this fan, he thinks he’s still searching for something, looking for something perfect, not realizing you work to get something good.

Matt (02:02:04):

And then what do you know? A sexy music lady journalist comes into the store and is like, “Hey, are you Rob the sexy DJ?”

Laci (02:02:11):

Do you know that I like lists and that you read my lists and you like them? Isn’t this a cute meat cute?

Matt (02:02:17):

She writes, “You write for the Chicago Reader, the music column. I read it. It’s fantastic.” He sees a poster, whatever. Rob Gordon is making his triumphant return to DJing and he’s like, “What the fuck?” Oh, his amazing girlfriend is paying to put on a great party that he can DJ at with all of their age appropriate friends. And he’s like, “This is unacceptable.” And she’s just laughing at it. I’m like, “No, this is exactly what you want. I know you so well. Don’t even bullshit. Don’t shit a shitter.” And guess what? Barry’s band is going to be playing and your two little fucks, the skate punks who you are putting out their CD. I don’t think we mentioned that. They’re going to put out their CD that

Laci (02:02:55):

Night. Well, see, and that’s the thing. She sees that he is showing signs of wanting to grow and he’s hinting in what direction. So she’s actually supporting him. This isn’t her forcing him to grow. This is her showing him like, look, I see what you’re trying to do and I want to tell you I fully support it. Let me help you market this rather than just marketing through your store. This is how you and me can partner to make it something you like and something that’ll work because it’s you’re going to DJ and I’m going to get a band that’s going to do a good job. So we need to trust each other.

Matt (02:03:28):

And my friends will be there and it’s not going to be the cool crowd from when you were 23. It’s going to be 36 year olds now, which means I have a lot more money to tip you. I don’t know. And you know what else? He said to those skate punks, “I’ll put out your record.” And all that that means is I’ll just pay out of my pocket to print your CDs.

Laci (02:03:50):

You can sell it here. You sell it here,

Matt (02:03:51):

Right? And that’s a thing he decided to do when he was not with Laura, but she finds out about it and says, “I’m going to help you with this. I’ll support it. ” It’s not like she’s like, “Rob, you should put out a CD.That would

Laci (02:04:02):

Make you feel great.” That’s why I’m saying this is an act of love and she’s showing how she is rewarding the thing she was having a hard time to put into words. You are stagnant and you are unhappy. But him making that decision and making that choice was him taking ownership and control of his life in a way that he hadn’t before. So she wanted to positively reinforce that by adding fuel to it.

Matt (02:04:24):

And I need to help you understand what you did because you’re still kind of being nonchalant and putting it down. So it’s just some stupid three singles, three song single. No, you helped somebody create something. You are a critic, but now you are a producer. You are contributing to something getting put out into the world. Let’s foster that. Let’s celebrate that. And he then in the next scene is talking to the music journalist and repurposes what his girlfriend just told him to her. And then she’s like, “That’s so cool. What are your five favorite records?” And he’s like, “Let me make you a tape.” So the wheels are spinning. Maybe I could fuck this lady with a tape.

Laci (02:04:59):

Oh, maybe she’s the fantasy. Maybe she’s the perfect thing. She’s already someone that likes the things I like. She even asked the questions that I like to ask. She doesn’t think I need to achieve more. I’m already here. She already envies me. I could just never grow and be perfectly perfect right here. But then he realizes all at once, I’m doing it again. I’m doing it again. This is just a cycle. She’ll have her issues. She’ll have her ugly underwear. She is not real. What I think she is is not real.

Matt (02:05:27):

And he says all of this to Laura. “This is what I’ve learned. And you know what? Let’s just get married.” And she’s like, “What?” He’s like, “Yeah, I’m just tired of thinking about it all the time. I’d like to think about something else.” She’s like, “Well, thanks for asking, but thanks, no thanks, but thank you. That’s very nice.” Great. Okay. So they have their amazing parties, their amazing DJ party and the great joke is Jack Black gets on the stage and just absolutely whales. Let’s get it on, which is Rob and Laura’s song.

Laci (02:05:52):

I

Matt (02:05:53):

Don’t know if he knows that, but this is … Everybody knows Jack Black’s a great singer now. I think it was like a joke in the movie like, wait a minute, what? He’s incredible. Again, the crowd is all in their 30s, but this is like, “Hey, you can do the things you like to do with the people in your life and it may not always look the way you envisioned it, but you can find your happiness in it, which I relate to a lot.” And Laci does too, I think. And the movie ends with him saying, “I’m making a mixtape for Laura for songs that are just for her that she’ll love, just for her.”

Laci (02:06:27):

He’s finding a way to put himself out of it and just look at it and not what it … Yeah, not tune in only when he’s like, “Wait, something happened to me.

Matt (02:06:40):

” And it’s very sweet

Laci (02:06:41):

And

Matt (02:06:41):

That’s-

Laci (02:06:42):

And very mature. Maturity, the movie.

Matt (02:06:49):

What is this song?

Laci (02:06:50):

Oh my God. It’s all my top five songs I can never think of the name of. Final thoughts. It aged well. I was nervous. I didn’t need to be. It seemed smart. Sometimes I was like, “Oh man, that movie seems smart and made me feel smart for watching it. ” And I can’t think of another example, but I know I’ve done that exact thing and gone, “Oh, I was fucking stupid.” Anyway, this is a movie that makes you feel smart and you are smart.

Matt (02:07:26):

And what the best thing that can happen on this show is when we revisit and realize like, oh, it was even better than I realized. And it

Laci (02:07:31):

Was

Matt (02:07:32):

Smarter than I

Laci (02:07:33):

Realized.

Matt (02:07:33):

Smart. Because when you read a book or watch a movie when you’re 18, you’re like,

Laci (02:07:37):

“Damn, that’s my problem.

Matt (02:07:39):

This

Laci (02:07:39):

Is the shit.”That’s what makes me nervous is like, this made me feel like I had growth after I’d experienced it. What if it’s so stupid?

Matt (02:07:47):

What if we watch the Boondock Saints right now and we’re like, the

Laci (02:07:50):

Boondock

Matt (02:07:50):

Saints got it. It understood, man. That is what I was worried about with high fidelity.

Laci (02:07:57):

Me too.

Matt (02:07:58):

I think that Cuzak as a man in his 30s, Hornby is a man in his 30s. There is some wisdom you get when you’ve lived a little and you can look back at what you were like as a teen and in your 20s and you … What am I saying? You’re better at it. Perspective. The perspective that comes with aging that maybe you do not see when you’re a young man and it’s such a pleasure to revisit something and

Laci (02:08:33):

Have

Matt (02:08:33):

A whole new takeaway.

Laci (02:08:34):

That’s what makes something evergreen, right? Is that it’s got something for each stage or that’s often the thing that they have in common is it appeals to you at different ages and your understanding of it evolves as you get older.That’s a smart fucking movie. That means that movie was probably put together from multiple perspectives with insight from more than just one type of person.

Matt (02:08:56):

The same thing happens with music too. A song, you can love it in a certain way when you’re 18 and love it in a totally different way when you’re 38. You’re like, wow, I never even noticed this about her. I have a totally different understanding of the lyrics or whatever it is. I love this movie. I think it’s so good. High fidelity five stars.

Laci (02:09:13):

I also did not realize that the movie poster is a spoof on a Beatles album. I didn’t know that. Which album is it?

Matt (02:09:23):

Well-

Laci (02:09:23):

Oh, you fucking poser. You don’t even know.

Matt (02:09:26):

Hard day’s night.

Laci (02:09:27):

All right. Fine. Anyway, I didn’t know that until I watched that YouTuber I like who changes out his records. And I was like, “Oh, high fidelity.” Yeah,

Matt (02:09:36):

Because I was like, “With The Beatles.” No, that’s not with The Beatles because with the Beatles … Okay, yes. It’s Hard Day’s Night

Laci (02:09:42):

Anyways, smart cover. I give five stars.

Matt (02:09:45):

Yeah,

Laci (02:09:45):

Great. You didn’t ask me, but five.

Matt (02:09:48):

Incredibly well directed. Great performances all around. Good movie, great music in said movie. We are 1-Week Rental. Check us out on social media.

Laci (02:09:58):

Thank you, Chicago.

Matt (02:10:00):

Thank you, Chy Town. Check

Laci (02:10:02):

Out- Wendy City.

Matt (02:10:03):

How the White Sox going to do this year. You think the

Laci (02:10:06):

Cubby’s have it? Going in. Shameless. Am I right? Who’s a lip lover?

Matt (02:10:11):

Love Lip. What’s the Bear doing?

Laci (02:10:14):

Is he making sandwiches? Jeremy Allen White. To have the initials that spelled Jaw and your jawline looks like that, come on. Jeremy Allen.

Matt (02:10:26):

Jaw plays lip. That’s crazy. Isn’t

Laci (02:10:28):

That wild? I realize that on my own.

Matt (02:10:31):

1-Week Rental on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

Laci (02:10:35):

I have a coloring YouTube channel as well.

Matt (02:10:37):

Oh, what is the name of that channel?

Laci (02:10:39):

I don’t remember. Movie Coloring Morphs. 1-Week Rental movie coloring. Okay. Link in the description. The longest fucking

Matt (02:10:46):

Thing. Link in the description and check out Laci’s coloring videos on YouTube as well as 1-Week Rental on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. I’m on Letterboxd at Mastokes9. Laci’s on Letterboxd at Loadbearing Laci. My band is Rural Route nine. I have a band with Wade Hemel and Patrick Perot. We do the music for 1-Week Rental.

Laci (02:11:04):

They each have their own podcast with Matt as well, pod job and a sign post up ahead.

Matt (02:11:11):

Thank you, Laci.

Laci (02:11:12):

You’re welcome.

Matt (02:11:12):

That’s very nice of you to say. All right. I love you, Laci.

Laci (02:11:16):

Oh, thank you. I love you. Goodbye.