Ask 411 Movies for 10.26.09: The Soup is Cold!

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 10.26.2009

Rudy, The Waterboy, Wildcats, Hardball, Point Break, greatest sidekicks, movies men can cry at and 3-D porno


I don't plan to be back in town until later Monday, so next week I fill you in on my trip to Ligonier, Pa., and the Midwest debut of House of the Wolfman.

To continue on into Halloween with commercials from YouTube, we have one of the most unsettling ads so far. Just give it time.



Comedian and children's show host Soupy Sales died Oct. 22 at the age of 83 in New York of various health issues. Sales hosted various children's shows, both regionally and nationally, as well as having done stand-up and being a frequent game show guest in the late seventies and early eighties. He always seemed to be on "The $100,000 Pyramid" with Nipsy Russell.



Composer Vic Mizzy died Oct. 17 of heart failure in Los Angeles. He was 93. Mizzy wrote several hit songs, but gained his biggest fame doing TV theme songs for such shows as "The Addams Family" and "Green Acres," and film scores for several Don Knotts movies, chiefly the awesome one for The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.



The Smokey and the Bandit love with quotes flying around in the comments last week warmed the cockles of my heart, maybe even the sub-cockle region.

Several other football movies were mentioned, so we'll hit them now.

Q: No offense, but the greatest football movie of all time is missing from your list. Rudy
-Barry

A: This was also mentioned by guest 5155.



From 1993 and based on a true story, Rudy (Sean Astin) was told that he was too small to play college football, but he fights to overcome the odds and make the team at Notre Dame. The final game was during half time of a Notre Dame vs. Boston College game and the real Rudy can be seen in the stands. As usual with Hollywood, some elements were altered or added completely. The famous scene where all the players put their jerseys on Dan Devine's desk to protest Rudy not being allowed to suit up never happened.

Q: You left H.O.T.S off your list of best football movies. That's the best football movie i've ever seen.
-Guest 3838



A: From 1979, this is sort of a female Animal House about a sorority named H.O.T.S. and their rivals P.I.E. who settle their differences at the end of the film in a strip football game. The initials stand for the first names of the primary girls Honey O'Hara, Terri and Sam. However, alternates in the movie include Hands Off Those Suckers, Hold On To Sex and Help Out The Seals. Danny Bonaduce has a bit part.

Q: re: Football movies
Can't forget about Unnecessary Roughness and The Waterboy.

Neither are 'the best' or top 5, but I still think they're worth mentioning.

Any Given Sunday was awesome.
-Nick

A: You mean Necessary Roughness and I covered it last week. Any Given Sunday was mentioned by the original question asker, so that's why I skipped it.



From 1998, Bobby Boucher (Adam Sandler) is a little slow, but he loves water and loves serving as the water boy for his college football team. However, Boucher has a bit of an anger management problem and this makes him a great tackler and the saving grace of what is a pretty bad team. Film features Kathy Bates, Fairuza Balk, Henry Winkler, Jerry Reed, Clint Howard, Peter DeLuise, Rob Schneider and Big Show as Captain Insano. The movie came about from Sandler's song "the Lonesome Kicker" and his Cajun Man character. Harold Lloyd's granddaughter sued the makers of the movie sighting it ripped off her grandfather's movie The Freshman. She was ruled against in 2002.

Q: Football movies: Wildcats with Goldie Hawn, Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes.

Quotable movies: My roommate and I can pretty much recite Tombstone from beginning to end.

"I'm your huckleberry."

"Where's he at?" "Down by the creek .. walkin' on water"

"It's like playin' cards with my sisters kids or somethin'"
-Nyte

A: My favorite line from Tombstone is when Doc Holliday shoots Johnny Ringo right between the eyes and says, "You're no daisy."



Wildcats (1986): Snipes and Harrelson made their feature film debuts as players on a high school team coached by Goldie Hawn. Hawn's character is a junior high track coach whose father was a successful football coach. She's always wanted to coach and gets her chance at a rundown inner city high school with a team that is torn apart by prejudice and laziness.

Q: I'm having trouble finding the name of a show. It was about a down on it's luck baseball team. I know it aired on Fox during about 1995 or so. Do you know the name of the show? Any information is appreciated.
-Harold Sachs

A: "Hardball" ran for one month from Sept. to Oct. 1994 on Fox, 8:30 p.m. on Sundays. Dave Logan (Bruce Greenwood) was a veteran pitcher and team leader of the woeful Pioneers. Mike Widmer (Mike Starr) was a former all-star catcher who had put on a lot of weight and could barely squat behind home plate. Frank (Joe Rogan) was the team's overpaid, egotistical young star. Lee Emory (Alexandra Wentworth) was the team's publicity manager and Mitzi (Rose Marie doing a Marge Schott imitation) was the team owner. The series name came from the nickname of the team's mascot. A dude in a pioneer's jersey with a baseball for a head, kind of like Mr. Red. Apparently this show took a lot from the Reds. There was also a short-lived cop show in 1989 on NBC by the same name. Vince in the comments last week pegged the show too.

Q: Also has there ever been a porno shot in 3D?
-BFF

A: Googling "3D porno" brings up a lot of links I don't want to click. So I looked at some 3D film lists and found some prospects. Adam and Six Eves from 1962 seems to be an old school stag film about a prospector that happens upon six topless women. Plus, there's a donkey in it. The Bellboy and the Playgirls also from 1962 is about a bellboy who wants to be a private investigator, so he sharpens his skills on a group of lingerie models who are staying in the hotel. It was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Found a 1983 movie called Sexcaliber, but couldn't find much more about it. The Stewardesses was a soft core porn that was made even softer to get an R-rating after it was fairly successful in adult theaters. Emanuelle 4 was shot in 3D and was the first film in the series to have explicit sex scenes. Star Sylvia Kristal also handed off the reigns to Mia Nygen under the guise that she had extensive plastic surgery.

And not a porno, but what has to be the most awesome thing ever in 3-D, Willie Nelson's Second Annual Fourth of July Picnic in 3-D from 1979.

Q: What was the conflict with Sayer's and filming the Brian's Song? My friend was played for the Bears then and was in many scenes. He said that they were paid $500 a day (cash from a briefcase) and that Caan was a great guy who couldn't hold his liquor (understandibly) when trying to match drinks with the players.

Point Break (a K. Reeves movie) is one of my X films. It is so over the top and seems to completely embrace that notion by not trying not to be (kind of like Crank) more than it is. What's your thoughts about that movie.

Thanks, as usual.
-BFF

A: From what imdb had listed, Gale Sayers couldn't play himself in Brian's Song because it coincided with Bears' training camp. However, that doesn't mean they wouldn't have loaned out some other players for a few weeks of filming of the game and training sequences before or after training camp. As star of the film, Sayers would have been out for a much longer period of time.



If I want a guilty pleasure Patrick Swayze movie I go to Road House or Next of Kin. My thing was that I never believed that Reeves' Johnny Utah was a quarterback of Ohio State. He's too scrawny and pretty boy. They never would have signed him. Then he played another former OSU QB in The Replacements. Anyway, at some points I think the movie takes itself too seriously and other times it is very tongue in cheek. The tone is uneven. The ending I don't care for either where Reeves allows Swayze to surf to his supposed death. It's just stupid.

From 1991, Johnny Utah (Reeves) goes undercover to bust a crew of bank robbers who wear masks of U.S. Presidents and discovers that they are a group of surfers led by Bodhi (Swayze) who are also crazy thrill seekers. Reeves beat out for the part Matthew Broderick, Johnny Depp and Charlie Sheen. Reeves learned to surf for the movie and practiced with UCLA coaches to learn how to quarterback properly.

Q: if you were actually alive & sentient at the time (gotta be at least mid to late teens) when Blair Witch came out, it was kind of a big deal when the movie came out. As was said here- the techniques used in films like Cloverfield were used here, and really you could draw a direct line from something like Blair Witch to popular shows like Ghosthunters now.

Again, what is new at one point in time will, if successful, seem cliche later because the youth don't recognize that things don't happen simultaneous, and all the things that come later only build upon innovations that wouldn't have happened without the original. Best example is the horror writing of HP Lovecraft that now any douche bag on this site would read and be like "OMG horros man was not meant to know, unspeakable terror... whatevz" that is, if they COULD read actual fiction
-Mr. X

A: I'm skipping a lot of the incidental comments from last week, but I did want to include this one as I totally agree with it. So many people seem to be clueless on what has come before and praise movies for being fresh, creative or innovative for various reasons and claim you need to see the movie because of that. However, most of the time what the movie is doing in story, style, execution, visuals, or what have you, has been done or directly comes from a previous source. Basically, every story has been told and every way to tell it has been done. There are only different combinations of how to present it and spin the tale left to do. I remember reading at one point that literary scholars have said there are only about eight to ten different plotlines. Some say only one, the quest. Every story is about someone going on a journey to gain something, whether that journey be a physical, mental or spiritual one.

Q: Who in your opinion are some of the all time best sidekicks from tv or movies?
My list would include:
Robin (Batman)
Ed Norton (The Honeymooners)
Walter (The Big Lebowski)
And of course the greatest sidekick of all time Barney Fife.
-Dr. Mickhead

A: You list some good ones. A few others I would throw out:
Kato, sidekick to the Green Hornet
Luigi, brother and sidekick to Mario
Dr. Watson, sidekick to Sherlock Holmes
Q, gadget supplier of James Bond
Gabby Hayes, frequent sidekick to Roy Rogers
Ed McMahon, announcer for Johnny Carson
Major Roger Healy, sidekick to Major Tony Nelson
Boo-Boo, sidekick to Yogi Bear
Barney Rubble, sidekick to Fred Flintstone
Crow and Tom Servo, sidekicks to Joel Hodgson and Mike Nelson

Q: You should also do a list of movies that are completely different when viewd edited on TV and the real versions...movies like Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles, Planes Trains & Automobiles are always on TBS, but when watched on HBO you forget how different they are.
-Mike

A: The pan and scan vs. letterbox vignette I posted last week from TCM had a lot of good examples of just how pan and scan can change a movie; epics like Lawrence of Arabia, musicals like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and action films like Ben-Hur. Then there are changes where the editing for language goes. Last week it was mentioned how quotable Smokey and the Bandit was and there are so many dubs in the basic cable version that, especially with Buford's lines, there are two different sets of quotes you can memorize.

Probably the most chopped up film overall I've seen on basic cable is Showgirls. Not that the movie didn't make sense in the first place, but edited for VH-1 it's as confusing as Franz Kafka on acid writing for "Twin Peaks." Because of the level of nudity, they digitally paint bras and panties on the girls in several scenes. Some scenes are chopped in mid-sentence and spliced together, such as when the guy puts the ice on Naomi's nipples, and large chunk are just taken out. Pulp Fiction is another one as the Gimp is edited out completely thanks to cuts and pan and scan.

Q: Great column. I'm actually starting to like mondays now. I was wondering what is your take on shows like Tim & Eric's Awesome Show and The Whitest Kids U Know? Do you think these shows are just stupid and immature or do you see humor in them? I myself am a fan of Tim & Eric (hence my user name) although I can understand why others wouldn't like their brand of comedy.
-Spaghett

A: I've only seen a few clips of "Tim and Eric's Awesome Show" and have never heard of "The Whitest Kids U Know?" Of "Tim and Eric" they are purposely being stupid. It's kind of like Steve Martin's old stand-up. You know he's a smart guy and in on the joke so it makes it easier to laugh at the crazy lowest common denominator antics. I do like shows that have that similar comedy style, but more of a plot, like "The Mighty Boosh" and "Secret Girlfriend." So, help me, I actually like "Secret Girlfriend." I think filming it in second person is clever and they generally do a good job of editing it so the ‘you' character doesn't have to talk. Plus, it's got some pretty hot chicks on it.

Q: Wouldn't Field of Dreams also count as a film that a guy can cry at? I'd be curious to see if there is a list of movies guys can cry at.
-Santa

A: I don't remember where I heard the line from about Old Yeller and Brian's Song being the only movies men can cry at, but I remember agreeing with it. I get weepy at Breakfast of Tiffany's, but that's because I had a relationship that was very close to the one in the film between the characters of Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. I could see guys getting misty eyed at the end of Field of Dreams when Costner asks his dad to play catch. You know originally, Cosnter never revealed to his dad that he was his son, but test audiences didn't like that, so they dubbed in the line where he calls him dad.

I did find a few lists of movies that make men cry. A few other good ones I found often listed were Rudy, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Shawshank Redemption and Million Dollar Baby.

Q: Speaking of standard vs. widescreen, what's the difference between what you see on a high def channel vs. what you see on a BluRay as far as aspect ratio is concerned? Several of my movies have the black bars at the top/bottom, but the same movie on HBO HD fills the entire screen. Are they chopping off a little bit on the sides or doing something different to stretch the image?

Keep up the good work!
-Tom N.

A: I'm not the most tech savvy, so someone out there might be able to explain this better or I could be just wrong. From what I could find, its seems that HD channels still show regular versions of movies and series. So while the resolution is higher because of converting the signal to HD, the aspect ratio would still be the same. I honestly don't think that sounds right, so somebody throw me a bone here.

Don't die.

"I was driving before you were an itch in your daddy's pants."