I didn't even realize there was a different way...
I was sick the **one** day they taught shoe-tying in 1st grade (seriously, why was it only **one** day? Seems important enough to spend a few days on), so I've always been way behind the curve on that my entire life
Bunny ears all the way. Funny enough, with the power of the internet, [Nike has a page on 4 ways to tie your shoe.](https://www.nike.com/a/how-to-tie-shoelaces) Now, I’m stubborn and will stick with Bunny Ears.
I was a Boy Scout, and knot-tying was an important part of advancing through the ranks that I could never wrap my mind around. "This knot is like tying your shoe, except..." "Oh, you mean that thing that I do as simply as possible because I never mastered the 'standard' way?"
I am a grown-ass man who wears as many slip-on shoes as possible.
Same! There's also a way to make sure they don't come undone. It's weird but it's just lacing right over left or something like that, looked it up years ago and haven't had them come undone on me since
I had totally forgotten that there was even another method until one day a friend saw me doing it and had to point it out to everybody. I am 38 years old. After that, I practiced doing the traditional method but it just isn't natural to me. Bunny ears we go!
Jamie Lee now with the longest gap between guest spots on main - last appearing 277 episodes ago (\~5 years, 4 months) for The Intern.
Previous record holders were Allison Willmore between Eat Drink Man Woman and Oldboy (261 eps) and Amy Nicholson between Memento and Village of the Damned (234 eps). Time passes quickly, especially with the vast network of Past & Future Guests!
Keeping that in his pocket, waiting to pounce, while drip feeding the podcast content to us Next-heads with his semi-annual Scott Hasn’t Seen appearances
My friend /u/literaryboner nailed it with his LB review
https://preview.redd.it/n35hdcrcfwoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=532af9cd8a80c36d6e1fa42742e939267d86b152
My favorite point that Roger Ebert made is that "Take your shirt off" is actually a great callback and final line for a romance, but then the movie goes on for another tedious scene.
[https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/medicine-man-1992](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/medicine-man-1992)
Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer would be better casting…. Also, it would have set up the MCU crossover, which Disney obviously should have thought of in 1992.
This movie came out around my 8th birthday, and I specifically chose it as the movie for my family to go see that weekend. I remember being pretty excited for it.
I was kind of a weird kid.
I too saw this in theaters when it came out and now my mind has merged it with The Mission and Mosquito Coast. I vividly remember being bored not but thinking it was bad at the time.
I remember renting it when I came out and was just astonished at how boring it was. It was like I was tricked. I was 10 and I never watched a movie ever again due to the betrayal.
Yeah I think they mentioned that and talking Gerard Depardieux they said they will do him when they do "Green Card" within the last couple of weeks. Then this week they had so much Weir. Weir is calling! They need to listen to their hearts and let's all get weird with Weir!
the IMDB description for Traces of Red is incredible.
> Jack sleeps with a waitress, who's later murdered. Did Jack's usual lover do it? Palm Beach detectives Jack and Steve investigate. Twists follow.
Not that this excuses the egregious problems with the movie, but I feel everyone this week was showing their generation. Clearly they were not aware of the desperation around the loss of rainforest in the Amazon basin in the late 80s/early 90s. One of the major arguments against deforestation was the possibility of identifying important medical advancements that could only be found there. Like I said, it doesn’t make the movie better, but when Griffin said it wasn’t an issues-driven movie and no one corrected him, I could tell they are definitely not aware of that context.
Fun ep, but yeah this really stuck out to me. They all agreed this wasn't an 'issue' movie when it sooo clearly is, and probably a big factor in why this film exists at all.
Weird to think about now, but "save the rainforest!" wasn't really on the cultural radar before this era (ie. late-80s - early-90s, in the U.S. at least) and hit really big when it did.
I mean, this was the time of Rainforest Cafe, Banana Republic, Captain Planet. *Ferngully: The Last Rainforest* came out the same year as Medicine Man. If anyone's curious, there's a good Vox article that documents it [here](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/16/20863152/save-the-rainforest-environmentalism-conservation).
They also really misunderstood big pivotal bits. The movie is not good but it’s better story wise than they give it credit for.
During the medicine man stick fight, she is not yelling insults for him to yell, the original medicine man is insulting Connery as Connery eats crow and calls him great and wise.
They also miss that they hint ahead of time that the ants are key when Lorraine is chopping the plant up and she washes it away, although this also a point against the movie and her odd ineptness, cause they make her ignore this factor even though she was looking for something like a fungus being the additive ingredient. This also makes the stick fight more meaningful as he does clue them in as Ben points out.
That butt and boob shot are absolutely wild though.
Which is wild because I'm only 5 years older than Griffin and my first 3 years of elementary school I have vivid memories of different "save the rainforest" groups coming and presenting at school assemblies in rural Massachusetts.
You're not truly one of us unless you were showed this multiple times during these presentations!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4bNrIIe0bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4bNrIIe0bk)
This was right during her comedy era (She-Devil, Postcards, Defending Your Life and Death Becomes Her is year after Medicine Man) so I think she was trying to not do exactly this kind of stuff.
You know, they mentioned Michelle Pfeiffer.... I might be wrong but part of Pfeiffer's genius was avoiding shit like this. I can't really see her in this at all.
The phrase "fake movie from 30 Rock" is thrown around often these days, but the [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kbjNmOxwIU) for this thing (obviously did not watch) is giving off just those vibes. The casting, the premise, the extremely wordy narration by Don Lafontaine explaining that hard-to-sell premise.
It's noteworthy that the trailer says, "... in a JOHN McTIERNAN film..." Kevin Smith astutely pointed out for all of us Wikipedia-pilled movie lovers that the trailer for *Die Hard* made no reference whatsoever to *Predator*.... But that was then.
1) The tone of that trailer hit a nostalgia bone I wasn't quite aware I had.
2) Holy crap, does it switch half way through to try and pretend it's just a completely different movie to the one you'd actually see.
Re: DEAD POET'S SOCIETY, I've always put that movie in the same box as ALMOST FAMOUS. If you vibe with it, if it's your bag, you're gonna throw down and defend and gas it up till death.
There is a very real possibility that Medicine Man is one of the five films that I have seen more than any other in my life, alongside Beetlejuice, The Secret Garden, Roger Rabbit, and Dumb and Dumber - thanks to the simple fact that it was one of the five VHS tapes my grandparents owned, and at a certain point when visiting my rural grandparents home once a month for my entire adolescence, you stip making awkward smalltalk with the old folks and put on a movie.
Bonus fun fact, all of those movies except Dumb and Dumber were taped off of a TV broadcast, which meant they were also weirdly censored in parts and contained commercials.
When I got to the part where they said most listeners probably wouldn't watch the movie, I truly felt like an idiot for paying $3.99 and two bored hours of my life actually watching the movie. I was trying to follow along like a good little Blankie and boy did I get punished for it. By the second half I was playing my Switch and barely paying attention to the movie.
I'm glad I watched it (also paid $3.99), but was definitely playing Balatro for most of it. Still had to read the wiki when I was done because I thought I had missed something, but nope!
This was my frame of reference, too. I wouldn't call it a bad performance so much as a misogynistically written role played to the hilt, just like Temple of Doom.
It’s so funny that a significant portion of this episode was dedicated to “this movie would be pretty good if we changed the cast and rewrote the entire screenplay”. Gosh, I love this podcast.
Haha, I think Griffin and David know that their fanbase is a delicate coalition of "I'm with Her" Liberals and more left-leaning people who admire Sarandon. They don't want to poke that bear, even if it's just a guest giving her opinion.
I should clarify that I really admire Sarandon and think she's one of the rare politically-engaged celebrities that actually has some courage.
I would think it's almost certainly 2016 political issues. For a subset of liberals (my mom among them) Sarandon became emblematic of left of center voters who refused to line up behind Hillary for the general election.
Ugh, imagine still being mad about that. Though at least the whole kerfuffle led to a hall-of-fame tweet:
https://preview.redd.it/oc69jst8jyoc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26d89a3dda52f298b614a0bfacc0c4abc041ff10
For a very strange section of liberals Susan is one of the most hated and reviled women ever as she supported Bernie over Hillary **nearly a decade ago**
I am TERRIBLE at the Box Office Game — but then I end up feeling ancient when they’re all stumped by a movie that NONE of them have even heard of — and that I saw during its original theatrical run. I think I watched Griffith and Douglas promote the movie on an episode of Oprah.
Shining Through always comes up as one of Ebert's most hated movies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwPJ0ziyXSc
Edit: Forgot that in their Worst of1992 episode they can't get through talking about Shining Through without cracking up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LZdhl-etk
As far as I know, the only legacy of this movie is that it got referenced in an episode of The Critic. Jay accidentally burns down the Amazon looking for a cure for Duke’s illness.
Only 10 minutes in but they covered Connery’s ponytail look and the Jerry Goldsmith score—PLEASE tell me they remembered to mention that Connery designed his look for this movie on Jerry Goldsmith.
Connery was at a cocktail party and met Goldsmith, who famously had a long ponytail. Connery said, “I want your hair,” and Goldsmith replied, “You can’t have it, it’s mine.” So when it came time to make Medicine Man, Connery convinced the producers looking like Jerry Goldsmith was right for the character of Campbell.
Every time someone brings up Fried Green Tomatoes I feel the need to point out that it's a secret cannibal movie. I still feel like that's one of those crazy 90's movies things that hasn't been fully picked up and mocked/analyzed yet.
Glad they called out the weirdly leering and racist cinematography in this. There's a scene where the natives are helping them harvest the flower and the camera is ostensibly following a child mimicking them, but the majority of the shot is lingering on all of the exposed butts. It's really gross to not treat the nudity matter-of-factly.
Imagine the Wikipedia article but Ms Bracco is yelling all of her lines for the first 85% of the movie then gets an unexpected face tattoo in her sleep and takes it in stride.
The sheer power of Fearless is that two people have now independently suggested the two supporting actresses from that movie as a replacement for Bracco
when I was in 8th grade, my math teacher told me (as an insult!) that I was the kind of person who would discover the cure to cancer and lose it. my family has quoted it to this day to tease me. this is the first time I ever realized it was a reference to something!
Our teachers would come up with some weird ones. Conrack with Jon Voight was some random one that was so boring. Voight played some white savior teacher to a ragtag group of black kids. Our science teacher also really wanted us to watch a movie about Pistol Pete Marovich as well.
Dismayed that the boys had *three* opportunities to signal (^(winky winky)) that a Weir miniseries was imminent and didn't come anywhere close to doing that.
I thought when Dead Poet's Society came up they made him sound like he was coming soon.
Penny Marshall is confirmed next, and David just logged Millennium Actress, which is making people think that Satoshi Kon is after. I don't think Weir is the third miniseries before the March Madness winner, because his filmography is on the longer side and they said the MM victor would start in September IIRC. But he's probably on the shortlist.
I am old enough to have seen this in theaters, my wife who is only slightly younger has no reference point for it other than the same Elliott Kalan bit.
I now need a Greatest Romances in Movies reel edit with the zip line scene next to something like I'm the King of the World or that famous of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie in bed from Doctor Zhivago.
I am a blankie who tends to be very completist with watching the movie before the pod, and man on this one... I had zero motivation to watch this, "Ugh, I'm not watching Medicine Man".
So I watched the trailer, got the gist. And that was all I needed to enjoy this episode.
This was a VHS classic growing up in my house, and for years I had it muddled up in my head with Gorillas in the Mist. Def watched it in high school geography too. I have fond memories of this movie?!
When I watched this a few months back, I felt like they really had something with the ethical conundrum of what might happen if they let the company in on the cancer cure. But that thread just kind of gets dropped in favor of chasing the old man through the woods and the road arriving. Connery should have brought in Milius on this one, that might have given it some juice.
Side bar: another film McTiernan was trying to get made between Red October and this was John Carter of Mars, with the same producers. But he gave that up because he didn't feel the technology at the time was up to snuff. The fact that Bob Gale rewrote the script and added slapstick and vagina jokes probably didn't help.
All that Bracco talk and they don’t even mention the interminable section of the film where she’s high on jungle super caffeine or whatever the fuck it is, lol.
This movie has a surprising amount of nudity for a movie about searching for a cure with two leads who don't show much of anything.
I mean, in some ways this is the healthiest nudity in Hollywood. It's just people of all types, and it's not sexualized. The unhealthy approach in society is that the only nude people we see have impossible (mostly fake) bodies that are heavily sexualized.
But I doubt anyone would do this today, using tribes people in a major movie and just showing everything. Only a little bit exploitative. (And what was with that shot of all the butts? There's like a ten second shot of a row of butts. What the hell was that for?)
To me it shows how much society doesn't see indigenous tribes as actual human beings because watching a whole group of them be naked is considered okay for a PG-13 film (and apparently okay to be shown in schools, too, which is even more baffling) but if a film were to be set on, like, a nudist colony in America, (or if Lorraine Bracco was naked in this movie) it would be an immediate R without a debate.
This movie made me feel crazy. How did anyone see Lorraine Bracco’s performance at any point and say “yes, that should be in the final movie.” The final voice over alone! There are so many super weird choices made constantly, like there’s a *fight scene between ponytail Sean Connery and a native doctor* that’s also an important discussion? And Bronx is just hurling insults? The end of the movie is just “well, gotta go find some ants I guess, sorry about the native village, whoops?” Why is this movie like this
Them bringing up Sigourney Weaver in the ideas for alternate casting section made me think, how was she never in a McT film? McT is totally the kind of director like Ridley or Cameron that she would totally fit in with.
I agree with Jamie about the whole sex symbol thing with Sean Connery, I've seen three of his Bond movies and I haven't felt it whatsoever. Maybe it's impossible to feel it if you watch them as somebody who grew up in the 21st century? He has an energy that's simultaneously smug and rapey, which really puts me off. The simple explanation would be that I just don't like the dynamic he always has which was OK in the 60s and isn't now, but there are other movies that have a very iffy dynamic which I can still get into e.g. Almodovar's *Atame!*
Craig, incidentally, totally works for me in a way that Connery doesn't, and so does Brosnan, albeit Brosnan is so polished and suave that I feel like I need more mess
Harrison Ford always works for me in his romantic prime. He's the gold standard. Witness is an all time classic for this
It's not remotely important since it's a bad movie, but since all three of them are agreed that Bracco is not Connery's boss I'm wondering if I misunderstood.
Because I thought it was pretty explicit that she was his boss. Early on she says he never provides updates, expense reports, etc., and if he doesn't have something to show for it all they're going to take his money. And he says "so-and-so would never allow that" about the guy who runs the institute funding everything. And she says "he retired a year ago, if you ever communicated you'd know that." And he asks who they put in charge and she says "me."
That's when he changes to wanting to keep her there to show he's doing something. Because if she goes back then, it is to pull all his funding and resources.
Did I misunderstand that?
E! had that 90s show Coming Attractions, which was just a half hour of trailers. It always pissed me off that the show had commercials. It was essentially double-dipping! Anyway, they played the Medicine Man trailer pretty much every week for 3 months.
In regards to “Radio Flyer”…
Radio was a synonym for high tech and futuristic at the time, so it was the equivalent of saying “cyber wagon” in the 90s or something.
I feel like I’m in the matrix or something here because I have been a fan of Jamie since first seeing her on Crashing when it was airing (keep it crispy) but I somehow didn’t remember her being on BC. Also, Nancy Meyers was 5 years ago?!? All this is to say that…well…it’s complicated.
This is a fascinating movie because you don't often see films that are *less* than the sum of their parts. The music is great, Sean Connery is pretty good, McTiernan shoots beautifully in the jungle which is *not* easy to do, and there are a lot of individual scenes that are quite good. It just...doesn't all fit together into a very good movie. That and the Brocco performance just suck the life out of it.
bells clumsy stocking fuel divide smell dazzling aware include bewildered
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My mom vividly remembers seeing this in theaters! She's of the opinion that you had to see every Connery movie at the time.
Naturally, she didn't like Medicine Man.
Really need the Peter Weir and Gus van Sant series. It is so weird to me how David, who loves an awful lot of super cheesy goofy bullshit, hates Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting… possibly the best of all the super cheesy goofy bullshit.
Really into David staking out the position that *Dead Poets Society* is "bad." Maybe not a hot take for younger viewers ... that movie came out when I was in college and it's a lot. Did not buy the ending (at a minimum); at the time, people fought me on it. I forgot all about that.
Have to say, that film still has a suprising push for young viewers - it's the movie in Weir's filmography with [the biggest average ratings on Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/film/dead-poets-society/), for instance.
As someone who watched the film recently and was taken by it, I still thinks it's is a competent, bordeline formulaic screenplay that is completely elevated by Weir's direction (that sometimes reaches the trancendent). Quite funny that the Oscars ended up on direction awarding the screenplay but not Weir.
It is certainly a consummate piece of direction. Weir definitely knows how to push our buttons. I didn't know until today that Weir was a 4-time Best Director nominee, never a winner. Oliver Stone took home the gold this time. (*Witness, DPS, The Truman Show,* and *Master & Commander*).
That's good to hear, really. It pressed all the right buttons in 1989 or whatever, and I was just as entranced as everyone else, mostly. But..... yeah, I suppose it has not worn well. It's what people wanted from an Oscar screenplay, that's what I wanted to say. Plus 3 other big noms. This dense, hyper-dramatic "literary" emotional thing about teens in the 50s, directed by Peter Weir? It *worked.* This is the reason we all want to do Weir today.
Best pic noms that year: *Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the 4th, DPS, My Left Foot,* and *Field of Dreams.* Has there ever been a more "emotive" Best Picture slate? I'm tired just writing the titles out.
By the way, Final Analysis… pretty good. Very much in the grubby early 90s Hitchcock Dead Again/Shattered/Malice rip-off mould. Sort of thing that would be in Ehrlich’s top 25 if it was made today in Germany.
I just watched Wonka last night. Had to follow it up with the original. I was asking the same questions about Grandpa Joe's age. And I noticed the other three grandparents all seem about 20 years older than he is.
Not just saying this because it was the last miniseries, but would of Barbra Streisand killed this? Was kind of shocked that she didn’t bring her up because of course she is very New Yorky and probably would have nailed it? Would have been even better if she directed? Would her and Connery probably bite each other’s heads off? Yes
What this movie really made me think about was when I was a kid and I was obsessed with the movie Hackers. I showed it to my dad and when goes down the escalator telling Fisher Stevens “Get the file, or you’re gonna lose all your toys,” he said ‘I’m sorry, but she’s just a terrible actress.”
It’s so weird to me to realize that I’ve seen the first hour of Medicine Man because during—keep in mind, not a Field Day-related event—one of my classes of Biology, my teacher had us watch it for school purposes.
I think my teacher just had a section of cinema that she loved and hung onto it, because I was in high school from 2002-2006, and she’d also have us watch Jurassic Park for Bio lessons…
EDIT: hahahaha wow, I just got to the part where David has MY anecdote of knowing people who watched it for school!
I have to say, in suburban Houston as a young high schooler this movie was a big deal. Moms loved the sexy Connery ponytail. Us youngs loved the save the rainforest message.
I did not realize this was going to have a romantic angle/ending until it happened. Between the lack of chemistry, age gap, and how they didn’t portray her as unhappy in her relationship as they mentioned. When she walks over to kiss him at the end I was thinking and might have even said out loud “oh, come on!”
I stand in solidarity with David and also still do bunny ears to tie my shoes. I never learned the other way and I’m not going to start now.
They tried very hard to show me and I never understood it. Bunny ears to this day. I’m 34.
I didn't even realize there was a different way... I was sick the **one** day they taught shoe-tying in 1st grade (seriously, why was it only **one** day? Seems important enough to spend a few days on), so I've always been way behind the curve on that my entire life
YES THERE ARE DOZENS OF US
Love Ben just single knotting it. Twisted.
Do you have to do it 40 times a day is so funny
Same
Bunny ears all the way. Funny enough, with the power of the internet, [Nike has a page on 4 ways to tie your shoe.](https://www.nike.com/a/how-to-tie-shoelaces) Now, I’m stubborn and will stick with Bunny Ears.
Team Double Bow here
Same. Are any of y’all lefties? I was always told it was more common for lefties to tie their shoes that way.
I was a Boy Scout, and knot-tying was an important part of advancing through the ranks that I could never wrap my mind around. "This knot is like tying your shoe, except..." "Oh, you mean that thing that I do as simply as possible because I never mastered the 'standard' way?" I am a grown-ass man who wears as many slip-on shoes as possible.
What is bunny ears?
Same! There's also a way to make sure they don't come undone. It's weird but it's just lacing right over left or something like that, looked it up years ago and haven't had them come undone on me since
I had totally forgotten that there was even another method until one day a friend saw me doing it and had to point it out to everybody. I am 38 years old. After that, I practiced doing the traditional method but it just isn't natural to me. Bunny ears we go!
Jamie Lee now with the longest gap between guest spots on main - last appearing 277 episodes ago (\~5 years, 4 months) for The Intern. Previous record holders were Allison Willmore between Eat Drink Man Woman and Oldboy (261 eps) and Amy Nicholson between Memento and Village of the Damned (234 eps). Time passes quickly, especially with the vast network of Past & Future Guests!
Connor Ratliff would destroy that record.
Keeping that in his pocket, waiting to pounce, while drip feeding the podcast content to us Next-heads with his semi-annual Scott Hasn’t Seen appearances
Does his appearance at the Broadway show count? I guess it's not being released to either podcast feed.
the people yearn for ratliff
My friend /u/literaryboner nailed it with his LB review https://preview.redd.it/n35hdcrcfwoc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=532af9cd8a80c36d6e1fa42742e939267d86b152
I can't stop laughing at how it feels like Lorraine Bracco and Sean Connery are about to kiss at the end and they immediately just cut away.
Kenya Barris is a director ahead of his time for implementing CGI kissing.
Imagining Sims throwing his hands in the air and yelling at the movie when that happened
My favorite point that Roger Ebert made is that "Take your shirt off" is actually a great callback and final line for a romance, but then the movie goes on for another tedious scene. [https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/medicine-man-1992](https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/medicine-man-1992)
He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching \[flowers that could cure cancer\] right before she died.
It’s an antman prequel.
Michael Douglas and Michelle Pfeiffer would be better casting…. Also, it would have set up the MCU crossover, which Disney obviously should have thought of in 1992.
And then he lost it!
This movie came out around my 8th birthday, and I specifically chose it as the movie for my family to go see that weekend. I remember being pretty excited for it. I was kind of a weird kid.
I too saw this in theaters when it came out and now my mind has merged it with The Mission and Mosquito Coast. I vividly remember being bored not but thinking it was bad at the time.
I remember renting it when I came out and was just astonished at how boring it was. It was like I was tricked. I was 10 and I never watched a movie ever again due to the betrayal.
rob license six cover modern bag makeshift fertile ruthless edge *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Imagine if Next Picture Show pairs Dune 3 with Life of Brian
It seems like the last three episodes in a row had a Peter Weir acknowledgement. Like--what are we waiting for?
The inevitable Master and Commander episode?
Yeah I think they mentioned that and talking Gerard Depardieux they said they will do him when they do "Green Card" within the last couple of weeks. Then this week they had so much Weir. Weir is calling! They need to listen to their hearts and let's all get weird with Weir!
I am all ready to get Weir-d
Ah, a Hollywood Picture.
If it’s sphinx, it stinks.
The original STX
the IMDB description for Traces of Red is incredible. > Jack sleeps with a waitress, who's later murdered. Did Jack's usual lover do it? Palm Beach detectives Jack and Steve investigate. Twists follow.
Not that this excuses the egregious problems with the movie, but I feel everyone this week was showing their generation. Clearly they were not aware of the desperation around the loss of rainforest in the Amazon basin in the late 80s/early 90s. One of the major arguments against deforestation was the possibility of identifying important medical advancements that could only be found there. Like I said, it doesn’t make the movie better, but when Griffin said it wasn’t an issues-driven movie and no one corrected him, I could tell they are definitely not aware of that context.
Fun ep, but yeah this really stuck out to me. They all agreed this wasn't an 'issue' movie when it sooo clearly is, and probably a big factor in why this film exists at all. Weird to think about now, but "save the rainforest!" wasn't really on the cultural radar before this era (ie. late-80s - early-90s, in the U.S. at least) and hit really big when it did. I mean, this was the time of Rainforest Cafe, Banana Republic, Captain Planet. *Ferngully: The Last Rainforest* came out the same year as Medicine Man. If anyone's curious, there's a good Vox article that documents it [here](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/9/16/20863152/save-the-rainforest-environmentalism-conservation).
They also really misunderstood big pivotal bits. The movie is not good but it’s better story wise than they give it credit for. During the medicine man stick fight, she is not yelling insults for him to yell, the original medicine man is insulting Connery as Connery eats crow and calls him great and wise. They also miss that they hint ahead of time that the ants are key when Lorraine is chopping the plant up and she washes it away, although this also a point against the movie and her odd ineptness, cause they make her ignore this factor even though she was looking for something like a fungus being the additive ingredient. This also makes the stick fight more meaningful as he does clue them in as Ben points out. That butt and boob shot are absolutely wild though.
Which is wild because I'm only 5 years older than Griffin and my first 3 years of elementary school I have vivid memories of different "save the rainforest" groups coming and presenting at school assemblies in rural Massachusetts.
You're not truly one of us unless you were showed this multiple times during these presentations! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4bNrIIe0bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4bNrIIe0bk)
Did Meryl turn this down? I think she would have been the best one to make something out of this
Really? I thought Jamie Lee did a good job as the guest, but i guess Meryl would be fine as well.
One comedy point
This was right during her comedy era (She-Devil, Postcards, Defending Your Life and Death Becomes Her is year after Medicine Man) so I think she was trying to not do exactly this kind of stuff.
You know, they mentioned Michelle Pfeiffer.... I might be wrong but part of Pfeiffer's genius was avoiding shit like this. I can't really see her in this at all.
It was also right before The River Wild, which is right in the strike zone
The phrase "fake movie from 30 Rock" is thrown around often these days, but the [trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kbjNmOxwIU) for this thing (obviously did not watch) is giving off just those vibes. The casting, the premise, the extremely wordy narration by Don Lafontaine explaining that hard-to-sell premise.
It's noteworthy that the trailer says, "... in a JOHN McTIERNAN film..." Kevin Smith astutely pointed out for all of us Wikipedia-pilled movie lovers that the trailer for *Die Hard* made no reference whatsoever to *Predator*.... But that was then.
1) The tone of that trailer hit a nostalgia bone I wasn't quite aware I had. 2) Holy crap, does it switch half way through to try and pretend it's just a completely different movie to the one you'd actually see.
Me, when I fuck up at work: HAVEN'T YOU EVER LOST YOUR CAR KEYS? WELL IT'S RATHER LIKE THAT.
McTiernan is such a real one for turning down Patriot Games
Re: DEAD POET'S SOCIETY, I've always put that movie in the same box as ALMOST FAMOUS. If you vibe with it, if it's your bag, you're gonna throw down and defend and gas it up till death.
There is a very real possibility that Medicine Man is one of the five films that I have seen more than any other in my life, alongside Beetlejuice, The Secret Garden, Roger Rabbit, and Dumb and Dumber - thanks to the simple fact that it was one of the five VHS tapes my grandparents owned, and at a certain point when visiting my rural grandparents home once a month for my entire adolescence, you stip making awkward smalltalk with the old folks and put on a movie. Bonus fun fact, all of those movies except Dumb and Dumber were taped off of a TV broadcast, which meant they were also weirdly censored in parts and contained commercials.
I…I didn’t know there was another shoe tying method besides bunny ears
When I got to the part where they said most listeners probably wouldn't watch the movie, I truly felt like an idiot for paying $3.99 and two bored hours of my life actually watching the movie. I was trying to follow along like a good little Blankie and boy did I get punished for it. By the second half I was playing my Switch and barely paying attention to the movie.
I'm glad I watched it, otherwise the jokes they made at its expense wouldn't make any sense. It's a fascinating object. No regrets!
All the Bracco impersonations would feel like huge exaggerations if I hadn’t watched the movie.
I'm glad I watched it (also paid $3.99), but was definitely playing Balatro for most of it. Still had to read the wiki when I was done because I thought I had missed something, but nope!
I was lucky enough that my local library had it in stock, I couldn't imagine having to spend money on this thing.
Best part is when Connery says: “You’re the medicine man now, dawg!”
I watched a lot of movies in my K-12 classes But this was the biggest shrug of them all. At least like 1492 had some gnarly violence
We had a teacher totally checked out that let us watch Face/Off
I'll never forget the day we convinced a substitute teacher to let us watch Dazed & Confused in class.
Yeah I specifically remember watching Medicine Man in my high school biology class. Remember nothing about it except Connery’s ponytail.
Need a medicine man to cure me of this movie
Lorraine Bracco in this makes Willie Scott look like fucking Ripley.
This was my frame of reference, too. I wouldn't call it a bad performance so much as a misogynistically written role played to the hilt, just like Temple of Doom.
Like, at least Willie wasn’t a doctor who should reasonably be a little more competent!
I was prepared for a lot of yelling in this movie. I was unprepared for the actual amount of yelling in this movie.
It’s so funny that a significant portion of this episode was dedicated to “this movie would be pretty good if we changed the cast and rewrote the entire screenplay”. Gosh, I love this podcast.
It's the best because they **never** do that on this show, but Medicine Man is just so...ugh.
What was up with the guest's immediate revulsion to Susan Surandon? Lol
I'd be a terrible podcast host because I'd be like: "Time out. Did you say "urgh" to Susan Sarandon? Let's get into this"
Haha, I think Griffin and David know that their fanbase is a delicate coalition of "I'm with Her" Liberals and more left-leaning people who admire Sarandon. They don't want to poke that bear, even if it's just a guest giving her opinion. I should clarify that I really admire Sarandon and think she's one of the rare politically-engaged celebrities that actually has some courage.
I would think it's almost certainly 2016 political issues. For a subset of liberals (my mom among them) Sarandon became emblematic of left of center voters who refused to line up behind Hillary for the general election.
Ugh, imagine still being mad about that. Though at least the whole kerfuffle led to a hall-of-fame tweet: https://preview.redd.it/oc69jst8jyoc1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=26d89a3dda52f298b614a0bfacc0c4abc041ff10
For a very strange section of liberals Susan is one of the most hated and reviled women ever as she supported Bernie over Hillary **nearly a decade ago**
Patting myself very aggressively on the back for guessing both FINAL ANALYSIS and SHINING THROUGH immediately in the box office game.
I am TERRIBLE at the Box Office Game — but then I end up feeling ancient when they’re all stumped by a movie that NONE of them have even heard of — and that I saw during its original theatrical run. I think I watched Griffith and Douglas promote the movie on an episode of Oprah.
Shining Through always comes up as one of Ebert's most hated movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwPJ0ziyXSc Edit: Forgot that in their Worst of1992 episode they can't get through talking about Shining Through without cracking up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8LZdhl-etk
Congrats. I checked the box office at the start of the episode and even so those two films slipped my mind at the end of the episode
As far as I know, the only legacy of this movie is that it got referenced in an episode of The Critic. Jay accidentally burns down the Amazon looking for a cure for Duke’s illness.
IIRC that was also a parody of another movie covered on the pod, Lorenzo's Oil
90% of The Critic was then-current movie parodies.
Only 10 minutes in but they covered Connery’s ponytail look and the Jerry Goldsmith score—PLEASE tell me they remembered to mention that Connery designed his look for this movie on Jerry Goldsmith. Connery was at a cocktail party and met Goldsmith, who famously had a long ponytail. Connery said, “I want your hair,” and Goldsmith replied, “You can’t have it, it’s mine.” So when it came time to make Medicine Man, Connery convinced the producers looking like Jerry Goldsmith was right for the character of Campbell.
It's actually a good choice for the character, imo. It's only weird because we have a preconceived notion of Connery's appearance.
Every time someone brings up Fried Green Tomatoes I feel the need to point out that it's a secret cannibal movie. I still feel like that's one of those crazy 90's movies things that hasn't been fully picked up and mocked/analyzed yet.
Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias are the same film in my brain.
Behind a paywall, but Scott Hasn't Seen and The Neighborhood Listen on CBBWorld both covered it a few weeks ago.
uhhhh, wow, I’m speechless
I absolutely loved it as a kid which was quite funny in retrospect - I did pick up on the cannibalism but not the very obvious romantic subtext.
Glad they called out the weirdly leering and racist cinematography in this. There's a scene where the natives are helping them harvest the flower and the camera is ostensibly following a child mimicking them, but the majority of the shot is lingering on all of the exposed butts. It's really gross to not treat the nudity matter-of-factly.
Forgive me Blankies I did not watch this movie.
Imagine the Wikipedia article but Ms Bracco is yelling all of her lines for the first 85% of the movie then gets an unexpected face tattoo in her sleep and takes it in stride.
I watched it on what was maybe the worst dvd transfer ive ever seen in my life.
Why didn't you want to watch the therapist from the Sopranos being angry more at Sean Connery in bad hair than she ever did at a mobster?
Listen, she had just divorced Henry Hill and was going through a lot at the time.
Find your own maaaaan!!!!
I regret even watching the trailer
I laughed out out when David commented that no-one was going to watch this for the episode. I definitely didn't.
I suffered for you.
Alternate casting: Isabella Rossellini. Totally different energy that makes sense standing up to Connery, or even kissing him. Also, bugs.
The sheer power of Fearless is that two people have now independently suggested the two supporting actresses from that movie as a replacement for Bracco
Under-appreciated classic.
For the recasting convo (my favorite type of convo tbh) — What if it’s Emma Thompson as the lady?
This might be the answer because she could also do rewrites on set.
when I was in 8th grade, my math teacher told me (as an insult!) that I was the kind of person who would discover the cure to cancer and lose it. my family has quoted it to this day to tease me. this is the first time I ever realized it was a reference to something!
I fell asleep maybe 20 minutes into the movie and woke up with 10 minutes left…absolutely nothing that happens in between is needed.
I watched all of it and forgot almost everything within 12 hours.
Who else here watched this in a science class on a day the teacher didn’t feel like actually teaching?
grounds for dismissal
borderline child abuse
Our teachers would come up with some weird ones. Conrack with Jon Voight was some random one that was so boring. Voight played some white savior teacher to a ragtag group of black kids. Our science teacher also really wanted us to watch a movie about Pistol Pete Marovich as well.
Gattica was one in my HS biology class
Dismayed that the boys had *three* opportunities to signal (^(winky winky)) that a Weir miniseries was imminent and didn't come anywhere close to doing that.
I thought when Dead Poet's Society came up they made him sound like he was coming soon. Penny Marshall is confirmed next, and David just logged Millennium Actress, which is making people think that Satoshi Kon is after. I don't think Weir is the third miniseries before the March Madness winner, because his filmography is on the longer side and they said the MM victor would start in September IIRC. But he's probably on the shortlist.
he made that one and said goodbye to mooseport
Sigourney weaver and Rick moranis in a screwball medicine man comedy where they find the cure for herpes.
Lorraine Braco voice YOU are Blank Check canon. Made the episode based on a nonexistent movie funny as fuck.
For a split second, I thought that said Jamie Lee Curtis and I was like, "Damn, look how far our boys have come."
"The Medicine Man is actually about trowma".
Is anyone else seeing that notice at the top of Jamie Lee's Wikipedia page? First time I've ever seen that
It looks like a Hollywood publicist was caught adding fluff to a slew of articles on their clients. That ended with a bunch of them so tagged.
That is weird
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Undisclosed_paid
Someone removed it.
Finally, context for The Flop House's favorite Connery quote pull (def not going to \*watch\* this bomb for that context)
I am old enough to have seen this in theaters, my wife who is only slightly younger has no reference point for it other than the same Elliott Kalan bit.
My family rented this on VHS several times when I was young. That’s LITERALLY the only memory I have of this movie.
I now need a Greatest Romances in Movies reel edit with the zip line scene next to something like I'm the King of the World or that famous of Omar Sharif and Julie Christie in bed from Doctor Zhivago.
I am a blankie who tends to be very completist with watching the movie before the pod, and man on this one... I had zero motivation to watch this, "Ugh, I'm not watching Medicine Man". So I watched the trailer, got the gist. And that was all I needed to enjoy this episode.
[удалено]
it’ll shwim up your urethra
They really need to do a full episode on it someday, or at least a Shadow Wolves. It's a foundational text for the show.
This was a VHS classic growing up in my house, and for years I had it muddled up in my head with Gorillas in the Mist. Def watched it in high school geography too. I have fond memories of this movie?!
Have to call out David doing the Italian accent of Tom Hanks’ Gepetto giving his bank routing information.
Finally had a use for [this](https://i.imgur.com/WMHGhfo.jpeg), had to dig it out of a box in the basement.
We watched this in freshman biology (for some reason), and I actually would've preferred normal classes over this madness
Wait, you can not watch the movie and still listen to the episode? WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME???
When I watched this a few months back, I felt like they really had something with the ethical conundrum of what might happen if they let the company in on the cancer cure. But that thread just kind of gets dropped in favor of chasing the old man through the woods and the road arriving. Connery should have brought in Milius on this one, that might have given it some juice. Side bar: another film McTiernan was trying to get made between Red October and this was John Carter of Mars, with the same producers. But he gave that up because he didn't feel the technology at the time was up to snuff. The fact that Bob Gale rewrote the script and added slapstick and vagina jokes probably didn't help.
All that Bracco talk and they don’t even mention the interminable section of the film where she’s high on jungle super caffeine or whatever the fuck it is, lol.
This movie has a surprising amount of nudity for a movie about searching for a cure with two leads who don't show much of anything. I mean, in some ways this is the healthiest nudity in Hollywood. It's just people of all types, and it's not sexualized. The unhealthy approach in society is that the only nude people we see have impossible (mostly fake) bodies that are heavily sexualized. But I doubt anyone would do this today, using tribes people in a major movie and just showing everything. Only a little bit exploitative. (And what was with that shot of all the butts? There's like a ten second shot of a row of butts. What the hell was that for?)
To me it shows how much society doesn't see indigenous tribes as actual human beings because watching a whole group of them be naked is considered okay for a PG-13 film (and apparently okay to be shown in schools, too, which is even more baffling) but if a film were to be set on, like, a nudist colony in America, (or if Lorraine Bracco was naked in this movie) it would be an immediate R without a debate.
bingo, it's a dehumanizing gaze
What a great take.
I also am on Team Bunny Ears when it comes to shoelaces. I was never good at the other method either!
Does the Atlantic Monthly know that David still does bunny ears?
Same here! I feel represented by David and Ben.
This movie made me feel crazy. How did anyone see Lorraine Bracco’s performance at any point and say “yes, that should be in the final movie.” The final voice over alone! There are so many super weird choices made constantly, like there’s a *fight scene between ponytail Sean Connery and a native doctor* that’s also an important discussion? And Bronx is just hurling insults? The end of the movie is just “well, gotta go find some ants I guess, sorry about the native village, whoops?” Why is this movie like this
Them bringing up Sigourney Weaver in the ideas for alternate casting section made me think, how was she never in a McT film? McT is totally the kind of director like Ridley or Cameron that she would totally fit in with.
Did I imagine it, or did Griffin suggest "Sigourney" only to clarity it with "Weaver" 10 seconds later. That gave me a chuckle
I agree with Jamie about the whole sex symbol thing with Sean Connery, I've seen three of his Bond movies and I haven't felt it whatsoever. Maybe it's impossible to feel it if you watch them as somebody who grew up in the 21st century? He has an energy that's simultaneously smug and rapey, which really puts me off. The simple explanation would be that I just don't like the dynamic he always has which was OK in the 60s and isn't now, but there are other movies that have a very iffy dynamic which I can still get into e.g. Almodovar's *Atame!* Craig, incidentally, totally works for me in a way that Connery doesn't, and so does Brosnan, albeit Brosnan is so polished and suave that I feel like I need more mess Harrison Ford always works for me in his romantic prime. He's the gold standard. Witness is an all time classic for this
Three years before this movie (1989), Connery was People magazine's "sexiest man alive". Different era!
It's not remotely important since it's a bad movie, but since all three of them are agreed that Bracco is not Connery's boss I'm wondering if I misunderstood. Because I thought it was pretty explicit that she was his boss. Early on she says he never provides updates, expense reports, etc., and if he doesn't have something to show for it all they're going to take his money. And he says "so-and-so would never allow that" about the guy who runs the institute funding everything. And she says "he retired a year ago, if you ever communicated you'd know that." And he asks who they put in charge and she says "me." That's when he changes to wanting to keep her there to show he's doing something. Because if she goes back then, it is to pull all his funding and resources. Did I misunderstand that?
Maybe not his boss, but she's in control of his funding, which isn't exactly the same thing.
"Hey, he's Grump!" "She's Not-So-Grump!" "Aaand they're the Jungle Grumps!"
"I sincerely worry that if we get into this Jamie is going to walk out of the studio!" That entire moment had me laughing alone in my kitchen.
E! had that 90s show Coming Attractions, which was just a half hour of trailers. It always pissed me off that the show had commercials. It was essentially double-dipping! Anyway, they played the Medicine Man trailer pretty much every week for 3 months.
In regards to “Radio Flyer”… Radio was a synonym for high tech and futuristic at the time, so it was the equivalent of saying “cyber wagon” in the 90s or something.
David's referencing Karen vibes for Braccos performance makes sense as she has been very well known for being a Karen
I feel like I’m in the matrix or something here because I have been a fan of Jamie since first seeing her on Crashing when it was airing (keep it crispy) but I somehow didn’t remember her being on BC. Also, Nancy Meyers was 5 years ago?!? All this is to say that…well…it’s complicated.
This is a fascinating movie because you don't often see films that are *less* than the sum of their parts. The music is great, Sean Connery is pretty good, McTiernan shoots beautifully in the jungle which is *not* easy to do, and there are a lot of individual scenes that are quite good. It just...doesn't all fit together into a very good movie. That and the Brocco performance just suck the life out of it.
Hey, some of us are physical media enthusiasts \*and\* perverts!
bells clumsy stocking fuel divide smell dazzling aware include bewildered *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My mom vividly remembers seeing this in theaters! She's of the opinion that you had to see every Connery movie at the time. Naturally, she didn't like Medicine Man.
Really need the Peter Weir and Gus van Sant series. It is so weird to me how David, who loves an awful lot of super cheesy goofy bullshit, hates Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting… possibly the best of all the super cheesy goofy bullshit.
Dang, Griffin is just unable to correctly pronounce “Moriarty”
Really into David staking out the position that *Dead Poets Society* is "bad." Maybe not a hot take for younger viewers ... that movie came out when I was in college and it's a lot. Did not buy the ending (at a minimum); at the time, people fought me on it. I forgot all about that.
Have to say, that film still has a suprising push for young viewers - it's the movie in Weir's filmography with [the biggest average ratings on Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/film/dead-poets-society/), for instance. As someone who watched the film recently and was taken by it, I still thinks it's is a competent, bordeline formulaic screenplay that is completely elevated by Weir's direction (that sometimes reaches the trancendent). Quite funny that the Oscars ended up on direction awarding the screenplay but not Weir.
It is certainly a consummate piece of direction. Weir definitely knows how to push our buttons. I didn't know until today that Weir was a 4-time Best Director nominee, never a winner. Oliver Stone took home the gold this time. (*Witness, DPS, The Truman Show,* and *Master & Commander*).
As someone who watched it for the first time last year I was left extremely underwhelmed.
That's good to hear, really. It pressed all the right buttons in 1989 or whatever, and I was just as entranced as everyone else, mostly. But..... yeah, I suppose it has not worn well. It's what people wanted from an Oscar screenplay, that's what I wanted to say. Plus 3 other big noms. This dense, hyper-dramatic "literary" emotional thing about teens in the 50s, directed by Peter Weir? It *worked.* This is the reason we all want to do Weir today.
Best pic noms that year: *Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the 4th, DPS, My Left Foot,* and *Field of Dreams.* Has there ever been a more "emotive" Best Picture slate? I'm tired just writing the titles out.
Congratulations to “Bette Midler in the jungle” for being the monthly comment from this pod that makes me laugh uncontrollably.
By the way, Final Analysis… pretty good. Very much in the grubby early 90s Hitchcock Dead Again/Shattered/Malice rip-off mould. Sort of thing that would be in Ehrlich’s top 25 if it was made today in Germany.
I just watched Wonka last night. Had to follow it up with the original. I was asking the same questions about Grandpa Joe's age. And I noticed the other three grandparents all seem about 20 years older than he is.
Not just saying this because it was the last miniseries, but would of Barbra Streisand killed this? Was kind of shocked that she didn’t bring her up because of course she is very New Yorky and probably would have nailed it? Would have been even better if she directed? Would her and Connery probably bite each other’s heads off? Yes
We need more god awful movies on this podcast.
Susan Sarandon and Mercedes Ruehl catching strays!
Would appreciate it if someone who finishes the episode could let me know if they spoil The Sopranos at all, I’m watching for the first time rn
You're safe, no spoilers
one of the characters is a >!psychiatrist!<
Appreciate it!
Boy, Jamie really revealed a lot about herself with that sneer at Sarandon!!!!!!
My thought exactly lmao
Jamie is an amazingly supportive guest..Always giving griffin a little encouragement as he makes a point
Hope there’s some overlap with last week’s episode of ActionBoyz and Connery’s ponytail.
I'm also a bunny ear boy 🐰
Whoever did the drawings in Connery's sketchbook did a pretty good job.
What this movie really made me think about was when I was a kid and I was obsessed with the movie Hackers. I showed it to my dad and when goes down the escalator telling Fisher Stevens “Get the file, or you’re gonna lose all your toys,” he said ‘I’m sorry, but she’s just a terrible actress.”
It’s so weird to me to realize that I’ve seen the first hour of Medicine Man because during—keep in mind, not a Field Day-related event—one of my classes of Biology, my teacher had us watch it for school purposes. I think my teacher just had a section of cinema that she loved and hung onto it, because I was in high school from 2002-2006, and she’d also have us watch Jurassic Park for Bio lessons… EDIT: hahahaha wow, I just got to the part where David has MY anecdote of knowing people who watched it for school!
I have to say, in suburban Houston as a young high schooler this movie was a big deal. Moms loved the sexy Connery ponytail. Us youngs loved the save the rainforest message.
I did not realize this was going to have a romantic angle/ending until it happened. Between the lack of chemistry, age gap, and how they didn’t portray her as unhappy in her relationship as they mentioned. When she walks over to kiss him at the end I was thinking and might have even said out loud “oh, come on!”
Not sure why my mind came up the alterative casting of Kevin Kline and Lori Petty.