Just as a heads up, four people listening.
Sorry if there's any extra background noise.
There's some construction going on.
We'll do our best to clean it up, but otherwise just enjoy the nice low hum.
I thought you were calling out our four listeners.
Just a heads up, four people listening.
It's like, wow.
We have more than that.
OK, at least we have some bots.
Yeah, I love the box.
Oh, God, oh my God.
Fuck.
I mean, it often is that Sean will intro the movie and then you will re-intro it.
Yeah, it's a great formula.
Yeah, I mean, the system works.
It's a mansplaining podcast that I'm just practicing on, Sean.
Welcome back to Cage Match, starring Nick and Sean.
I am Sean and I'm Nick with our producer.
Peter, hello.
This is a roundabout way of meeting Nicolas Cage.
Yeah. So a little behind the curtains scene right now.
We haven't recorded in a few weeks because of just scheduling things
and me having to travel.
And it is currently almost nine in the morning, I think.
Which is the wrong time for podcasting other than sexy voices.
Yeah. So welcome to a very special cage match in the morning.
Get your mimosa and your finest robe.
Sit back and listen to us debate the finer points of one of America's greatest actors.
Definitely our snappiest intro.
So this is a podcast where we're going to put 64 Nicolas Cage movies
head to head against each other and we're going to figure out which one is the best.
I don't know if somebody said that before.
I was kind of staring at my beverage.
Peter, you said we have you did the math that we've done 20 movies so far.
Yeah, this is we've watched 20 Nicolas Cage movies at least one time.
Well, I guess I haven't.
I've skipped a couple of the ones that I really thought were going to make me want to die.
But you still watch dog eat dog.
I did. And Ghost Rider. I did.
Yeah. And we're going to make you watch one of them again.
Your decision making skills suck.
Yeah, I'm bad at this.
So this week, our matchup is 1987
Coen Brothers Classic Raising Arizona versus 1994
Thing Trapped in Paradise.
Period comedy. Yeah.
Peter, as I said, it's been like three weeks.
Do we usually just go into a film now?
Yeah, you basically just kind of start.
I mean, how about raising Arizona?
All right. I can see why my friends back East think you should be a host.
So 19. They're wrong. We don't have the budget for that.
That's right. We we have one patron.
Thank you, Josh. We we love you.
I sign up for a patron.
Yeah, it helps us be better.
It'll eventually pay for the mimosas.
They're part of a sparkle, buddy.
I mean, we could just have the sparkle, but you tear.
Yeah, I like to call yourself a sparkle, buddy.
Oh, that's actually really good. All right.
Well done. Well thought.
No, you're welcome. All right.
So 1987 Raising Arizona directed by the Coen Brothers,
starring Nicolas Cage as H.I. McDonough, Holly Hunter as Ed
and John Goodman as Gail.
In brief, reprieve criminal H.I. McDonough falls in love with the local cop
Ed after his third parole. He proposes
they get hitched, move into their nice starter home
trailer and decide to start a family.
Things don't necessarily go as planned when Ed finds out she's barren.
So they steal the favorite child of local
unpainted furniture magnate Nathan, Arizona.
Hilarity ensues without getting into too much detail in the synopsis.
Those are the broad strokes of the film.
Ed's but Ed's best friends from prison break out and come and stay with them.
Not Ed's best friends.
I suppose. Oh, yeah. Sorry.
Hi. I kept throwing me off because I'm like, is his name Hyde?
I would tie it.
Robert I. McDonough. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah. Ed does not like them because she is former law enforcement and baby crazy.
I think is the only way to put it.
She has her husband steal a baby.
I think her biggest reservation is that she was a cop
and she knows they broke out of prison.
I mean, considering everything else they've done at this point,
I don't know if that's a big reservation for her.
Hey, a grand theft baby is not the same as tunneling out of prison.
And they had too many baby more babies than they could handle.
It said it was in the newspaper.
No, no, man. I think they did them a favor.
So this is my first time watching this film.
I'd never seen this film before.
I know it was. It's a second Coen Brothers second film.
I think they're funny, good writing boys.
This was my first time as well, I believe.
I think I had maybe caught little bits of it
on when like Josie was watching it on TV.
I don't know. It was a first sit down watch through for me.
And I enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
It was a it was a nice romp.
There's a lot of great Coen Brothers aspects of the movie.
Yeah, it's got a nice clip.
The the dialogue is all great.
It does move fairly rapidly, like in the first what?
Eight minutes we see H.I.
get arrested three times, paroled three times and get married.
Yeah, very truncated intro introduces all the main players.
Yeah, they don't waste a lot of time.
What was a H.I.'s M.O. usually criminalize?
Are you quizzing me? I'm quizzing you.
No, he's robbed convenience stores.
That's his thing. He was this thing. Yeah.
Yeah, it was like his way will.
Yeah, convenience stores always.
Yeah, always with an unloaded gun.
Yeah, it's not armed robbery.
It's not armed robbery if there's no.
Yeah, so he robbed convenience stores all the time.
It kind of had like a romanticized relationship with robbing convenience
stores, which just comes up throughout the movie.
I mean, he also had a romanticized relationship with this cop
who just took his mugshot every time he got dragged in there.
Well, she was like a beautiful desert flower.
I mean, the lines in this movie are so good.
Oh, it's so good.
And Nicolas Cage is narration and his physical comedy.
And this is a lot of fun to watch, like all the faces he makes.
He's just like getting beat and he's got like just one eye open.
And according to the Cohen brothers,
he got really into his hair during shooting this film.
The more danger H.I. was in, the bigger the swoop would be,
which I thought was a fun little detail.
Yeah, his hair is wild.
Yeah, I think it was by far the best comedic performance
I've seen from him.
Intentionally comedic, because I've seen some funny Nick Cage.
I think this is just smoothly like the whole movie
has the same like his character is just well defined.
And this is credit to Joel and Ethan Cohen, but well written.
Everything just works throughout.
Yeah. And his performance is so consistent.
He doesn't have bad scenes.
It's just now he everything that his character is in rocks.
Yeah. And it's a short film.
It's only an hour 30.
Yeah, it goes quick.
There's no wasted screen time in this film.
The cinematography, I love just them out in the desert.
Their little silver motorhome.
When he's stealing the babies,
there's a very great babies day out scene where all the babies are like
getting out of their crib and trying to go downstairs
and you have to stop them while not getting caught.
Yeah, his tiptoeing is great.
Yeah, his little leather like dance shoes or whatever he's wearing all the time.
His old man shoes, as they would say in Sorcerer's Apprentice.
So many callbacks.
Oh, man. All right.
I remember what we do here. Yeah, I'm getting back.
I'm kind of amazed that we remember any of these.
It's all I do with my free time.
So it's it's my only hobby these days.
So kind of getting more into some more that beats the film.
So it is Baron.
They find out like they are very much trying to have kids.
I think H.I. talks about how they, you know, kind of plan her cycles
so they can have their best chance at and then they just do it
the rest of the time to just in case like you know,
in case like he gets tackled coming home from the machine shop one day.
I'm going to throw my quote in here right now, but I love this one.
So it's high says that we know his insides were a rocky place
where my seed could find no purchase.
Yeah, that's a great.
That is probably the best written line in this film, at least for Nick Cage.
There's a lot of great lines in this film and a lot of quotable ones.
His note that he leaves her later in the movie is also pretty eloquent.
So like high shows, like he's got some kind of like poetry inside of him
for somebody who robs convenience stores in like panty hose on his head.
Son, you got panties on your head.
He always sort of has like a vacant look on his face.
Like I kind of imagine, you know, in cartoons where they like zoom
into someone's brain and it's just like another animal, like
bouncing their arms up and down.
Yeah, no, like he's a living cartoon.
This is a live action cartoon. Very much.
Even even to the point of the action.
So Edwino wants to have children.
They can't decide to steal a baby because they they can't handle five babies.
Clearly. Yeah.
So makes him do it, which again, great physical comedy.
One of the babies crawling under the crib and crawling after it.
The tiptoeing at one point, he can't he just leaves and he's like
feels bad about kidnapping someone's kid.
And she's just like, get get in there high and get me that baby.
Yeah, I want the baby.
And then meet the baby.
They get home and suddenly they're like, we're going to turn over a new leaf.
We're going to be good parents.
We're going to no more crime.
And she gets really mad whenever he never says it, like a hard swear
around the baby, but damn, she gets like, don't swear around the baby.
And he's like, he he's a troublemaker.
It's like, no, he's perfect.
Like I can see it in his eyes.
He's got that spark.
Yeah, he's going to be a little outlaw or whatever they said.
And of course, as soon as like they have everything they want and life can be normal.
High's friends break out of the clink in an amazing birth from the earth situation.
I just I've seen that scene referenced in so many things
and never known where it came from until now.
I just loved John Goodman, like holding his brother over his head and just yelling.
John Goodman yells so good in this movie.
I've got to say he stole it for me.
He is so good.
And I can understand why the Coen's ended up working with him a bunch of other times.
Yeah, he is.
Yeah, he's amazing.
Best part of this film.
Like acting wise is the best part of this film.
I wouldn't go that far, but I mean, it's great.
I just I think.
Who's your best?
Nicholas Cage.
OK, yeah, I was like he's in one of the smalls.
Yeah, Leonard Smalls.
Leonard Smalls plays like a mercenary bounty hunter,
and he comes in and they just show him like destroying everything in this narration of him,
like which is a dream sequence being extra hard on all of the like good things
and the smaller and the cuter it is, the like more aggressive he is towards it.
So he's like throwing grenades at rabbits.
He takes a shotgun and he shoots a little lizard off of a rock.
So Nick, it's time for my favorite game.
Let's see how big I can get that vein inside of Peter's head to swell.
Oh, OK. Thirsty.
Is it time for mouth noises?
No, I just love.
I absolutely love that scene because Ghost Rider makes a callback to that scene
when they do the riding through the desert.
Yeah. And I want to reference
and I will use any chance I can to reference the cinematic masterpiece
that is Ghost Rider that we have to watch again with Peter.
And I'm just going to watch Peter.
I don't want to totally insert myself into this too much, but fuck Ghost Rider.
It's probably going all the way now.
Yeah. Just out of spite.
Your vote is cast.
Right. We established last time that if you tell Nick to not do something,
he's going to do it.
So sorry, everyone.
Ghost Rider, when I have stopped listening to the rest of the episode.
But yes, things progress.
You know, things start to unravel.
They find it difficult to hide the fact that they stole the baby.
People are starting to kind of figure things out.
Hi. Starting to come apart.
I'm going to give my quote now because it's what got the best.
Just chuckle out of me is he's narrating how hard things are at home right now.
I even caught myself driving by convenience stores that weren't on my way home.
Yeah, I might as well give my quote as well.
Since we're at this moment,
it's high saying I even caught myself driving by convenience stores
that weren't on the way home.
I thought that really fucking slapped.
That was a good quote.
Peter, do you have a quote that you want to share right now?
Yeah. The one about convenience stores is really good.
Nailed it. OK. Stuck the landing.
Thanks, guys. But yeah.
So eventually after he beats up his boss for suggesting they swap
on the drive home.
Let's be clear, swap wives, swap wives.
And maybe kids.
He had the worst kids.
Like one of the kids is just writing fart and crayon on their wall.
One kid is just spraying Nick Cage's white pants with a squirt gun
and goes, Mr. McDonough beat himself. Mr. McDonough beat himself.
Yeah. This kid.
One of the kids had an eye patch and was just throwing jello at high.
Yeah, it was a little girl.
Just handfuls of jello, like green jello and berries.
So do you count this as a movie with a good kid or a bad kid situation?
Because those kids sucked.
But the baby was pretty rad.
Oh, Nathan Jr. Yeah.
He was just the sweetest little thing.
Yeah. Just melts my heart.
I would say this goes in the good kid category because everyone who meets Nathan
Jr. falls in love with that kid. Yeah.
And then I mean, even and Gail and Evel.
Yeah, Gail and Evel at the at the end, they kidnapped the baby
to turn it in for the reward, the reward, but then suddenly fall in love with it.
And they're like, this is our baby.
Well, they also keep leaving the baby on the top of the car.
And then they'll like drive away like they'll rob somebody drive away.
It's like, oh, where's that baby?
And then they have to go back and twice.
And then, yeah, but the baby always just lands perfectly OK on the floor.
It's always fun. I've left things on the top of my car.
That's not how that goes.
Have you left a baby on top of your car? Not mine.
Well, then wait. After Ed kind of completely curtailed his life,
he goes into a convenience store to buy some huggies and just while he's in there,
decides to stick up the place and sees him do this, you know, gets that car,
you know, fuck you, fuck you and like drives off as she's driving off.
Hi turns back and the convenience store teenager has a giant gun.
I think they had like one gun for this movie and everyone just had this massive
just fucking revolver.
But then the cops immediately show up and Hi is running through the street,
holds up a guy in a pickup truck, gets him to drive off.
Dogs start running after him.
But just the amount, the sheer amount of what's the word I'm thinking of?
Chaos. Chaos, but excessive force in this in this scene,
because there's a cop just literally sitting in the window of his car,
just blasting away. Cops are the worst.
Yeah, no, I mean, that's bad cop.
Yeah, there's no like Nicolas Cage cops in this movie.
Yeah, there's no Nick Cage cops in these movies.
But like the whole scene in the in the grocery store,
because he runs into a grocery store to try and get away from the cops.
And the cop is just shooting like running down aisles, just letting go.
And then everyone in the store joins in like the butcher pulls out a shotgun
and just starts shooting at Nick Cage.
And there's dogs running through like there's now a pack of dogs.
It went from one dog in a backyard to just a pack of dogs
chasing this lady with a shopping cart.
It's a great scene.
Oh, it reminded me of Birdie to where like the little dogs have joined the pack.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
There's another callback to another callback to another movie we watch.
Nick Cage, like an adaptation, goes through a windshield.
Well, the windshield was blown out, but he goes out the front of a car when they when it crashes.
Yeah. This whole time, though, it's that like yodeling music, right?
Oh, yeah. Again, this is this is a live action cartoon
and to the point where the bounty hunter that he dreams will find them one day is actually a real person.
Yeah. Leonard Smalls is there to find Gail and Evel.
He's there to find the two escaped prisoners and then finds out about this baby situation.
Solely by being atop a hill. Yeah.
Looking down at a trailer. Yeah.
And then he extorts Nathan Arizona Senior for more money and it becomes a whole thing.
Which turns into the climax of the film.
So that's how he gets roped into trying to find this baby.
Well, I mean, let's talk about Gail and Evel steal the baby.
What? Them taking the baby? No. OK.
Them taking the baby, losing the baby, getting it back.
And then they're going to go rob a bank.
Can't leave the baby in the car because if they get if they get killed in the bank, no one will find the baby for days.
So they bring the baby into the bank robbery, which has one of my favorite just not Nick Cage lines.
The film's like, all right, everybody freeze. Get on the ground.
What is it? Do you want us to freeze? Get on the ground.
Because if we freeze, we can't move. We get on the ground.
We can't freeze on account of us moving to get on the ground.
Both these films had like really snarky. They had all of the in bank robbed.
Well, they had almost the same bank robbery scenes.
Yeah, that's true. That's really true.
Of course, blue dye is put in the bag of the money they steal, which when it goes off in the car, everything's blue.
And John Goodman is just screaming while trying to wipe paint off the windshield while careening out of control.
I was dying. But of course, this leads to and high trying to get the baby back and meeting the bounty hunter and Nick Cage getting the ever loving shit kicked out of it.
It was such an entertaining scene.
He's got the board like after he hits Leonard off the I'm just going to keep calling Leonard off the motorcycle and then throws a knife at him and he catches the knife in the board and he just gives us like this super just stony.
Him trying to climb under the car to get away and just get dragged back out by his ankles spits a spits a tooth in a text.
Cobb was the character's name Leonard.
It's a way better bounty hunter name. And of course, when he's pretty much being murdered crushed there, he's high as just grabbing at Leonard and when it's just got grenades on him.
So he like finally gets away, finally like gets dropped and shows the pin and Leonard just stands there dumbfounded for like a solid five seconds before attempting to take off his vest and then just a meaty chunks.
Yeah, he's got two shotguns in his hand so he can't like get them out of his hands fast enough to get the grenade away.
He gets gibbed. Yeah, it's a jibbed or gibbed.
I don't know. Put it in a comment. Tell me all about your vernacular baby.
Um, so they get the baby back. They decide to return it and to be forgiven for doing the right thing. Well, he was going to give him money and then he was like, oh, these motherfuckers.
He doesn't say that. I mean, he's like, oh, you two stole the baby. And they're like, yeah, end of movie. Yeah, we couldn't have our own.
But we had to do this. We had to do this. We had to do this. And so, you know, it's just like a whole new world.
Yeah. And so I think it was a good idea to just keep him in mind for them. Not necessarily.
And then there's a dream extended dream sequence of them having a bunch of kids in the future, even though they say they're going to know they have a family and maybe things will work out.
imagines Florence, Arizona, discovering the missing baby.
And it's going through the fields
in this low angled shot, shaky cam thing
that is very reminiscent of Evil Dead 2.
Well, they were such huge fans of Sam Raimi
that they wanted to do the up the building
in the window scene.
So one of the things that I think
is really fascinating about this,
and anybody who listens to the Blank Check podcast
has heard all this,
but the Coens and Sam Raimi and Ted Raimi
and Frances McDormand and Holly Hunter
and fucking Kathy Bates were roommates.
Wow, weird.
Yeah.
And one of the Coens is married to Frances McDormand.
So it's like the start of it all was there.
So there was a lot of like collaboration.
And you think about like watching
the early Evil Dead movies and this,
and some of the fight scenes and stuff like that
felt so fucking similar.
Like there's a lot of love between those three.
That's a good segue to my next fun fact about collaboration.
Apparently Nick Cage and the Coens really clashed
on this one in terms of Nick Cage wanting to improvise more,
put more of himself into it,
like have more control over it.
And he wasn't used to directors having
a very tight focused idea.
And a lot of Nick Cage's improvised scenes
were cut from the film because it didn't,
it clashed with like the view of the film was.
Hmm, interesting.
Yeah.
That's funny and not to dive
into the next movie too early or anything,
but the cast on Trapped in Paradise
also clashed with their director.
But to the point where Nicholas Cage
ended up directing a bunch of it.
Yeah.
And they had the opposite problem
where the director didn't want to direct it.
Yeah.
And the actors didn't want to be in it.
Yeah.
Apparently Kevin Costner auditioned for High three times.
That would not have been as good.
Probably the most interesting thing
just in terms of what I know about filmmaking.
The script was written in three and a half weeks
and it took 10 weeks to shoot.
I mean, this is early in the Cohen's career.
So that part kind of makes sense to me,
like a fairly short timeline, fairly tight budget.
Yeah.
I mean, they had one movie that had come out before that
that was weird.
And they like really pivoted from that to this.
Well, they wanted to do something completely different,
something more lighthearted.
They wanted to do something funny.
And I think they succeeded.
Yeah, it's funny and lighthearted.
Well, and then I have just a quick question.
Do you guys like the Cohen brothers?
Yeah.
I like some of their films.
I feel like an idiot a lot of the times
when I watch their movies.
I think they are well-written.
I think they are good, but I'm often like,
why is this good?
Am I too dumb for this?
And I'm now just like posturing that I like them
because I'm stupid and everyone else does.
I really like their writing.
I love their dialogue.
I'm going to be honest in terms of the acting in this film,
I was not blown away.
It's just, it's meant to serve a purpose
and it's meant to, it works for what this movie is,
but none of it like wowed me.
Well, it's not a realistic performance film.
It's definitely a performance catered
to the overall artistic design of the movie.
I get that.
I just don't know that it necessarily worked for me.
But again, the writing is so snappy and so on point,
which is what I absolutely love about that.
The way they write dialogues.
Yeah, that's what I love the most about it.
And my favorite Coen Brothers film is still Fargo,
which is much more self-serious while still being a comedy
and much more, not so much of a cartoon.
And having never seen this film before,
I think on my initial watch,
that didn't click until too late in the film
for me to appreciate what was going on.
Definitely looking forward to watching it again,
be it for this or just on my own,
just to really kind of go in there with the right mindset.
Cause it wasn't until a little over halfway when, you know,
all the shooting starts where I realized,
I'm like, oh, I'm watching a cartoon.
I kind of feel like because this is a morning episode,
we need like morning radio sound effect board,
like a toilet flushing right now.
And then,
wah wah wah.
I can go flush the toilet.
We'll prank call somebody later.
Hell yeah, let's do it.
Okay.
Prank call Adam.
You guys wanna prank Adam?
Yes.
We'll call him on my phone and he'll just have a call
right here.
Hey man, is your fridge running?
Wait, can you do that more like Dana Carvey in this movie?
Oh God, I fucking hated that laugh.
Oh man.
Oh yeah.
Okay, let's just get into it.
Dropped in Paradise, 1994.
Starring Nick Cage as Bill Furpo,
John Lovitz as Dave Furpo,
and Dana Carvey as Alvin Furpo.
I'm gonna give you a fun fact,
just because we were talking about that laugh.
Dana Carvey based his character,
or his voice for this movie,
on one of the producers and a young Mickey Rourke.
Somebody from 20th Century Fox had to fly out
and tell him to stop doing the voice,
and Nicolas Cage told him to keep doing it,
so he just kept doing it.
I mean, this movie had no rules.
There was no adult supervision.
Not at all, it's fantastic.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, there's so many great behind the scenes stories
of just these guys fucking off.
I'm sure.
So this is a movie about three brothers
who find themselves in Pennsylvania,
robbing a bank, and the robbery is foiled
through the kindness of the town.
Whomp, whomp.
But it gets better, so that's my brief synopsis.
That's about right.
Whomp, whomp, whomp, whomp.
Ah.
Good morning, Seattle.
Oh great.
The comedy police are us.
The cops.
Bad cop.
Man, we need to just start with the second half
of our podcast, because they're always funnier.
Yeah, so in this movie,
Nicolas Cage is playing Bill Furpo.
He's, I'm guessing, the middle child of the three brothers.
John Levitz and Dana Carvey are.
In jail.
In jail, they are on parole,
but they are lifelong criminals.
And I think early on, we're kind of led to believe
that Nic Cage, you know.
Well, he has a checkered past.
He has a checkered past, but not as bad.
Right, he's tried to atone for it.
He finds a wallet and ends up giving it back,
but he really struggled because it had 800 bucks in it.
He's a manager at some restaurant.
I do love the line when he goes to confession
about the wallet because he feels bad that he,
like he even had thoughts of keeping it.
It's like, forgive me, Father, if I have sinned,
it's been two weeks since my last confession.
And the priest just goes, is that Bill Furpo?
It's been five years since you've been in here.
Yeah, that was good.
Did you guys think that was fucking Paul Schrader?
Oh, is it a priest?
No, because I don't mentally project him
into anything I'm doing anymore.
It's like, anymore.
I used to, but not anymore.
Is this a Slenderman situation?
You just see Paul Schrader everywhere you go now.
It is a nightmare for me.
You're like, is this movie going to be funny?
Oh, is that Paul Schrader? No.
Yeah, so he's Bill Furpo.
Nicolas Cage is just trying to live a straight life.
Finds out his brothers are getting released early, early parole.
I love Dave's speech at the parole board
because he just starts in talking about dinosaurs and pterodactyls
and how they fly over their problems and all this.
And the parole board is just like, what are is there?
Is there a point to this?
Just skip to the end. And he's like, OK.
And he like mentally fast forwards for a second.
He's like, and like the mighty pterodactyl,
I will fly above all my problems.
It's like, oh, God.
Also, both these movies had great parole board scenes.
Yeah. Good parole board scenes.
Nice parallels again.
No, we can talk about this briefly at the end,
but there were a lot of weird parallels in these two films.
It's like we've been given 64 different versions of the same movie
just presented through different eyes.
The NCU. Yeah.
The New Cage universe.
Oh, man.
So they get paroled.
Yeah, he has to pick them up.
I like how one John Lovitz is leaving the prison.
He tips one of the guards.
Oh, yeah. He just treats it like he's leaving.
Yeah. You sell something nice.
John Lovitz is just like a chronic liar.
Like he never tells the truth.
And Dana Carvey plays a kleptomaniac.
I mean, he's just stealing something in every scene.
Like from the very beginning, he steals the parole board
officials like tie pin.
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm assuming he like shook his hand or like, oh, yeah.
Steals all the pen knowing Alvin.
He probably hugged him at the end.
I was going to say when you get paroled, you get to hug everybody.
So that's how it goes.
I also I do like when I'm still on the lam thing.
So I haven't.
Fortunately, we're going to record this in a new spot sensor.
Take that cops. Yeah.
You'll never take us alive.
Coppers. I don't like give them the option.
The out. It's like, no, no, please try to take us alive.
Well, if the cops in this movie are any indication, they fucking shoot
first like regular cops and the last movie, too.
Again. Oh, I loved when Alvin just being a kleptomaniac.
He tries to steal the toy out of a box of Captain Crunch.
Not the sear. It doesn't want to take the whole box.
He just wants the toy.
Yeah. And it must be terrible having a brother like that around
because they're in this town in Pennsylvania
and they're getting the materials they need to rob this bank,
like ski masks and stuff.
And he's just emptying out a box of cereal on the floor
just for a plastic piece of shit toy.
But then you get like a funny moment where you like takes the toy
and like steps to walk away.
And it's just like Captain Crunch under his feet.
And he sits there, looks at it and then slowly takes another step.
And it's like 1994.
Oh, yes. That very specific brand of comedy. It is.
So, yeah, the two boys are out on parole.
So John Lovitz told his mother and offer Bill that, you know,
he had this note and it was from another inmate.
And they were saying like, oh, check on my daughter.
So and so stop story.
So they while in town, there's
that scene where they make maferbo read the letter.
And what is it? If you and if you don't, I will get out of prison
and I will rip off your head and shit down. Yeah.
And she's crying at how beautiful this letter is.
So both very eloquent letter movies.
Again, another connection. Yeah.
The written word we what I'm saying is we watch the same movie twice. Yeah.
But this time with John Lovitz instead of John Goodman.
Yeah, we changed Jones. Yeah.
That's a John downgrade. Yeah.
So, yeah, they go to Pennsylvania because they got this letter.
And then while out and about in town,
like an Alvin tries robbing someplace like he's taking the money
out of the register and then that was in New York.
Yeah. In New York.
And Bill is like, hey, stop it.
And then they get chased by the cops.
Nicholas Cage, you know, convinces the cop that he was an undercover cop
from the Bronx or something.
Lower Queens, lower Queens.
And thank you for being the detail guy today. Yeah.
Again, so I just between travel and work this week.
I just watched this movie at 10 o'clock last night. Yeah.
So it hasn't even been 12 hours.
Hot and fresh. Yeah, it's all in there.
Pretends to be a cop. Long story short, Dave convinces Bill
that he left his wallet at the crime scene and the cops are coming to get him.
So they run away and they run to Pennsylvania.
I'm sure that makes sense. Yeah, I followed.
Well, you've seen the movie. Yeah.
When does that matter for this podcast?
I'm fairly certain our entire audience does not watch these movies.
Except for Jiu Jitsu.
The number of people have told me they've watched Jiu Jitsu
because of our talking about Jiu Jitsu.
I think we should get a commission.
I think I have just more discerning friends
because they are not watching Jiu Jitsu based on what we said.
I have a hard time believing you have more discerning friends
considering your friends about us.
I thought you were going to say friends and I was like, Dick move.
So, yes, they go to Paradise, Pennsylvania.
Yeah. In pursuit of Sarah, the daughter of this guy,
they end up in this bank because there's a girl who works there named Sarah.
Sarah Connors.
So no, that's that's Terminator.
OK, Sarah. Sarah, see something. It's close. Yeah.
Connelly in concert. Yeah. Yeah.
But a different set, different name.
Yes, Sarah, but different last name.
They go in and it doesn't matter.
This character will never be developed.
Yeah. It's the girl from Twin Peaks.
A different one. A different girl. Yeah.
They're in there and then they just like see how fucking robbable
this bank is, because obviously this is what Dave brought them down there for.
The security guard is 100 years old and is asleep.
Yeah. And won't wake up for anything.
The cameras aren't plugged in. Yeah.
Like the wires are just hanging from the cameras.
It's ripe for the plundering.
And similar to the last movie, they get there right as like
there's a ton of money coming into the bank. Right.
Dave is just like, man, check this place out.
And Bill's like, it's like, doesn't matter.
There's no money in the vault.
And right as the door gets kicked in with giant bags of money with like
practically as dollar signs on them.
Yeah. Bank is re-upped.
They got that going for him.
So they decide they're going to rob this bank.
I do want to talk about that scene, though, because they're driving.
Well, Bill gets them out of there and they're driving away from the bank.
And Bill just says, if I had a gun, I'd rob that.
I'd go back in there and rob the bank right now.
And Dave's just like, so Bill, I told you, what if I told you
there were some guns in the trunk?
And then, you know, because it got like he got the car from a gun runner.
So, I mean, there's a high likelihood that there's guns in the trunk.
The cage like balls over the side.
You're telling me there's guns that trunk.
I'm like, telling you where I got it from.
I'm like, but you haven't seen them now.
And then it opens it and Dana is like, hey, there's guns in the trunk.
This movie had its moments.
They did like it's not the same like writing style.
Also kind of funny that both movies are writer director combinations.
So this written by the.
Again, the director of this film direct wrote the first two bad boys films.
So we're fucking on top. Yeah.
They robbed the bank.
And we'll just get right through this.
They robbed the bank.
Then there's another great bank robbery scene where someone like
raises their hand and has something to say about how they're robbing the bank.
Yeah, for me, this movie, I felt pretty solid on this movie.
Then we get to the bank robbery scene and I'm like,
I just didn't like it so much.
I appreciate what they were doing because like they get in there.
They're robbing the bank.
But the bank vault is locked because the bank manager is at lunch across the street.
So the wife of the bank manager who has explained this to us is taken across.
Then Nicolas Cage and Dana Carvey are in the restaurant.
And then they have to re declare that it's a robbery,
but they have to specify it's a bank robbery.
So they take everybody from the restaurant back to the bank.
I loved that scene. They didn't want any witnesses.
Yeah, because Dana Carvey's like, well, if you leave him here,
any one of them call the cops.
Yeah. So they escort everyone across the street.
And now they just bring everybody into the bank.
And it's meanwhile,
oh, fucking John Lovitz is telling stories and like coaching people.
I'm like, like Lamaze and stuff.
I'm like, how did just get through it?
I don't understand what Lamaze is.
I'm going to say that right now because I'm not a childbearing human yet.
It's probably the most PC thing you've ever seen on this podcast.
But they bring everybody back to the bank and finally,
you know, get the vault open, get the money and leave.
As they're leaving town, a blizzard is rolling in.
And this is how we get the name trapped in paradise,
because now they can't get out.
I want to just throw this in here right now.
Speaking of the blizzard, my favorite fun fact about this film
is because they needed the whole town to be covered in snow.
They used seventy five thousand pounds of custom
biodegradable potato flakes to add to the snow on the ground.
Yeah, it's like Idaho flakes. Yeah.
And they were from Idaho. Yeah.
When we were watching this, Josie was just like, how are they even trapped?
These roads are clear, like they're freshly plowed throughout all the movie.
Yeah, the criminals have no problem getting to paradise.
Yeah, it's just like all these potato flakes are just the mounds of snow
that they've built up to make it look like there was a lot of snow,
but it's been plowed.
It's like anybody could drive out of there.
As Sean said, some criminals from New York whose original idea
was it was their idea to rob this bank.
John Lovitz and Dana Carvey just got out first and then robbed it.
And then when these criminals got out, they went on a little adventure.
That scene with the criminals in prison was fucking stupid.
Where it's like it's them talking about this whole situation.
And they're like, tell the story about your your daughter's bank again.
And he tells the story and it's like, hey, did you hear those furpos got out?
Well, also, the bank just got robbed. Convenient.
Yeah, like, fuck. It was bad.
That's absolutely true. It's a bad scene.
It's a terrible scene. So much of this is just like,
I mean, you get so many scenes in this movie where it's just presentational.
It's like, OK, there has to be this plot point.
We don't know how to like eloquently get through it.
So here is people giving you this story.
Yeah, I wrote him for you.
Oh, yeah. No, it's it's exposition, maybe.
Yeah. Then they went down.
Well, they kidnapped Ma Furpo and you get lots of good Ma Furpo
being a sassy old lady and annoying the robbers or the criminals.
And then they go down to paradise and hijinks.
Hijinks do ensue.
So after they robbed the bank, they try and get out of paradise,
because once you've done a crime, you generally don't want to stay around.
There's that scene where Dana Carvey like is just revving the engine
because he wants to see how high you can get the needle to go
and then just peels out right when they get to the car.
Does the classic like drives away when you get to the door?
Yeah, twice. So they have a stolen car, go back to their car.
But while driving out of town, cop sees them, starts chasing them.
They go over a bridge and they get picked up by a good Samaritan
going back to paradise, Wedwalk West Isle.
But it is the son of the bank manager.
Yeah. So then they end up having Christmas Eve dinner with the bank manager
and the bank manager's wife.
And this is where all the kindness keeps coming out.
And it's like they take care of them because they, you know,
don't have any luggage or clothing and they give them like clean clothes.
They give them their Christmas presents to each other, which are clothes.
This isn't my quote for the movie, but this has one of the most
just disjointed lines in the film, which is Sarah sees Nick Cage
in the living room because she rents a room upstairs.
You know, it's like, what are you doing here?
And he's just like, I've had a bad night that I'd rather not recount.
That dog has three legs. Yeah.
Which apparently the dog was just owned by someone in the town
who the director saw like spectating one day and they were like,
let's get a three legged dog in this movie.
So the kindness of the town keeps kind of warming their hearts.
Making them want to not take this money.
They try to they end up trying to like take the money back
and like return it to the bank because Nicholas Cage
sees that he still has the bank manager's keys.
They fuck up trying to put it back in, end up setting off the alarm
and they leave the money at the local pastor's front door
and tell him to get it back to the people.
And then they run off.
I think my favorite part of the end of the movie was just them escaping
in the horse and sleigh.
It was their third or fourth escaped attempt.
Yeah. But now they're as they steal the horse and sleigh
from the mentally handicapped person and son of the sheriff
who is a deputy. Yeah.
And I don't know, like they show him shooting later and he doesn't
hit somebody like shoot somebody. Yeah.
He saves the day.
He knocks the gun out of one of the criminals hands and then shoots
the other criminal through the window.
And so for somebody who's that cross-eyed being able to shoot straight,
that was impressive.
I mean, like he literally looked like one of the assholes from Spaceballs.
Eyes are crossed. Yeah.
I enjoyed it.
There's a pretty decent chase sequence where they're on the sleigh
and like they're the FBI is doing a low budget
Blues Brothers style like pile up behind them.
Yeah. Which is kind of fun.
I got to say I loved Richard Jenkins as the FBI agent.
He's so fucking good. He's a great.
What's his name? I tried looking at it.
He's a or something. Yeah.
What was his first name is like so so Bolba so Bolba.
Bolba, Pazer. That's my next D&D character.
So Bolba, Wado, you got all the good ones. Yeah.
So the town gets the money back.
The bad guys get re-arrested.
Nicolas Cage and his brothers kind of get off, you know, like the town.
Again, much like the last film, the town forgives them.
Yeah, it's a Christmas movie. Yeah.
Well, like the FBI agents there.
OK, there's no money. There's no hard evidence,
but there's a town full of people who saw them and they're like, yep,
not these guys. They saved the town.
The FBI agent also does point out that two of them have broken parole.
Well, parole violations is pretty below the FBI.
So just nobody seems to care. But again, Christmas movie.
Yeah, it's a Christmas movie.
I mean, this might be my new go to bad Christmas movie seen as I can't really
watch the ref anymore. Thanks to Kevin Spacey.
Fuck you, Spacey. I'll keep that in.
It's it's cool to say fuck Spacey.
That's the movie. Nick Cage. Nick Cage finds love at the end.
Yeah. Yeah. By the really boring person with a character who was never developed.
Nobody was developed. But again, we said the director had no interest in directing
this film without oversight. Nick Cage is wildly all over the place.
You see every instant of cageing out in this film.
I think this is the most cagey film that we've seen so far.
I know he has some other ones that are crazier, but like I made a note of it.
It was like, holy fuck. Every scene, every delivery, mid delivery, he will change
his candor. Like this is not a consistent character.
And he's the straight man. And he's the straight man.
There's a scene that's very cagey and it's when they're waiting for the bank key
and he just goes key, key. Oh, when's he get back?
Or when he's just chasing the bank manager.
I've been coming, coming, coming. I do like.
The cop is coming after us. The cop is coming after us.
Most of my quotes involve him being mad at Dana Carvey.
Yeah, I didn't love to the point of remembering any Nicholas Cage stuff.
It's like, it was good for what it was.
And the performance he brought to the quotes was fine.
None of them, I think, made it into like a re quotable sentence for me.
For me, like the best quote of the movie is a Dana Carvey quote.
And it's just at the very end when Ma Ma Ferbo is like, oh, your brother's going to get hitched.
What are you two going to get hitched?
And Dana Carvey is just like hitched.
We're not even attracted to each other. It's a great line in reference to him and Dave.
There's also just another good little interaction when they first get out of prison
and you see Dana Carvey, who is clearly not all there.
They're driving away and Dana Carvey just in the back seat and ask if they can stop on the way home to get some ring dings and milk.
Yeah, and they can just go milk for the kids. Yeah.
Ring dings and milk. Oh, sure.
Then we'll get some balloons, go to a puppet show.
What are you two years old?
So my favorite quote came right after that, too.
So it's same car situation and then he he's explaining to them how because they're out on parole, he's in charge of them.
So he says, so quiet down, my little ones and call me dad.
Yeah. Yeah. His performance is very weird in this.
It's not super consistent. It's not in line.
I feel like with the I would I would say the tone of the movie, but it's all such a fucking mess.
Yeah, I think because the director was so hands off on any of the performances, Cage just got to sort of do whatever he wanted.
Well, like, according to John Lovett, the director just didn't want to direct and he just kind of told him to do whatever they wanted, which is wild.
They're definitely trying to ride on that that high of Nicolas Cage throughout the year.
Well, also, this is like Dana Carvey and John Lovett's is like first, I think, first film after leaving SNL.
Yeah. And 1994 was a big year for Nick Cage. This is the fourth film, Nick Cage film to be released that year.
We had Red Rock West, which was filmed a couple of years earlier, but got released that year.
Guardian Test, which we haven't seen. And it could happen to you.
And two of those movies we will be discussing again later as they've already made their way to the second round.
But yeah, that was trapped in paradise. Yeah, it was a fun movie. I enjoyed watching it.
Two weird comedy of errors tying it and tying it to Red Rock West.
It's another thing where it's like, all right, a crime has happened. Now I'm going to leave town. Oh, wait, I'm not.
I'm trapped here. So, you know, fun times had by all.
I think on an initial watch, I think I enjoyed the stupidity of trapped in paradise more, not having grok on to what was going on with Raising Arizona immediately.
But I think Raising Arizona is going to be more fun to watch a second time.
I would say definitely Raising Arizona through both of my watches.
And the Coens are just so they made it such a captivating movie. They did.
They got me from the very beginning. They they just hit you with such a great premise.
Walking Nicolas Cage in repeatedly, getting his mug shot done.
And you see his relationship. It's so big. Everything is so big.
It's like Ed is such a hard cop. She's like, turn to the left.
Turn left. No. Then next time it's like, you know, she's a little softer than she's crying because her finance broke up with her.
Obviously, it's the better movie. Yeah, it is. And I am look that one.
I'm so much more looking forward to rewatching and having a more self aware view of it.
Yeah. So next episode, we're back on to the serious bracket and we have leaving Las Vegas and the runner, which I don't remember.
I think it's a political never heard of her. But I'm kind of excited because I haven't seen leaving Las Vegas.
Have you guys? No, I've not. I've never seen a Nicolas Cage movie. That's a lie.
You've seen 20. Yeah. How about a little sign off?
I love you, Peter. Oh, thank you. Yes. Do I have to say it back?
Goodbye, everybody. Good night. And God bless.
Hayden, jump down in the comments and tell us how bracket. Yeah.
Yeah. Do it in the comments and don't do it to me while I'm trying to sleep. Yeah.
Actually, whisper it to him in his sleep. Just that's how it gets in deep. Yeah.
Just sneak your way in. Please don't.