The Sandlot: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret histories and little known fascinating facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We are your Sultans of So What, the Kings of Crash, the Colossus of Cloud. At least as far as useless trivia as concerned. I am Jordan Run Talk a k a. The Great Jordano, and I'm alex Ago and I did not write a nickname for myself. And today we are recognizing the unofficial end of summer with one of the best summer movies of all time. I'm talking about The sand Lot, a movie about youthful friendship in an idealized version of the early sixties. It's the kind of movie that will make you nostalgic for a childhood you probably never had and probably no one ever had. And that's sort of the main point. As we'll discussed on this episode in interviews, the writer and director of The sand Lot got in the name of David Mickey Evans. Frequently references are possibly apocryphal story of Walt Disney walking a bunch of dignitaries through a newly completed Disneyland in nineteen fifty and as they walked down the avenue line the shops and buildings design that looked like turn of the century Middle America. One of these dignitaries said, you know, well, you really nailed it. This is exactly the way it was back then, and Walt said, no, it's the way it should have been. That's sorry. That's very much the sensibility behind this movie, and that's one of the reasons why I think it's so beloved. Yeah, I mean we've talked about how baseball is not my thing. Yes, I definitely watched this movie at like sleepovers and in like middle school when the teacher was hungover and wanted to put on a movie, but I was a little too busy rewatching Jackie Chance Rumble in the Bronx to um pursue this on my own time. That's funny, because I mean, the nineties really had a surplus of kids in sports movies, and I think baseball really reigned supreme in that genre. Like Rookie of the Year, a Little Bigly, Angels in the Outfield, which I hastened to remind you featured an all star cast including Danny Glover, Joseph Gordon, Levitt, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd, Adrian Brody, Matthew McConaughey, and Dermott Laroney. Remember that one. But in addition to kids baseball movies, you also have the Mighty Duck series. You had Little Giants, which was a foray into football and a somewhat cult favorite, The Big Green starring the kid who played ham Porter from The sand Lot and the older sister from The Wonder Years, Olivia Tabo. But I'd argue that The sand Lot has all these beat as a fan favorite. And I was talking about this with my stepbrother the other day. He likened it to the Beatles movie A Hard Day's Night, which just proves I can relate anything back to the Beatles in the same way about A Hard Day's Night had this almost supernatural quality of making you want to drop everything and start a band with your friends. The sand Lot made you feel the same way about wanting to drop everything and play a game and pick up baseball with your buds. I mean, did that I know you're not really a baseball guy, did that have any effect on you? Did this movie and you want to go play a game with kids down the street. No, I wanted to pretend martial arts fight kids. Um I was it was Power Rangers Power Rangers, and Jackie changed for me. I don't I don't know. I missed this. I missed this. Maybe we didn't have a baseball diamond near me. I don't know. I just I missed this. Um yeah, not great great American pastime. My asked, well, I think I think it's most interesting to me about The sand Lot is that it manages to avoid the old, tried and true sports movie trope, probably best exemplified for our purposes in The Mighty Ducks, which I miss wrote as the Mighty Dicks initially, which it's like, guess the porn movie versions, you know, the whole trope of a rag tag group of misfits takes on the rich snobs. We get a little bit of that mid movie in The sand Lot where they play the more professional team with you know, the kids in the varsity jackets, but they move off that pretty quickly, which is a bold move because at as sart, Sam is a movie about friendship and belonging and finding your people, you know, and maybe that's why it has the same pool as the Beatles movie. The camparaderie at its core is so strong you want what they have, you want to be part of it. And many of the actors in the movie have gone on to say that they put same law in a category with movies like Stand By Me and The Goonies rather than sports movies. And I tend to agree, Yeah, I would. I would second that. Um, you know what I just thought of when you said that was bigger for me was Karate Kid. Oh yeah, okay, I mean, come on, that's a kid's sports movies. Coast Italian guy who gets into martial arts and hates the rich people. That's my origin story, pal. Yeah, I'm an indoor kid with social skills almost as poor as my sports skills. And uh And this podcast is the story of our friendship. The subtext of this entire podcast is discovering things about ourselves, discussing pop culture well speak of painful childhood memories from a truly tragic childhood backstory that inspired this film in the first place, to the precedent setting lawsuits sparked by the character of Squints, to the finer points of the vomit used during the chewing tobacco scene, the six foot tall puppet required to create the beast, and what happened when they let Dennis Leary loose around a group of kids. Here's everything you didn't know about the sand Lot. Well, before we talk about the sand Lot, we have to talk about the Sad Pot. This movie is based on a true story from writer director David Mickey Evans's childhood, but as we said at the top of the episode, it's an idolized version of because his early life was deeply sad. He tells this story in the twenty fifth anniversary documentary Legends Never Die on Fox. Evans his dad left home when he was a little kid. He just went for cigarettes or something and never came back. So his mother put him and his little brother into the family car and drove a cost the country from the east coast of southern California to try to find him. She eventually did find him, but he had moved on with his life, in Evans's words, and didn't want anything to do with his former wife or his kids. So they found themselves starting over in a strange state. And like Scott Small's the main character in the Sanmot, Evans and his brother were the new kids and their mom married a man who was not very nice to Evans, and to hear him tell it, he and his brother got bullied on her own block. We got bullied at school, we got bullied on the way back from school, and when we got home, we got bullied. So tough early life. In an effort to force her two boys to make friends, Evans's mom would throw him and his little brother out of the house to like Scott Small's mom and the Sandlot, go make friends, go get dirty, go get into trouble, and in doing so, she effectively threw her kids to the wolves. And there was one particularly vicious gang who hung out at the end of their block and played baseball, and naturally, Evans and his brother were not invited to play with them. One day, these kids hit a baseball over a brick wall fence. Any of this sound familiar yet, which is basically the entire plot of The Sandlot. Evans's little brother was always hanging around hoping for a chance to play, hoping he'd finally get the invitation, So they talked to him in the hopping the fence and getting the ball back for him, you know, go over and get the ball and bring it back and maybe you can play with us. And this little kid was thrilled. This was his big chance to get on their good side and maybe, just maybe finally make some friends. But when evans little brother hopped the fence, he was confronted with a massive, terrifying, ill treated dog named Hercules, who chased him down and bid him quite badly. And as David Mickey, Evans said, the boys all knew what was going to happen, and they laughed as a little brother as he was walking bleeding back home, and Evans said, I really hated those guys for a long, long time into my adult years. I mean until the baseball party. This is the plot of Kid Southern California. Oh man, I didn't even think of that text, but Evans would get the last laugh. By the early nineties, he was a hotshot screenwriter in Los Angeles and he sold the script for a movie called Radio Flyer for over a million dollars, making one of the highest paid writers around at the time. Do you remember this movie? Nope? I remember Radio the Cuba Gooding Junior movie. No no different movie. Radio Flyer with Elijah Wood, Alec Baldwin, John Heard, and An uncredited Tom Hanks as the narrator. This is yes, we have our our first Hanks connection, and I think are only one in this episode. This is another deep well of childhood sadness, and like The sand Lot, it borrows a lot from Emma's childhood. I remember this movie quite well. It was extremely upsetting. Young mother moves from the East coast to the west with the two young boys. Mary's a man who tunes out to be an abuse of alcoholic who beats her kids behind her back, and the whole movie is spent with these kids scheming how to escape. It's one of the bigger bummer kids movies I've ever seen. Um anyway, Radio Flyer is supposed to be David mickey Evans directorial debut, which makes sense considering it obviously has a lot of personal connections to his childhood, but the studio decided the last minute that he was too inexperienced and they unceremoniously removed him from the film ten days into production. He was bombed, to put it mildly, and the director chair was given to Richard Donner, late of the Goonies, Scrooged and the Lethal Weapon and Superman series. So he had some big hits under his belt, and Donnerd just spent some hard truths to David Mickey Evans wrapped in the guise of encouraging words. I guess everyone gets a second chance in Hollywood, but nobody gets a third chance. So the pressure was on for Evans to make his next film a good one. So he's racking his brain trying to think of a movie idea that would be more suitable for a rookie director, in his words, a small, contained film with a limited number of locations, a limited number of characters, and a simple but clean idea. And he stuck in l A traffic one day and he's bored thinking of the opening scene of La La Land, and he recalls the incident from his childhood with Hercules the dog and his little brother, and the plot just came out one line. A bunch of kids during the summer have to get a baseball back from a mean dog. And unlike Radio Flyer, which was a pretty brutal portrayal of the worst elements of being a kid, being helpless and afraid and abused, this new movie was going to be the opposite. As Evans said, the whole movie is really me rewriting my childhood because I turned all those bullies into heroes. And he made the Lost Ball signed by Babe Ruth and worth three million dollars. As he told the website the score, the sand Lot isn't the way my childhood was. The sand Lot was the way my childhood should have been. After writing the first paragraph of that script, I never had negative thoughts about those bullies from my childhood again. So at least it was cathartic for him, and he took a very active role in putting this very personal story together. In addition to directing and co writing the script, he also served as the film's narrator. That's him. I didn't know that, I man, that is rough. Although if you're gonna get kicked off your movie, you could do worse than Richard Donner. That's a great line. Though you've always got a second chance on ever a third. That's really good. Yeah. The original title of the film was Boys of Summer, but it was changed not to avoid a lawsuit with Don Hemley, which is surprising because Don Henley loves to sue people um, but because an author by the name of Roger Khan had written a book of the same name in Nino about the Brooklyn Dodgers, their fabled team from as Evans told Sports Illustrated, I changed it to the sand lot because Roger Khan threatened to sue me upside down and backwards, and God love him, he was right. That takes a brave man to admit that, he said. The irony is that the sand loot in the film wasn't originally written as a sand lot. It was an elementary school recess yard. A lot rougher when you have kids sliding around on asphalt sand, right, oh man' getting into that league of their own five five injuries? Oh god. Uh. With the script of the film ready, it was time to begin casting, and this was a long and arduous process where the producers mixed and matched actors and characters, trying to get the right blend for the film. They originally planned on casting kids who around nine or ten years old, closer to the age that Evans was when the origin story of Hercules the Dog occurred. But as the casting progressed, it became apparent that the cast needed to be older. Apparently, the prevalent comment that they gout was, oh my god, they look like babies, and ultimately they bumped the age range of the kids twelve or thirteen, with Evans telling Sports Illustrated dot Com we knew was the right decision instantly because the first kid that the interview was Mike Vitar, who played Benny Rodriguez. While we're talking about Ben of the jet, would you describe him as the most iconic part of this film from the PF flyers, the shoes on down, good looking to it. From the shoes, he's got a good face, He's visited his dreams by Babe Ruth, and ultimately he gets the happiest would you say the happiest ending he goes on a play on the Dodgers. Yeah, he's played by a Cuban American actor. Mike Vuitar got his big break when he was just twelve years old and the casting managers saw him standing in line at a carnival. Good lord, can you imagine that that's a Bruce Springsteen song? Uh? You know. The adult actor actually looks a lot like the kid version, and that is because they got the kids older brother Pablo to play the adult version of Benny. He's playing on the Dodgers. I guess the pro the actual Dodgers who are in that scene were not actually Dodgers, which is depressing. They're played by cast members from the film crew members like they got like the grip and stuff like that. The best boy. Yeah, I think that's gonna be cool to have like kind of a grunt job in a film, be like, all right, well you got a day planned baseball at Dodgers Stadium, Like that's pretty great. Yeah yeah yeah uh and then you get hit with a fastball from Randy Johnson explodes your head like that bird. Uh. It's the only bit of baseball trivia I know. Um. Mike really found his niche in the nineties kids sports movies. He also started D two The Mighty Ducks and D three also The Mighty Ducks. Um, do you remember the kid's name? Oh? What was the kids in? Um? He was the kid who can state really fast but it can't stop. That's my main memory. I forget his character's name, Emilia the jet estavs uh. Also the kid who played in the sand long plays the picture in the sand Loot. Kenny denez is in m D two. But you didn't come to this podcast to listen to Uh, that's pontificate about different guys whose nick names are Latin and the Jet. You came to listen to Smalls The Smallest Corner A little part of this podcast we like to call The Smallest Corner. The start of the movie undoubtedly is eleven year old kid named Tom Geary, who won the role despite the fact was one of the first auditions he had ever been on. He didn't even get the part. Originally, the roles between him and another kid, and he flew all the way back from l A to the East Coast, ready to give up on acting for good. And then the other kid fell through and they called up Tom to the big leagues. Some nothing happened to the kid who played Yeah Yeah too. He was a last minute replacement. And to Ralph Makio, really nope, making that up the character of Scott just tying everything back to CHRONI kid Um Yeah. Scott Smalls famously not a great baseball player before he's taken uh into a mentorship by Benny the Jet. But the actor Tom Geary was actually pretty good at baseball. In I r L. We talked about in League of their Own how some of the people had to dumb down in the racing scene, right, isn't it? Um Kit who plays kid Lori Petty. Lori Petty had to like run slower, slower than slower than to like miss a ball that's going right for you. Like there's a scene when he gets hit in the face with a ball. Yeah, how do you fake that? Just eat it in the face. Um. But yeah, he had to take lessons on it. You know, he was coached how to look like, how to be bad. He told Time magazine. Uh, I know, my little league coach was pretty upset when he saw the movie. But you know, aside from that, he did bring a lot of himself to the role. He said, I remember moving when I was little, moving around, and it was hard for me to make friends. I think as an actor you always bring a part of yourself into the role. So in order to establish the close bomb between the actors of Benny and Small's David Mickey Evans, the director and writer had the two actors meet and rehearsed together weeks before the rest of the kids showed up to film, and it worked so well that the other actors playing the kids in the film thought that they had been friends for for a long time. It's a good move. Yeah, it's smart Um. Probably the other nicknamed kid you can really think of in this film after the Jet and Smalls is Squints. How do you pronounce this kid's name? Michael Squints Palladoras Palladorus, played by In the tradition of actors time immemorial, you get a Greek guy to play an Italian guy vice versa played by kid named Chauncey Lea Pardy, which sounds like he belongs in one of our British niche music episodes. But breaks and geeks good for Chauncey. According to the actor played smallest Tom Geary, nothing at all like the guy he played. He said he'd wear the nerdiest clothes and the thick glasses, and as soon as they would call rap, he'd be in humongous jeans down to his knees and a backwards hat and blasting gangster app So that doesn't ruin your image of Squints. I don't know what will para Jinko's, but he was like his character in that, like Squints, he was kind of a in your words, a bit of a horn dog. It was not above manipulating circumstances to get what he wanted. Apparently in exchange for behaving himself on set, this kid, Chauncey Leo Party, demanded a copy of the current issue of Playboy from the d P on the film director of photography, Anthony Richmond. Yeah, he says he bought one on his lunch break for the kid. He said everything was fine after that. Just kid blackmailed the DP on his film for porn. That's a power move. Uh. Leo Party would not confirm or deny this, he told the Score. I've heard that story before. I honestly don't remember what it probably happened. Bribery is the quickest way to get to somebody's heart, right, Good for you, Squint's good lord. Yeah. All these kids are true characters, and they do such a great job of carrying off this movie that I completely forgot that Scott Small's parents are played by two serious heavy hitters, Karen Allen, who will forever be marrying Raven Wood from the Indiana Jones movies In My Heart and Dennis Leary. I completely forgot Dennis Lear was in this. The kid who played Smallest told time I was expecting him to show up on the set with a leather jacket and the cigarette hanging out of his mouth, talking really fast. I remember saying that my mom at the time. He's so different from how I thought he'd be. He and Karen Allen were both great to work with. And Dennis Leary's famously from Massachusetts, a fellow Whister County boy, just like me. And even if you don't give a damn about baseball, if you're from Massachusetts, you're hardwired to hate the Yankees. That's just how it is. And this caused the problem with Dennis. When the prop master handed him a baseball glove for the scene where he tries to bond with his new steps On Smalls by playing catch, and Dennis put the glove on started punching it with his fist to break it in, and then he looked down and horror spread across his face and immediately took the glove off and said, I'm not wearing this. Get me another one. The prop master looked at it and it was a Mickey Mantel signature glove, and Dennis Leary would not wear a glove endorsed by one of the most famous Yankees of all time. I just love that the last member of the Sand loot team to be cast was Hamilton ham Porter, the husky, redheaded wise acre played by Pat Renner. Finding the right blend of wit and warmth proved difficult for producers and they were still looking the day. The rest of the cast. We're getting on a plane in the Salt Lake City to begin filming. According to David Mickey Evans, the director Pat nailed the audition and he told them you're in, and you got a plane to make kids get all the plane. Ham's finest hour in this movie, aside from the gripping explanation of how you make a some more which we'll get to later, was the scene where the sand Lot gang or facing off against the snooty varsity jacketed wearing kids and they're actually too. There's the scene where they first challenge each other and it's like gunfight at the Okay Corral where they you know, the two teams are lined up nose nose and they just trade rapid fire insults. You know, moron, scabb, eater, pus liquors, some really gross ones, culminating with the insult of all insults. You play ball like a girl, yeah, I mean has an age. Well, but par for the course though, especially in the era, and also like, you know, I remember talking like this when I was a kid. Yeah, Evans has been asked about that line because again, he wrote the script in addition to directing it, and he's defended it on the grounds of it being authentic to the period. He told USA Today recently in the context of two thousand eighteen, obviously I would never write that line. It wouldn't resonate, and nobody would understand it and they would find it offensive. You're talking about a movie that took place in nineteen two. So if I was to make The Sale Lot again today, taking place in nineteen sixty two, no, I wouldn't change that line, of course. Not He's not wrong, I don't know. There's also the scene a few minutes later when they're actually playing the game and Hams behind the plate. He's the catcher, remember, and he's taunting the batters like, hurry up, batter, it's gonna be a short game, and I have to get home before lunch. And of course, my personal favorite, if my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave his butt and make him walk backwardsous. Oh my god, it's incredible. The insults for at least this home plate scene. Possibly both scenes were unscripted and improvised on the day and David Mickey Evans fed the off the cuff insults to Ham as they were shooting the scene and they were just workshopped on the fly between them. And Yeah, let's say that's Ham's finest hour. Hashtag Ham's finest hour tweeted us, using that about this episode. As you meditate on that, We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages. Everything on the set of this movie was man made because even though it's set in southern California, San Fernando Valley, it was shot in Utah, often called the San Fernando Valley of whatever's part of the coast Utah. Um, Yeah, I mean the tax break capital of the of this era of film, right like it's in the past twenty years, Well, in the past twenty years has been Georgia, right Like, everything is shot in Georgia today because the I think this comes in with like legislatures and whoever like passed these really aggressive tax breaks and becomes the place dujor to shoot. And they needed that because this movie was made for nothing. Seven million dollars which will get you like what a couple of canisters? A film on a Christopher Nolan shoot these days good lord and craft services if you're lucky. Um. Yeah, they made the send a lot of an empty field on someone's private property and then built the backstop dirt grass, trees, fences, Mr Myrtle, the Timmins's house, boats, backed yards, and it never reverted from being private property. You cannot go there. Uh. You try and visit it in Utah, you find no trespassing signs posted everywhere, and apparently it has passed into local legend. The owner does not want you there. If you're a devoted sand Lot fan making a pilgrimage to Utah out of luck, don't do it. Uh. And you know there were also houses completely surrounding the property, so unless you are actively courting the wrath of a Utah property owner, you can't see it. Sorry. They even built the trees on this. You know. The treehouse scenes are such a big part of this film. Um, that's where they make the Erector set pieces to try and get one over on the beast, and they needed to actually buy that. They wanted to buy an actual oak tree for the film. But again, seven mill didn't get you a tree. You don't get a tree. It's not the budget. So they know these things will go for like hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy, like a hundred year old oak tree that caused apparently, according to interviews with David Mickey Evans, like a hundred grands. Yeah. And so one day one of the crew members was on his way to the production office. We saw a guy in his front yard. Apparently Kiss meant about to cut down a massive oak tree in his yard. The beautiful century old oak tree was starting to, as they do, cause problems with the foundations of the house. You know, once the roots get in there, you're just looking at all kinds of structural problems. You get a you gotta take that guy down. Uh. And they needed to get rid of it. So the crew member asked if we could have the tree and Salt cities. Uh. Utility companies removed power and telephone line so the tree could be hauled away in a flatbed. Um cemented to the ground. They've hot glue guns not available. Uh, and you know, becomes an indelible part of the film. And Uh, much like when they filmed Halloween in Pasadena, even though that movie is set in hadn't filled Illinois. They replaced the original oak leaves on this tree with wire and satin green leaves, although on Halloween they famously did it with actual dead leaves that they brought in h and stuffed in garbage bags and strew them individually across wherever they were shooting, and then went and collected them in between shots. Speaking of Halloween and my favorite film director of all time, John Carpenter, great segue here, I'm gonna go ahead and declare sand Lot and Halloween occupied the same cinematic universe. Go on, devoted fans of the Halloween franchise, and God love you, We've suffered a lot the misbegotten later era sequels, starting with Halloween four The Return of Michael Myers, These were all shot in Utah, again for tax reasons. Vincent drug Store is one of the famous locales in the movie. Michael goes there to get his new knife and mask in four Uh an actual drug store in the town of Midvale, Utah, sadly no longer operational, but still standing um shows up again in Halloween five. Halloween Dorks, who remember that is where Rachel takes her adopted sister, Jamie played by Danielle Harris, if memory serves correctly, to pick out a costume. And Michael is also in there. But the Vincit drug store that you're referring to is where the same lot gang goes to buy their new ball and it's actually a story as you mentioned, and the out of Midval utall as of early still standing. You can google street view it. We should go there, I'd like to. I mean, you can go to the poll for the Squint's kiss scene. There's a lot of stuff that store. You know, Midvale is often called the Paris of Utah, and Utah is often called the southern California Utah because it was made on such a shoe string. They shot the entire movie in just forty two days. That's just six weeks, around the same time as the average American kids summer vacation, which also might explain the limits on how long they had the shoot. They've probably done a lot of those in between. You know, kids school schedules their interior shots for the aforementioned treehouse, specifically the scene where Squints is telling the story of the beast. You know, for ever that was shot on a sound stage in l A, but pretty much everything else was shot on location in Utah. The only downside of shooting during the summer vacation months was that it was extremely hot. Salt Lake City was in the midst of a massive heatwave of all the production took place, which made things difficult on the poor young cast who were running around in relatively heavy sixties clothes. One day, the temperature broke a hundred and five degrees and the actor playing Smalls became so overheated that he fainted and fell into a cameraman. Ironically, the only day that it wasn't hot as hell was the day they had to film the scene with the boys go to the pool. In the movie, that's the hottest day of the year, and they deemed it too hot to play. In real life, it was the coldest day of the shoot and the kids were freezing as they soaked in fifty six degree water. Good writer director David Mickey Evans points out that in this scene where Squints is staring at Wendy Peppercorn, who will talk about in a moment, his teeth are chattering. You can see it in the final shot. It's because he's freezing to death. Evans said he would go on the praise actor Chauncey lo Party, who played Squints, for being such a trooper. And this brings us to the pool scene, a scene that some to find adorable, others find pervy. I have to admit I sort of found it messed up even as a little kid watching this movie. But for those of you who don't know which if you don't, I can't believe you made it this far. In this episode, Squints has a crush on the beautiful older lifeguard at the town pool, the glamorous Wendy peffer Corn. I thought it was Wendy Peppercorn for years, which I kind of like better, but Wendy peffer Corn. So he fakes his own drowning in order to receive mouth the mouth resussitation from her and go in for a kiss. Actor Chauncey la Party knew that he had this scene coming for weeks, and he's a twelve year old kid. He was very anxious about it, a mix of terror and excitement. Every day he'd come onto the set and asked the director if this was his big day, and director David mckeevans says he purposely wouldn't give Jauncy schedule or call sheets. He wanted to just have his anxiety intention just escalate. Finally, the big day came and Squints was a static in order to keep the emotions as authentic as possible, which wasn't hard considering all the twelve year olds on the set had a crush on Wendy. Evans shot everything sequentially to help the kids keep everything clear in their head, as he said, but they wouldn't film the kiss until the director delivered a very important message to the young actor. Before the camera started rolling, Evans pulled the actor who played Squints aside for a very serious discussion. Listen to me, he said, you keep your tongue in your mouth. Understand, given the whole playboy thing, seems like a very necessary warning. But Chauncey came through like a champ. David Mickey Evans later said, he asked how it went. I said, pretty darn good man, I'm going to print that one, and then Chauncey said, okay, but maybe let's do it one more time twelve year olds, and as I said, they all predictably fell in love with the actors playing the beautiful Lifeguard. Her name was Marley Shelton. Child actors, I guess, often developed crushes on their older fellow actors on the set. It's kind of an occupational hazard. This famously happened on the set of Hearing Hotter, when the actor playing Draco Malfoy Tom Fulton, crushed very hard on Helen the Bottom Carter. I love that one because he completely bypasses Emma Watson goes straight for Helena Bottom Carter. Who among us? But man, God love him. Oh wait, there's a tribute to one of your favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke and the Wendy Pefforcorin scene. Absolutely, can you do a George Cannady impression? I I can't. I feel like you can, though I didn't prepare it. He has such a specific tamper to his voice. I don't think I can do it other than you know, no man can, No man can eat fifty eggs. They should have put that in there. Don't make you eats fifties smores. Oh my god, you're right. It's the same where all the boys are watching Wendy. You gotta do it, you gotta do it. She don't know what she's doing. Yes, she does she knows exactly what she's doing. That's not bad. It's a homage to the scene in the classic nineteen seven Paul Newman movie Cool and Luke when Luke and George Kennedy's character drag line or while a woman wash her car with their fellow convicts on the chain. Gang. Um, it's gotta be intentional. Those lines are identical. It's the same era. There's no way it's not. Did you do do you really find them? Not going on the record about that? I didn't see any I didn't find anything about that. No, it's gotta be yeah. Uh. Though the same with Wendy Feffercorn and the Kiss isn't based on a true story. The character Wendy Peffercorn herself is actually based on a person from writer director David Mickey Evans's real life. There was a lifeguard named Bunny at the public pool where he hung out as a kid, and she was beautiful and always wore a one piece red bathing suit. And Evans later told USA Today, when I was a little kid in the San Fernando Valley in southern California in the seventies, there were public pools and you could go all day for fifty cents. At those pools, the lifeguards were perennially tan and handsome and beautiful, and they sat up on those big chairs and they all wore standard issue l A County red trunks or one piece suits, and as a little eleven, twelve or thirteen year old, you literally had to look up at them and they were like, Goddess is really up on a pedestal? I love that. And the actors who played there, Marley Sheldon later had an extremely varied acting career, appearing in slashers like Grindhouse and Since City and also brom coms like Pleasantville and Never Been Kissed. She's in Sin City. That's so funny, all these San Fernando horn dogs making movies man, uh, you know Liquorice pizzas about Paul Thomas Anderson having a crush on the Him sisters mom, So okay, is the story behind that? He's had a crush on his teacher and grew up and then somehow met the Heims sisters, and then the Hime sisters invited him over to their house, and then the Himes mom walked in and it dawned on him that, oh my god, you're the teacher that I had a crush on and he had no idea and then Alana Heim to basically play her mom in Pizzas, have that right, I believe. I don't know if that's if he like didn't put it together before then, but yeah, I mean certainly the making of the like I mean, you know, he also cast his biggest collaborators, uh Son Son as himself. I realized that was Philip Seymour Hoffman's kid until like weeks after seeing that movie. Oh really, I thought there's I maybe because I was primed knowing that to go into it, but I was like, there's certain like mannerisms that he does where I was like, Jesus, that is like that's yeah in San Fernando Valley man, what is it? What do they put in the water over there? But as it turns out, Squints was also based on a real life person, a classmate of writer director David Mickey Evans. The real Squints was named Michael polydorros as opposed to Michael Pollodorus. Very very slight name difference, a little too close because the real life Michael Pollodorus objected to the way that he was depicted in the movie and actually sued twentieth century five Box for invasion of privacy and exploitation of his likeness. I guess in addition to the similarity of the names, part of the case involved the fact that he also wore glasses. However, had he won this case, he could have received damages and even a share of the film's profits, but the case was dismissed two years later after the judge ruled that there wasn't enough similarity between Polydoros and the fictional character of Squints Polydorus to justify the case. Plussy waited like six years after the movie came out, so I don't know, maybe they thought it sounded like kind of a cash grap This actually proved to be something of a landmark case because it set the precedent that movies could feature characters that were loosely based on real life people. Robert Wyman, who represented the twenty century Fox, said that the courts decision quote should give motion picture and television companies a great deal of comfort when they inadvertently used someone's name or personal character traits and what was clearly a fictional piece. I guess the real life Squint appealed the case all the way up to the California Supreme Court, which is impressive, but they refused to take up his appeal. Good lord. Yeah, unlike the sand lot itself, which, as we mentioned, this private property, you could actually visit and swim in the very same pool used in this scene. It's the Lauren Far Swimming Pool, located in the town of Ogden, Utah, and it's actually a good forty minutes from where the rest of the movie was shot in Salt Lake City, so I'll bear that in mind if you're planning on taking a Sandlot pilgrimage. Plan Accordingly, there's a song by the Drifters that comes on every time the gang encounters Wendy There Goes My Baby, which is a cat Stephen's song, right or is that a different there Goes my Baby? It's a different There goes my Baby, son of a Bitch. And also this magic and this Magic that's the classic one, but probably the most memorable musical moment in the sand Loot, aside from the Ray Charles fireworks scene, is when the boys go to the carnival eat a bunch of big chief chewing tobacco a k A chawing go on the twist to ride and lose their lunch all over the shoes of the fair goers. Below to the strains of the classic fifties Sacks instrumental. Tequila by the Champs also featured notably in Pee's Big Adventure in the bar scene Yeah Yeah. Interestingly, they wanted to pick Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs. But poor Sam the Sham had fallen on hard times and was Shammon Shamon doesn't pay what it used to, trying to squeeze him for the licensing rights. Uh. And again you know the cigar trumping executive was not having it. You don't get Sam, you get the drifters. Uh. This scene recorded. You know, this scene required very little acting from these kids because the chew do you were chew chewing tobacco. I can't imagine you were smoked a cigarette in your life Jordan's ye, I can't imagine. I grew up going to bowling alleys, and so I have a like I smell second hand smoke and it like clears my head, Like I love the smell of smoke so much. So I and I and I'm also a man of uh ruled by their passions. Shall we say so. I never went near it because I just felt like I would probably like it way too much. I've never done a single bit of chewing tobacco on my life. I can't imagine. The true that they gave these kids was licorice and beef jerky huh uh. Chauncey lip Party Party hashtag Chauncey squints La Party later told Yahoo Sports it was easy to act like you wanted to puke. Uh, and then some of these kids ended up swallowing it. Oh good lord. Upwards of fifteen takes on the Twister to get this scene down. Help Tom Gary, the kid who played the smallest total time. At first, it was like, yeah, you know, this isn't so bad. But by the fifteen go round, it was like this is getting a little uh ellipsis. And some of them actually got sick while they were filming this, but fake vomit was a little more photogenic, so they went with get it back out there, put him back on the Twister ride Uh. Folks, if you're just tuning in, we have the recurring character of the cigar chomping Hollywood executive who looms large and the too much information podcast Backstory Um the time on a tradition of using split pea soup for vomit. You'll remember that was famously using The Exorcist. But they added a little baked beans, oatmeal and gelatine give it that heft. When it adds the shoes, it's got a splatter. Good, Lord, that is foul. I just got a little rise in my throat at baked beans. Um. Anyway, much like League of their Own, before shooting would even start, the they had to make sure these kids could play ball. And you know, the whole thing about sports movie is that if the kids with these shoots, you gotta reset everything, not just line readings and lighting, but you gotta reset the entire choreography of having this entire team running around. And then if you're going to cut around those kids, you have to do all these inserts of shooting the kids in close up or mids and then cutting around it and having I don't know, shoot one kid throwing and then shoot some other kid, you know, catching it, and then yeah, and again. The cigar trumping executive had slashed the budget to this to nothing. Craft services were literally just you know, beef jerky and liquor, so following the audition process, the kids spent two weeks in a baseball camp in California where they were taught how to hit, catch and throw. Apparently their coach for this, Daniel Zakappa, actually played Squint's grandfather in the flashback scene um we mentioned earlier Ray Charles scene Ray Charles Beautiful Rendition of America. The Beautiful plays during the night game on the fourth of July. Fireworks are going up and this scene features one complex shot. Manning the jet hits a ball into the outfield where it rolls right in front of the camera lens, which was lying in the foreground of the shot. These days, they would just do that in c G I, but back in the nineties they had to literally set up the camera and hit the ball to exactly the same shot, which they some have managed doing the very first take in the Annals of the Great First Take Sports Shots. I mentioned this in an earlier episode. I don't remember if you cut it or not, okay. In Alien Resurrection, the Misbegotten fourth entry in the Alien franchise, directed by Amalie director Jean Pierre, Jane Sigourney, Weaver does a hind the back um half court shot and nailed it on the first take, and it ruined the take because everyone lost their and I believe though the insert that they use of Ron Pearlman is his genuine reaction that anyway. Sorry, So it's this an alien resurrection and the greatest first steak sports shots of all time. Uh, they actually used a pitching machine, though they cheated, son of a bitch. I should have read that beforehand. That allows you to adjust the trajectory of a ball, I guess, like the classic tennis ball serving machine that you see in UM A bunch of movies. But as David Mickey Evans observed, the odds of us launching a baseball two hundred and some odd feet and having it land and roll right up into a camera lens are what ten million to one? But the first take it was perfect. That was really weird. And then buddy, Uh, this s'more scene, on the other hand, pitched at the the opposite end of the efficiency spectra him. You know this scene, in which is probably the most immortal line of this film, You're killing me small, yes, yes, yes, before explaining what s'mores is and how to make one. Seems like an easy scene, but it was actually one of the most difficult scenes to shoot because the kids couldn't stop laughing, much like this podcast uh Tom Geary said it took about twelve takes because once one of them started laughing, the other ones just couldn't stop breaking. And if you look closely en after in that scene, you can see Mike guitar in the background, um yep, Benny. You can see this look in his eyes. It's like, please just cut away so I can burst, I can burst into laughter. It's like a doctor's strange love. When Peter Sellers is doing his whole like Nazi salute thing with his arm and one is trying to strangle his own throat, the actor playing the Russian ambassador, diplomat or whoever it was behind him is in the final take of the movie. You could see he's like visibly laughing, and the thro who played him and said like he can't watch the movie because it's just you don't totally notice it. But when you actually know that that's what's going down, you watched the movie, now it's absurd, Like this guy is clearly breaking character and just laughing at Peter Sellers going crazy. But Stanley Kubrick would let Sellers go. I was gonna say, I'm surprised Kubrick let that stand. Well, he loved those like I mean, just all the energy of the first takes with Peter Sellers was what he went for. And then the more because Peter Sellers could never repeat anything, that was his whole deal. So Kubrick would have like five cameras set up to get coverage of everything Sellers was doing at all times, so that he only had to do one two takes at most. And yeah, they just went with it. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more, too much information and just a moment wow. Well, as you can imagine, the set of the sand Lot was a lot of fun for a group of tween boys on summer vacation. As the actor who played Smalls later said, it was pretty much just playing baseball, swimming, or going to a carnival for an eleven year old. You really couldn't ask for a better movie to be in. It was like summer camp, and director David Mickey Evans tried to foster this sense that they weren't even making a movie. He later explained his m O saying they were just heading out playing baseball and oh there are cameras here. I tried to keep it loose and fun, like, pretend this is baseball summer camp. Man, don't act, be yourselves and I'll take care of everything. And that's how we did it. He likened it as like chasing squirrels and herding cats, which a bunch of eleven twelve year old boys, I am sure, but being twelve year old boys, they got up to a certain amount of mischief. The Playboy story with Squints sort of sets the tone for this one. During the anniversary cast reunion on ESPN, Murdy York, the kid who plays Yeah Yeah, recall that Tom Garry, the actor played smalls older brother, offered to sneak them into a showing of the R rated Basic Instincts starring Sharon Stone. The viewing was quite memorable for the young actors. Victor de Mattia, who played Timmy, described it as quote, a big moment for a twelve year old movie. Would have blown my damn mind if I saw. It's just been like catatonic, like staring like Vincent Dinofrio and full Metal Jacket, just staring into middle distance glazed look in my eye to bring it back to the Kuber reference. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and a third couber another Doctor Stranger. We're bringing it back. That's a that's a Kuber reference within a Kubrick reference. That is right. James Earl Jones, who plays Mr Myrtle and sand Lott, was in Doctor Strange. Wow, you're absolutely right, Uh, James Earl Jones, What can you say about the man? The kids on the set were blown way at the opportunity to hang out with Darth Vavors, the voice of Darth Vader. Did you know that James Earl Jones overcame an incredibly difficult stammer and he basically refused to speak for years as a kid. He's like one of the most beloved voices of our time. Him and Morgan Freeman. Incredible. I didn't know that until researching us. Anyway, he was on set to play Mr Myrtle, the owner of the Beast, a ka Hercules and a former pro ball player who knew Babe Ruth, the kid who played Tommy repeat Timmins, a guy the name of Shane O. Bazynski. I think I got that right, told the Sports Daily. We all knew who he was, so there was that anticipation of meeting Darth Vader. I believe he was only on the set for a day, so we all had a moment where we got to meet him during lunch hour before shooting. And shockingly, James Earl Jones was a last minute edition of the cast. In fact, there were two weeks into shooting and they still didn't have an actor to play Mr. Myrtle, which I guess they're shooting schedule, you know, meant that it wasn't a problem, but seems like that kind of close. Who else would have been in the Running Man? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the only reason that they landed on James Earl Jones was at the assistant director of The sand Lot, a guy by the name of Bill Elvin suggested him because he'd worked with him on another iconic baseball movie, nine Field of Dreams, along with a guy who plays Babe Ruth in The sand Lot La Fleur, marking the second time he would play a long dead ball player that appears in a dream sequence. And it's hilarious to me that James Earl Jones is in two of the most beloved baseball movies of all time, held the dreams in the sand lot, and he doesn't really much care for baseball, much like you. He told the website Michigan Live recently. I was not into baseball. The only Major League baseball game I ever took my son too was out at Anaheim. It was a nice day, and that's what was important, this lukewarm description of going to a baseball game. I sat there, baseball slow enough, and when the flock of birds came over, look up at them and just enjoy the day. Oh man, I had no idea I had this much in common with James Earl Jones. You just go to baseball games and look at a flock of birds, find overhead. So this was not really his thing. Um, so I guess despite being a messo messo on baseball, he agreed to take the gig and David Mickey Evans has said that the character of Mr. Myrtle was written with no ethnicity in mind, but it was James Earl Jones himself who suggested that he have a backstory as a former Negro Leagues ballplayer, and the hat that the picture Kenny Janunez wears in the movie bears the logo of the Kansas City Monarchs, and they were a Negro League team active from nineteen twenty to nineteen sixty. Mr Myrtle James Earl Jones famously the owner of the dog known as the Beast, which we later find out at the end of the movie. Its real name is Hercules, which is like the real dog name of the real dog that bit Director David mckeevans little brother Hercules for anyone who didn't grow up watching Kevin sorbo uh large large man, a large man in Greek mythology, the strength of several men, fitting because the dog that portrayed Hercules was not real. It was a large puppet, so big that had towered over the child actors, and it was built by animatronics designer Rick Lazzarini, who designed costumes for Spaceballs. I bet he did Pizza the Hut right, so um. One of the only scenes in which Hercules was a real dog, or actually two dogs, two English mass stiffs, which are these enormous, terrifying bulldog like dogs. I mean it's like a bulldog and a st Bernard, particularly in his way like two pounds um. And it's when he hugs Smalls after he's freed from the fence. Um that falls on him. When they were recovering the Babe Ruth ball and you know, Hercules slobbers all over Smalls, but getting the dog to kiss on demand was difficult, so they got around this by putting what Geary described as a whole jar of Gerber baby food on the side of my face. Quote that dog had a field day on my face. Uh. They use a real dog for some of the shots and the chase scene where Benny and his pair of Pia flyers sprints through the town with the beast and Hercules in hot pursuit. Evans said this scene took a week to shoot for all the reasons that you would expect. Um classic W. C. Fields quote comes to mind here. Never worked with children or animals. And the scene, you know, they chased them through a lot of I guess salt Like now was it Saltlake City? Yeah, they chasing through the beautiful downtown of Salt Lake City, famously known as the Paris of Utah. Uh. The English Mastiffs, as a two hundred pound dog would in Utah summer like to sit around nice cool places and take up space in snow or Um according to Evans, which yeah, degrees, they probably didn't want to do a lot of running. It's funny to think that this chase scene was actually harder than shooting a fake game in a Major League Baseball stadium, but it was. In the flashforward ending of the movie, we see that Benny has grown up to become a professional baseball player for the Dodgers, and Smalls becomes a sportscaster. The filmmakers wanted to film the scene at Dodgers Stadium, but there was a problem when they couldn't get the request approved. But thankfully, cinematographer Anthony Richmond, the guy who I believe purchased the Playboy for squints uh, was apparently friends with the team manager, Tommy Losorda, who pulled some strings and ultimately managed to secure a date for the production crew to film the sequence. And when Benny the Jet is shown all grown up and playing for the Dodgers, he's wearing number three, the same number the Babe Ruth who appeared to him in a dream sequence in the movie, or when he played for the Yankees. I thought that was nice and now for this episode, it belongs in the museum segment in the final scene of the movie, you'll notice that the adult Scott Smalls is wearing the distinctive baseball cap he wore as a child at the start of the movie, the ugly one with the trout on it that Benny the Jet told him to burn because it was so hideous. Apparently he didn't take his advice, because he wears it at the end of the movie when the adult Benny steals home at Dodger Stadium and he's working as a sports announcer. The sheer randomness of that hat and his ugly fish logo has made it kind of a crucial part of the film's lore among fans, and also with Tom Geary, who played child Smalls. He says that he desperately wanted to keep that hat, telling Time Magazine in two thousand thirteen, I love that big, gass, ugly trout hat. It was a gross hat. I was looking for it a while back, and my parents called up Fox because I couldn't take it with me when we finished shooting because the sports announcer needed to wear it, the guy who played the adults version of Smalls. But they called up and I guess it had been misplaced at the war Jobe place at Fox. So if anyone finds that, tell them the email me. I'll pay top dollar for it. Well some money at least this was and I don't believe there's been an update so far. Small as big as ugly trout hat was among the material that was lost during the radios fired. I would do a quick sandbar and p flyers sidebar and PI flyers if I can. Um. PIA Flyers invented in part with BF good Rich of the tire good Riches. Do you know what PF stands for? No posture foundation? No way, that's so not cool. I would have thought it was be like pushing fast. Um. So obviously anyone with eyes can tell that these look like Chuck Taylor's right. So these were designed in ve Did they predate Chuck Taylors or Converse? Rather, they the hydrocks of the Converse oreos. Yes, actually they are because in nineteen seventy Converse bought out p F Flyers and this led to a monopoly in the shoe market, and in nineteen seventy five they were split by an antitrust lawsuit. Yeah, and uh, let's see what else we have, uh, Bob cuz if your beloved Boston Celtics. Uh the first athlete to be endorsed by a shoe brand, Flyers yea. By the sixties they had one fifth of the canvas sneaker shoe market in the US. So, yeah, it's funny to me they're growing up with Chuck Taylor's being like the hot, cool canvas shoe being like, what the hell are p of Flyers? But they came first and then Converse bottom, and then they got broken up by an anti trust lawsuit. I love that. In addition to falling out of contact with the ugly ass trout hat, he also fell out of contact with the Sandlock castmates. Like summer camp friends, they lost touch with one another. Smalls later said, I was the only guy from the East Coast except for Shane who played Tommy Timmins, who was from Florida. So I never really kept in touch. For a few years we do Christmas cards, but yeah, I never really kept in touch, which is a shame. And this is less a fascinating fact and more of an uncanny coincidence. But when the narrator explains what became of all the kids from that summer at the end of the movie, it makes a comment that Bertram Weeks quote got really into the sixties and has never heard from again. Grant Guilt, who played Bertram Weeks, was later cast in the TV miniseries The Sixties, which was his last credited role as an actor. That's why I loved that mini series. I taped it and used to watch it all the time. Julia Stiles is in it, Jeremy Systems in it, Jerry O'Connell's and it's got a crazy cast. Um. Speaking of things that were actually a success, the sand Lot made over thirty four million of that budget of just seven million. A ciguard shomping executive surely excited about that, went on to make estimated seventy six million. Holy, almost eleven times it's budget and home release. That is wild. But you know, going back into the reviews, not a unanimous decision. Roger Ebert gave it three stars, comparing it to a Christmas Story, incisively saying both movies are about gawky young adolescence trapped in a world they never made and doing their best to fit in while beset with the most amazing vicissitudes. Great job there, Roger. Did you know that the guy who wrote, the Christmas Story is on a Charles Mingus record. What no funny enough? Oh my god? Bringing it back in Jerry McGuire, when she's listening to She's he goes into her apartment, He's like, what are you listening to? It's a Charles Mingus song called Haitian Fight Song. That song is on a record called The Clown. The song The Clown features spoken word narration by Jean Smart, Jean Shepherd, Jean Shepherd, Yeah, wow, yeah, how about that? Uh? Janet Maslin Long of The New York Times said Evans wrote and directed the Sandlot quote as if it were stunningly momentous, even though nothing about his modest coming of age comedy demands anything like this awe struck approach. You mentioned that math Janet Maslin was once married to Bruce Springsteen's manager John Landau. Yes, indeed, this movie almost feels like a Bruce Springsteen song that absolutely does take on this period of one's life. Also, all those damn names here telling me that like on Greetings, f Raspberry Park, Bruce Springsteen didn't write about Tommy Tommy, Yeah, Benny the Jet, Rodriguez, Henny DeNunez. Those are absolutely. Bruce Springsteen asked character names. I don't think she's married to John Landau anymore, so maybe that's why she added the movie Bad Memories. I don't know. Yeah. Uh. We won't talk about the sequels, as was the way with many things that made any degree of money in the nineties. The sand Lot spawned two direct to video sequels, first of which was predictably titled The sand Lot Too in two thousands five. I would have thought it was earlier. Uh. That plot centered around a rival girls team who want to share the sand Lot. Uh, and it went back to the well for the idea of a terrifying dog who lives beyond the wall that separates the sand Lot from Mr Myrtle's house. Although they called the dog the Great Fear. I think the movie was set in a late sixties, so that's more of a a sixties style name. It's a considerably more Cormick McCarthy name. Ah. Not a single member of the original cast appear in the film. Uh. Tom Geary played small so he was never even contacted about signing on for these, But in the second sequel two thousand seven, cops made a third The sand Lot Trilogy concludes in two thousand seven, the sand Lot Colan heading Home. One member of the original film made an appearance Squints, led by a friend of the podcast, Chauncey Leopardy. Apparently, the plot of this star is Luke Perry as a man who gets transported from two thousand five back to nineteen seventy six to relieve his childhood fourteen years after the original movie. They made a movie about a time traveling Luke Perry. Isn't that your whole thing about traveling back in time? Yeah? Very much so. Yeah, good lord. In speaking of misbegotten sequels, it was announced that a prequel sand Lot was in the works at twentieth Century Fox, co written by the original films writer and director David Mickey Evans alongside Austin Reynolds. Who the hell's Austin Reynolds don't know? Yeah, I don't know. Evans is also said to be directing a Disney Plus TV series that will be set in the nineteen eighties Jesus and be seeing the original cast returning his adults. As for the prequel film, as we mentioned, it was announced in still has no title or cast, so folks place your bets. Oh God, it's gonna be in the eighties. They're all gonna have like, oh God, I don't even want to No, now, moving on, Jordan, take us home. So no, no, it gets worse. As if the possibility it will conceived remakes and prequels aren't bad enough, I have worse news for sand Lot fans. If you want your memories of this film and the characters remained pure and unsolid, I suggest you stopped listening right now. We'll catch you next time. The rest of you proceed at your own peril. I got bad news about some members of the cast and some misfortunes that befel them, mostly self created. In years to come. We will start with Tom Geary, who played Smalls. He had a fairly active career as a child star. He played Matthew Turner in the Last Sie movie in the year after The Sandlock came out. In later years, he had bit parts in non kid friendly movies like U five seven, One Black Hawk Down, Mr. Griver, and The Revenant. In an interview we did a few years back, he talked about working in a hospital as a patient transporter between acting gigs to support his three kids. And it's in the town where he grew up. So a lot of people know him and they affectionately refer to him as Smalls, which I think is adorable. Said, I've come to kind of embrace it. If you can't beat him, join him, you know. So that's cute. But then he was arrested for headbutting a cop. That's a Springsteen song, Yeah, yeah, that's that's all or an m Night Shamalan twist. But it went down as he was preparing to bore a United Airlines flight out of Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport when he was deemed quote too drunk to fly. According to t MZ, the police were called in to take him in the custody, but he didn't want to go quietly. He reportedly became quote belligerent and verbally abusive towards the responding officer. According to eight show Biz, Gary tried to kick the officer in the face before ultimately headbutting him. He was subsequently arrested and booked on a charge of felony assault of a police officer. He was later released on his own reconnaissance after posting a five thousand dollar bond, and he was quote notably absent weeks later. When the other Santla alums reunited to celebrate the film's twentie anniversary. Bum or timing, maybe he was going out on on a press tour forward or something. Even worst news concerning Benny the Jet Rodriguez, the actor who played him, Mike Guitar, took a job as an l A firefighter. However, he was placed on six months unpaid suspension in early seventy and after facing felony assault charges for his involved and the beating of a grad student. It went down on Halloween when Mike and several other firefighters confronted twenty two year old Samuel Chang, who was handing out candy in their neighborhood to trick a treaters. Chang claimed that kids couldn't come to his parents house in a gated community, so he walked down the street, handing out candy as he went, dressed in a mismatched Halloween costume that included a Dracula mask and a white Mickey Mouse glove. Okay, that's kind of scary. The off duty fireman approached him and asked to know why he was there. They also asked, for some reason, if the candy was laced with drugs. I don't know why they would suspect that. Chang took out his phone and made videos showing the lead fireman dressed in a he man costume with bulging fake muscles, repeatedly asking Chang why he was on quote their block. Chang told the police that he smelled alcohol on all the men's breath. The fireman all later claimed that Chang was harassing kids and he had his pants zipper part way down. Chang denies it. Whatever the the situation ended with the fireman chasing him and pinning him to the ground in a chokehold until he fell unconscious, beaten so badly that his pulse stopped, and the same firefighters who attacked him had to revive them with CPR. That is a short story worthy of William Falder. Yes, the guy would remain hospitalized for weeks, suffering a hemorrhage, kidney failure, severe head trauma, and other injuries. Mike Guitar and others were charged with felony assault, and he pled no contest to a reduced charge of Mr meanor battery and was suspended without pay for six months, but then he returned to full duty. Good lord, onto uh you could have stopped. I should have just stopped recording this and let you just punch yourself out on the ropes for the rest of the episode. Actor Marty Yorke, who played Yeah Yeah, also appeared on Boy Meets World, Saved by the Bell, The College Years, Wings, Wings, and more. People love that show. I love Wings, I love Becker. Do you remember Becker? Oh my god, post Chairs, working out, you know, non dancing news, Yeah ye as. IMDb page went cold for over a decade until two ten, when he showed up in a short film called The Trainer, possibly because um in the intervening period of video surfaced online of an expletive laden video in which York drunkenly harasses an interviewer, threatening to beat him up because he's from Brooklyn. Him he, himself is from Brooklyn. Anyone from Brooklyn has the capability of doing that. No, he's not wrong, repeated benson Hurst, repeatedly lifting up his shirt and yelling, yachtzi, you go to see this, Cliff, It's like bootleg the situation. It's not nice. He was also arrested for domestic violence in two thousand nins so oh boy, nice. Yeah, here we go, keep keep rolling Ham your beloved Ham. Thankfully he had a slightly happier ending. Ah. He played basically the same character in The Big Green with the kid who played Squints. Patrick Renna has gone on to have a steady acting career, appearing mostly on television. He's been in shows like Home Improvement, Boy Meets World, e Er, and The X Files. Off screen, he is very active in scientology, which, for reasons of personal safety and legal we will not comment further on. He helped find the church's Loose Fillies mission a new home, saying the building would quote help the individual change conditions and live a better life. So there's that. Um. Boy Means World, funnily enough, basically a post send Lot grad program welcoming veterans like Patrick Ham Renna, Chauncey Squintsley Party, Marty Yea York, Brandon Kenny, Janjoonz Adams, and Grant Bertram Weeks Gulp, as well as the late Art La Fleur, who remember played the the late Babe Ruth the Great Bambino in the dream sequence. So if you're feeling nostalgic about the sand Lot, simply watched the entirety of Boy Means World. Yes, Yes, We are not going to dwell on the bad like the sand Lot. We're not going to focus on the world as it is, but the world this should be. Let's beloved film is a high point in the lives of all who worked on it. In numerous interviews, pretty much all of the cast have described the production as the best summer of their lives, and it continues to touch people to this day. Nearly thirty years later, for the twentie anniversary, fans rebuilt the sand Lot in the private owned field in Utah, and many of the actors made a pilgrimage to the site for a special anniversary screening on the exact field where they filmed it. I think that's so cool. David Mickey Evans, the man who drew in his traumatic childhood to create this cherished movie, was moved to tears by the outpouring of support from the community, the outpouring of sport he didn't have as a kid. He said the film The sand Lott was made with the same amount of love that the people have for it, before adding it was the greatest summer of our lives, and I think that is the perfect way to say farewell to this summer. I hope it was a good one for all of you. With many more ahead of you, you are in fact not killing me. Uh folks, thank you for listening. This has been too much Information time. Alex Hegel and I'm Jordan run Talk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts and I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.