"The Karate Kid" (1984) vs. "The Last Dragon" (1985): Part 1

<v Speaker 1>This is Chris. Do what I and my family do.
<v Speaker 1>Pile into the family truckster and listen to d and
<v Speaker 1>Jason discuss classic eighties and nineties movies and music on
<v Speaker 1>the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast. All right, Jason,
<v Speaker 1>ready to do the podcast? I guess so, Jason Son
<v Speaker 1>but podcasting, Lacarode but podcasting, Yes, okay, podcasting no, okay,
<v Speaker 1>podcasting guests so sooner or later, squished.
<v Speaker 2>Like grape man, let's get into it.
<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirly You Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>We are here.
<v Speaker 1>Today to compare nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty five
<v Speaker 1>La to New York, Karate to Karate, both with Italian leads.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah won Italian American and one Italian African American, and
<v Speaker 1>it is all eighties gold.
<v Speaker 2>It's gonna be so much fun to talk about these
<v Speaker 2>movies because it is the glow and sweep, the leg
<v Speaker 2>and wax on, wax off and stuff that we have
<v Speaker 2>had running around our brain for forty years.
<v Speaker 1>Now. I've literally got the glow right now. Ladies and gentlemen,
<v Speaker 1>If you're listening to this podcast for the first time
<v Speaker 1>or the one hundredth time or whatever. You are one
<v Speaker 1>of those folks that wants to escape your everyday life
<v Speaker 1>and go back to the days when you thought you
<v Speaker 1>could cure somebody's muscle illness by slapping your hands together
<v Speaker 1>and coming together, or that if you tried hard enough,
<v Speaker 1>you could catch a bullet in your teeth. I wish
<v Speaker 1>you could see my face, if you could glow. Then
<v Speaker 1>we are the podcast for you. Just to tell you, guys,
<v Speaker 1>we are an independent podcast. It's me and Jason and
<v Speaker 1>that is also if you guys want to support independent
<v Speaker 1>businesses out there, we would encourage you to go to
<v Speaker 1>our Patreon page. It's patreon dot com Surely Podcast, where
<v Speaker 1>for as little as five bucks a month, you get
<v Speaker 1>access to all of our one Hit Wonder episodes, which
<v Speaker 1>are some of our most fun to do, and we
<v Speaker 1>have the best Patreon family around. You would be joining
<v Speaker 1>an incredible group of folks.
<v Speaker 2>Check us out on Patreon. Before you say one Hit Wonder,
<v Speaker 2>I think we need to change into like lightning at
<v Speaker 2>a bottle.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my gosh, you got some hate on that facebooks.
<v Speaker 2>Give me a break.
<v Speaker 1>There is some There are some die hard Beach Boys fans.
<v Speaker 1>They're about to draw and quarter you for suggesting they
<v Speaker 1>might be a one hit wonder. Yes, it's not all
<v Speaker 1>one hit wonders. We do have some people that we
<v Speaker 1>would just say these are songs outside of their realm
<v Speaker 1>or special in some way.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I mean we've even covered carry unfortunately, but but you
<v Speaker 1>should still check out that episode because there's still some
<v Speaker 1>gold there. There is no dolphin noises at all. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>so we got to jump in now. People have come
<v Speaker 1>to listen to the Karate Kid versus the Last Dragon,
<v Speaker 1>which is what we're here to talk about today. Have
<v Speaker 1>the Sun versus.
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Leroy Blues.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, so I'm gonna take you back though, I'm not
<v Speaker 1>going back to eighty five. I'm not going back to
<v Speaker 1>eighty four, going back to ninety three. No, not nineteen
<v Speaker 1>ninety three, No, not eighteen ninety three. I'm going back
<v Speaker 1>to seventeen ninety three on the birth of Ryu Ryuko,
<v Speaker 1>who is the guy who invented the choreographed pattern of
<v Speaker 1>kung fu, a repeated pattern wax on wax off that
<v Speaker 1>teaches you the moves. Okay, teach me the moves the
<v Speaker 1>all right, So in about eighteen seventy, several years later,
<v Speaker 1>a guy named Higa. She say this right, A guy
<v Speaker 1>named Higa shi Ona Kanrio went from Okinawa to China.
<v Speaker 1>He did not get drunk and fall asleep in a
<v Speaker 1>fishing boat, okay. But he did travel to China on
<v Speaker 1>the pretext of becoming a translator, and he ended up
<v Speaker 1>being the servant of Ryu Ryuko for years. He begged
<v Speaker 1>Rayu Ryuko to teach him, but Ryu Ryoko said no,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not teaching anybody. And then there was a flood
<v Speaker 1>and Canrio saved Ryu Ryuko's dotter from drownding, and Ryu
<v Speaker 1>Raiko said, okay, I will teach you my kung fu.
<v Speaker 1>The name of that kung fu is the white Crane method.
<v Speaker 2>Stop are you kidding?
<v Speaker 1>That's number one? All right? So he works with him
<v Speaker 1>for many years, and then he takes this Chinese form
<v Speaker 1>of martial arts and brings it back to Okinawa, where
<v Speaker 1>he's from, and he becomes a sinse and he calls
<v Speaker 1>this martial art Naha te name of the region plus tay,
<v Speaker 1>which means hand right. Learn that from mister Miyagi. Right, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he means hand right right, okay. So he teaches there
<v Speaker 1>and he gets a fourteen year old that comes in
<v Speaker 1>who is the son of a wealthy shop owner, and
<v Speaker 1>this shopowner's son then trains with can Rio for the
<v Speaker 1>next fifteen years until Canrio's death okay, And then in
<v Speaker 1>honor of his master's death, this shopowner's son goes to
<v Speaker 1>China to visit his master's grave. But while he's there,
<v Speaker 1>he he learns this new type of martial art called
<v Speaker 1>roki shoe, and it's a hand exercise which emphasizes the
<v Speaker 1>rotation of the wrist. He uses that in combination with
<v Speaker 1>the nahat that he'd been learning for fifteen years now,
<v Speaker 1>and he brings that back to Okinawa and he starts
<v Speaker 1>teaching it himself, this shopowner's son, and he calls it
<v Speaker 1>ok nawan goju Riyu is a hard soft style. One
<v Speaker 1>of his students then brings this hard soft style to
<v Speaker 1>New York City. Yeah, a seventeen year old kid shows
<v Speaker 1>up one day. Now, this student of the shopowner's son
<v Speaker 1>doesn't really speak very good English. But the seventeen year
<v Speaker 1>old kid says, listen, I got beat up by a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of bullies. This is nineteen sixty four. Got beat
<v Speaker 1>up by a bunch of bullies. I went to this
<v Speaker 1>other karate school, and all the guy wanted to teach
<v Speaker 1>me was how to be mean and how to get revenge.
<v Speaker 1>And that's not really what I want. And so this
<v Speaker 1>seventeen year old kid then starts taking lessons in the
<v Speaker 1>hardsoft style. Okay, but the guy who teaches him doesn't
<v Speaker 1>speak English very well. Right, But what he does get
<v Speaker 1>from him is the name of his teacher, the name
<v Speaker 1>of the shopowner's son. Okay, the name of the shopowner's
<v Speaker 1>son is Kojin Miagi. Now that seventeen year old kid
<v Speaker 1>goes on to get his degree and he writes a
<v Speaker 1>story marshally based on his experience. The seventeen year old kid.
<v Speaker 1>His name is Robert Mark Kaman, and the story he
<v Speaker 1>writes is called The Karate Kid.
<v Speaker 2>Oh that's so good, well done, well done.
<v Speaker 3>Thank you.
<v Speaker 1>I'm done for the day. I'm gonna sit back and
<v Speaker 1>let you do the rest.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah right, right, okay. So here's what I know about
<v Speaker 2>Robert Mark Cayman. Okay, so you're right. He writes The
<v Speaker 2>Karate Kid based on his own life experiences where he
<v Speaker 2>got beat up at the World's Fair in nineteen sixty
<v Speaker 2>four and he was just this scruddy little kid yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but he goes on. He writes Taps, he writes the Transporter,
<v Speaker 2>he writes the Bandida's movie with Bruce Willis, I think
<v Speaker 2>is in it. He writes the Taken Movies and one
<v Speaker 2>of my least favorite movies of the nineties.
<v Speaker 1>So let's hoping it would come up.
<v Speaker 2>He writes the fifth Elements.
<v Speaker 1>I know, right, we had just talked about that when
<v Speaker 1>we did our IMDb MVP. I was an episode just
<v Speaker 1>a month or two ago. Go check that one out.
<v Speaker 1>But yes, one of the movies that I really liked
<v Speaker 1>from the nineties that you really hate.
<v Speaker 2>Gary Oldman, you should have lost right there, you know
<v Speaker 2>what happened there? And then so he presents the script
<v Speaker 2>The Karate Kid, Yeah, to the director of Rocky.
<v Speaker 1>I know, right. So that guy's name is John g. Avelson, Right,
<v Speaker 1>he was the guy they picked to direct Rocky. Now,
<v Speaker 1>keep in mind, Rocky was never supposed to be a hit, right.
<v Speaker 1>It was an unknown writer, unknown star. And if you
<v Speaker 1>look at John g Avilson's IMDb record, it's a lot
<v Speaker 1>of misses, right, and about half a dozen super fantastic
<v Speaker 1>the here you go, So.
<v Speaker 2>I've got a list here for you. So Rocky the
<v Speaker 2>Best Picture nineteen seventy six, Sylvester Stallone and all of
<v Speaker 2>a sudden is on the map as a scriptwriter and
<v Speaker 2>an actor. He does the movie Neighbors in nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 2>one with John Belushi and Dan Ackright.
<v Speaker 1>Not their best movie, Okay, so that's what we're going
<v Speaker 1>to call that a miss. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Then he does of course Karate Kid Credit Kid two,
<v Speaker 2>KARTI Kid three awesome, pretty good and okay some people
<v Speaker 2>like it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>He does the Molly Ringwold movie for Keeps in like
<v Speaker 2>eighty eight, remember that one. Sure he's pregnant. Yeah, he
<v Speaker 2>does Lean on Me with Morgan Freeman. That's a fantastic
<v Speaker 2>that's a great movie. Right, And then actually kind of
<v Speaker 2>an underappreciated movie in the eighties, I think eight Seconds
<v Speaker 2>with Luke Perry.
<v Speaker 1>Luke Perry, that's right, Yeah he was. I mean, Sylvester
<v Speaker 1>Stallone took over the Rocky franchise for a while, right,
<v Speaker 1>did some really great things, and then John G. Efflson
<v Speaker 1>comes back and does Rocky five. I'm going to say
<v Speaker 1>that is in the miss category.
<v Speaker 2>Listen before I jump on my shobbox, Deft Dave loves
<v Speaker 2>Rocky five.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I think that movie is terrible. Yeah, it's got
<v Speaker 1>one Oklahoma's own, isn't it right? Tommy Moorrison, Yeah, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I went to his. I saw my daughter played a
<v Speaker 2>basketball game in his high school the other day. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and I sent you a picture of the bust. I'm like, hey, guys,
<v Speaker 2>look where I am. And everyone's like, who's that?
<v Speaker 1>No?
<v Speaker 3>No, this?
<v Speaker 1>What was that? Guy?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah? Tommy Moorison.
<v Speaker 1>So the way that Robert Mark came in gets his
<v Speaker 1>script to John g Avilson is the producer a guy
<v Speaker 1>named Jerry Wintraup. Have you heard of him?
<v Speaker 2>Briefly?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So I, for some unknown reason have read his biography.
<v Speaker 1>It's been a few years ago. But he was just
<v Speaker 1>this kind of incredible producer and I can't I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he's got a ton of stories and they're all great,
<v Speaker 1>but I will just tell you this. He brought Elvis back.
<v Speaker 1>Elvis was Elvis in the fifties and then petered out
<v Speaker 1>in the late sixties and seventies, and Jerry Wintrop is
<v Speaker 1>the guy responsible for bringing him back, bringing him to Vegas,
<v Speaker 1>doing all that, And there's a great story that goes
<v Speaker 1>along with it where he basically calls the colonel and
<v Speaker 1>says I want to do a headline tour with Elvis
<v Speaker 1>as the headliner. And the colonel is I mean, he's
<v Speaker 1>in a game. He's sitting at gambling or something and says,
<v Speaker 1>bring me a check for a million dollars and we'll talk.
<v Speaker 1>So Jerry Wintrup has not that at all, right, but
<v Speaker 1>starts talking to people and literally last second before he
<v Speaker 1>gets on a plane, says, I find an investor that
<v Speaker 1>will give me a million dollars. Is able to walk
<v Speaker 1>up at a craps table and hand a check for
<v Speaker 1>a million dollars to the colonel to get Elvis back? Wow? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so this idea. This is the producer of the Karate Kid. Right,
<v Speaker 1>by the way, he was completely against Pat Marida being
<v Speaker 1>mister Miyagi.
<v Speaker 2>Really yeah, like what a comedian? No, the guy on
<v Speaker 2>Happy Days.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, we'll get into casting here in a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>Because because there was a different guy that they had
<v Speaker 1>in mind, Oh yes, would have made a completely different movie.
<v Speaker 2>I can't wait to talk to the alternate universe about
<v Speaker 2>you know, all this.
<v Speaker 1>Stuff exactly exactly. So what happens is they get together,
<v Speaker 1>they decide, Hey, we're going to We're going to make
<v Speaker 1>this movie. It's not expected to be a big hit,
<v Speaker 1>right right, And we'll talk casting again here in a minute,
<v Speaker 1>but I will just tell you that part of that
<v Speaker 1>process while they were filming the movie is several advocates
<v Speaker 1>for changing the name of the movie. Top amongst them
<v Speaker 1>is Ralph Macchio.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, because it does when you sit back and look
<v Speaker 2>at it, it does sound like a Saturday Morning Special.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I heard Elizabeth Shoe say she didn't like the title.
<v Speaker 2>I heard Ralph Machio say he didn't like the title.
<v Speaker 1>You petitioned every day, would say to anybody that would listen,
<v Speaker 1>Let's think of another title. What other title can we
<v Speaker 1>have for this movie? They literally paid DC Comics to
<v Speaker 1>have the rights to that name because DC Comics had
<v Speaker 1>had some sort of you could call him a superhero,
<v Speaker 1>but he really wasn't. He was just a martial artist guy.
<v Speaker 1>But they and it wasn't even a well regarded comic.
<v Speaker 1>But for some reason, I guess Jerry Wintrop thought that
<v Speaker 1>that was a great title.
<v Speaker 2>And so here's the story with that. Yeah, I heard this.
<v Speaker 2>So for the longest time, Robert Mark Kaman just had
<v Speaker 2>it listed as the Karate Kid Project. Just as a
<v Speaker 2>placeholder every day. They would be like, Okay, listen, we
<v Speaker 2>need a title. He's like, well, you know, I'm still
<v Speaker 2>working on it. It's this karate Kid story. And they
<v Speaker 2>finally were like, if you don't give us a title
<v Speaker 2>in the next ten minutes, we are we're out. So
<v Speaker 2>he's like, okay, the Karate Kid. So that's it, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And when you step back from it, now that we
<v Speaker 2>are familiar with the movie and we're familiar with the
<v Speaker 2>legacy and the story and all that stuff, it does
<v Speaker 2>sound like a Saturday Morning special. So I do get
<v Speaker 2>why they didn't like the title. By the way, I
<v Speaker 2>meant to mention this to you. Another one of the
<v Speaker 2>movies that Robert mark Kaman wrote is a movie called Gladiator. No,
<v Speaker 2>not the one with Russell Crowe.
<v Speaker 1>The one with cep It getting Junior and the other
<v Speaker 1>dude from a Few Good.
<v Speaker 2>Men Yeah and Brian Denahey, yeah. And it's like a
<v Speaker 2>it's like a karate boxing type of movie. Brian Denn
<v Speaker 2>he's like Tommy Boy's dad.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, or you know, or the guy from First Blood whatever,
<v Speaker 1>you know, the sheriff right right, right. So one of
<v Speaker 1>the people that I don't think belongs in casting. He
<v Speaker 1>belongs in the pre production. When they got the cast together,
<v Speaker 1>none of them knew any martial arts. Ralph Moncio didn't
<v Speaker 1>know martial arts, williams Avoca didn't know any Crease Martin
<v Speaker 1>Cove didn't know it. And so they said, who do
<v Speaker 1>we know that can come and train these guys?
<v Speaker 3>Right?
<v Speaker 1>And he had this very specific way of training them
<v Speaker 1>where he separated some of them off and put some
<v Speaker 1>of them together. But that guy's the guy who trained
<v Speaker 1>him was the stunt coordinator. His name was Pat E. Johnson,
<v Speaker 1>Not Patty, but Pat E Johnson, right, right, right? So
<v Speaker 1>Pat Johnson would train all of the Cobra Kai guys together,
<v Speaker 1>and he trained them specifically in that kind of hardcore
<v Speaker 1>way that they would have been trained by Crease. He
<v Speaker 1>trained Ralph Mancio and Pat Marita together, and he used
<v Speaker 1>a softer hand with them, and he basically said they
<v Speaker 1>would both be in pain and they would commensurate in
<v Speaker 1>their pain together. And I let that be, okay because
<v Speaker 1>he I mean, but he was a guy who had
<v Speaker 1>been doing at this point in martial arts for ten years. Okay, right,
<v Speaker 1>do you know what movie he got his start in? No.
<v Speaker 1>Ten years earlier. No, No, a little movie that will
<v Speaker 1>segue right into our next topic called Enter the Dragon. Ooh,
<v Speaker 1>that's Pat Johnson's very first movie as a stunt coordinator.
<v Speaker 1>He works with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, Kareem
<v Speaker 1>Abdul Jabbar, Yes, and Chuck Norris. He ends up working
<v Speaker 1>later on with Brandon Lee. I mean he if you
<v Speaker 1>look at his IMDb, he is the guy you go
<v Speaker 1>to for martial arts.
<v Speaker 2>And he plays the referee at the end of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>Is the mustached referee? Yeah? Call in the fight? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>How about that? That's incredible.
<v Speaker 1>So good friends with Bruce Lee, which brings us to
<v Speaker 1>our next story. Enter the Dragon. Yes, Any of the
<v Speaker 1>Dragon came out in nineteen seventy three. It was widely
<v Speaker 1>accepted that this was going to be the movie that
<v Speaker 1>may or broke Bruce Lee. Right surely, It's like, this
<v Speaker 1>is gonna make him or it's gonna kill him, and
<v Speaker 1>all of Hong Kong, where Bruce Lee was from, like
<v Speaker 1>revered this guy as a hero, expected this to be
<v Speaker 1>the big breakout role changed the way that people from
<v Speaker 1>China are depicted in movies. That Chinese man becomes the
<v Speaker 1>hero and so there's a lot of build up for
<v Speaker 1>this movie Enter the Dragon. Well in July of nineteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy three, just a few months before the movie is
<v Speaker 1>to be released, Bruce Lee goes with his business partner
<v Speaker 1>and his probably girlfriend married at the time, probably had
<v Speaker 1>this mistress, right, okay, And they're in an apartment and
<v Speaker 1>they're talking about what will be the sequel to Enter
<v Speaker 1>the Dragon called Game of Death. This becomes ironic a
<v Speaker 1>few hours later because Bruce Lee comes down with a headache.
<v Speaker 1>He gets this pain reliever from his girlfriend. He goes
<v Speaker 1>and lays down. His business partner leaves to go get
<v Speaker 1>some dinner. A little while later, he calls back to
<v Speaker 1>the apartment and is talking to the girl friend and
<v Speaker 1>she'd goes to wake up Bruce Lee, but Bruce Lee
<v Speaker 1>won't wake up, and so she calls her personal doctor.
<v Speaker 1>As the business manager comes back, he gets there, they
<v Speaker 1>can't get a hold of her personal doctor, so they
<v Speaker 1>start calling his personal doctor. It ends up I don't
<v Speaker 1>know why they are not calling the ambulance, but it's
<v Speaker 1>an hour and fifteen minutes before Bruce Lee is ever
<v Speaker 1>actually taken to the hospital. He had been looked at
<v Speaker 1>by a doctor, had no breathing, no heart rate. By
<v Speaker 1>the time they get him to the hospital, they pronounce
<v Speaker 1>him dead from what the cause of death listed at
<v Speaker 1>that time was a reaction to the aspirin in painkiller. Now,
<v Speaker 1>as it turns out, I mean this was nineteen seventy three.
<v Speaker 1>As it turns out years later, there was another chemical
<v Speaker 1>in the painkiller that was used that they determined later
<v Speaker 1>on had some adverse reactions, including brain swelling, and so
<v Speaker 1>they discontinued the use of that other chemical. Fifty years later,
<v Speaker 1>when Bruce Lee's brother is hiring a private investigator to
<v Speaker 1>look at the files and their god going through all this,
<v Speaker 1>ultimately they determined, because there was a valid concern that
<v Speaker 1>he was killed, that he was murdered. Sure, what they
<v Speaker 1>ultimately decide is it was another chemical, not the aspirin,
<v Speaker 1>but this other chemical in the painkiller that he had
<v Speaker 1>gotten that caused his brain to swell and that ultimately
<v Speaker 1>led to his death. Still an accident, just a different cause.
<v Speaker 1>Wow yeah wow. Pat Johnson said that Bruce Lee said
<v Speaker 1>something very important to him at one point. He said,
<v Speaker 1>the usefulness of the cup is in its emptiness. That
<v Speaker 1>is to say, if you have an empty cup, you
<v Speaker 1>can use it for what you need it for. You
<v Speaker 1>can fill it with what you need to quench whatever
<v Speaker 1>thirst you have. But if the cup is already full,
<v Speaker 1>then you're stuck with whatever it's already full with. So
<v Speaker 1>if you're working with someone who's already been trained in
<v Speaker 1>a certain way, they're already full. Your most useful student
<v Speaker 1>is the one who is in an empty cup. He's
<v Speaker 1>used that little saying throughout his career, teaching all of
<v Speaker 1>his students and actors in all of the movies that
<v Speaker 1>he's done. He just passed away in November, by the way,
<v Speaker 1>Pat Johnson just passed away.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man.
<v Speaker 1>So nineteen seventy three, Enter the Dragon comes out, Bruce Lee,
<v Speaker 1>even though he's dead, becomes a international, worldwide superstar, and
<v Speaker 1>Enter the Dragon is his most famous movie. Fast forward
<v Speaker 1>ten years later. Okay, it's nineteen eighty three. An actor,
<v Speaker 1>and I say an actor. He's been in one movie.
<v Speaker 1>Ok But he was one of the principal dancers in
<v Speaker 1>the movie Fame. Okay, his name is Lewis Venosta. Yes.
<v Speaker 1>He goes to a tenth anniversary screening of Entered the
<v Speaker 1>Dragon with his girlfriend and when he walks in, it's
<v Speaker 1>mass chaos like he's he's amazed. He's never been to
<v Speaker 1>something like this before. People are dressed up in costume,
<v Speaker 1>people are saying the lines of the movie along with it.
<v Speaker 1>People are pretend fighting in the aisles. He said, it's
<v Speaker 1>like going to a rocky horror picture show. It's the
<v Speaker 1>most amazing theater reaction that he's ever seen before. And
<v Speaker 1>he thinks to himself, I got to write a story
<v Speaker 1>about this. He writes that story, Yeah, and that story
<v Speaker 1>is called The Last Dragon. So, Jason, if you were
<v Speaker 1>going to be writing a movie from the nineteen eighties
<v Speaker 1>without telling me you were writing a movie from the
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighties, how would you write it?
<v Speaker 3>All? Right?
<v Speaker 2>So here's what I would do. I would take a
<v Speaker 2>wholesome kung fu protege who has a Chinese accent for
<v Speaker 2>no apparent reason, who also eats popcorn with chopsticks, who
<v Speaker 2>rescues a beautiful MTV v J from a power hungry
<v Speaker 2>video arcade mogul with a girlfriend who looks like Cyndi
<v Speaker 2>Lauper and another guy who looks like the black version
<v Speaker 2>of Mad Max, set in Harlem, all set to the
<v Speaker 2>song Rhythm of the Night by Debarch Into.
<v Speaker 1>The Street, We're all of em is right there, and
<v Speaker 1>you'll be well, I love away.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think?
<v Speaker 1>I think that's a perfect nineteen eighties karate movie.
<v Speaker 2>Doesn't that sound like an eighties karate movie?
<v Speaker 3>Wow?
<v Speaker 1>In nineteen we have this movie that comes out. Now
<v Speaker 1>it's interesting, this isn't This movie isn't just called The
<v Speaker 1>Last Dragon. It's called Barry Gordy's Last Dragon. Now we
<v Speaker 1>know that Barry Gordon didn't write it. How is Barry
<v Speaker 1>Gordy's The Last Dragon?
<v Speaker 2>So Barry Gordy, for those of you who don't know,
<v Speaker 2>is the founder of Motown Records. Yes, you're talking Smokey Robinson,
<v Speaker 2>the Supremes, the Jackson Five, the Temptations, that guy.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Diana Ross, Diana Ross.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I believe he had a love affair with Diana Ross.
<v Speaker 1>Michael Jackson.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, did you have a love affair with Michael Jackson?
<v Speaker 1>Well, we won't get into that. So we've we've been
<v Speaker 1>talking for a while about Barry Gordy, not necessarily because
<v Speaker 1>of this movie, but because we're planning on doing a
<v Speaker 1>Patreon on the Rockwell song Somebody's watching me right? Rockwell?
<v Speaker 1>Is Barry Gordy's son one of many children that he has, right,
<v Speaker 1>And I started looking up his family tree and I
<v Speaker 1>was like, what the what. Jimmy Carter's mother, her last
<v Speaker 1>name is Gordy, her maiden name was Gordy, right. Her
<v Speaker 1>grandfather had a slave, yes, who he got pregnant back
<v Speaker 1>in the slave days, and that was the grandfather of
<v Speaker 1>Barry Gordy. It was Barry Gordy the first uh huh,
<v Speaker 1>and Barry Gordy that started Motown is Barry Gordy the third. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that is to say, President Jimmy Carter and Barry Gordy
<v Speaker 1>Motown hero share common answers. Oh my god. They're like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's like half sibling. I don't even know where It's
<v Speaker 1>too complicated to get to, but.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, right, wow, how about that? Follow us on Patreon
<v Speaker 2>for the rest of that story. Rockwell is his son
<v Speaker 2>and comes out with a great one hit wonder song.
<v Speaker 2>Somebody's watching it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So this movie comes out March twenty second, nineteen eighty five.
<v Speaker 2>Now you ask, how did Barry Gordy get involved in this.
<v Speaker 2>I've got some theories, but basically Motown and the Jackson
<v Speaker 2>Five and the Supremes had kind of run its course
<v Speaker 2>a little bit, and he created a movie in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy two, which was a movie about Billie Holliday, which
<v Speaker 2>starred Diana Ross, the Wiz Whiz Michael Jackson and Quincy
<v Speaker 2>Jones and Diana Ross.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I told you that.
<v Speaker 2>I think a lot of this comes from It's like
<v Speaker 2>a concoction. It's like a Frankenstein Monster of the leftover
<v Speaker 2>parts of Purple Rain with motown and MTV.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you put MTV in, and you also put in
<v Speaker 1>the magic formula that gave us breaking in nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 1>four and Breaking to Electric Boogaloo in nineteen eighty four,
<v Speaker 1>both of them. Yeah, you got dance sequences, You've got karate,
<v Speaker 1>You've got a strong Harlem showing. But it's they really
<v Speaker 1>do a great job of being completely color blind to this.
<v Speaker 1>I mean you just look at you look at show
<v Speaker 1>Nuff's entourage, and he's got a black guy and a
<v Speaker 1>black girl, and a white guy and a white girl,
<v Speaker 1>and a Chinese guy and a Chinese girl. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's just it's a rainbow type of a movie. I
<v Speaker 1>got to tell you, I didn't think about that in
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty five. All I thought was it's a good movie.
<v Speaker 1>But today, with the way the world is, we look
<v Speaker 1>at it and go, oh wow, how forward thinking of him.
<v Speaker 1>So he gets this story, yes, and he's got to
<v Speaker 1>find a director.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So Michael Schultz has got a kind of an
<v Speaker 2>interesting directing repertoire here.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>He did some Rockford Files. Yeah, he did Sergeant Pepper's
<v Speaker 2>Lonely Hearts Club Band.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. By the way, Rockford Files, wasn't that one of
<v Speaker 1>your top TV theme songs? It was from the nineteen seventies.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it was awesome. He did Bust and Loose with
<v Speaker 2>Richard Pryor. He did carbon Copy with Denzel Washington, Denzel
<v Speaker 2>Washington's debut movie, put a pin in that name. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he does Crush Groove Hello, def Dave Right. He does
<v Speaker 2>Disorderlies with the Fat Boys in eighty seven.
<v Speaker 1>Again def Dave's favorite movie, right of eighty seven.
<v Speaker 2>And then when I looked at his catalog, he really
<v Speaker 2>becomes involved in the Young Indiana Jones chronicles.
<v Speaker 1>Is that crazy?
<v Speaker 2>It's just a weird hodgepodge of movies.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know what his first directed movie was? Though, No,
<v Speaker 1>you're gonna love this. What it is? A movie called
<v Speaker 1>car Wash? That's the god you throw this back to
<v Speaker 1>our episode from a couple of years ago on Batman
<v Speaker 1>Versus The Dark Knight. Yeah, that's the movie that after
<v Speaker 1>Woody Allen discovered Joel Schumacher as a window dresser at
<v Speaker 1>a caes Or wherever it was, that was Joel Schumacher's
<v Speaker 1>first movie to write, was called car Wash and it
<v Speaker 1>was directed by Michael Schultz, his friend direct.
<v Speaker 2>Wow. How about that.
<v Speaker 1>So they've got a movie that involves dancing, that involves
<v Speaker 1>the Harlem music scene, that involves karate and they say,
<v Speaker 1>let's get Michael Schultz to come in and direct.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, by the way, we didn't mention this, but Louis
<v Speaker 2>Venosa he also wrote Bird on a Wire o Mel
<v Speaker 2>Gibson and Goldie Han, and then he later becomes involved
<v Speaker 2>in Grey's Anatomy fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>So they've got their story, they've got their producer, they've
<v Speaker 1>got their director. Now all they need is a cast.
<v Speaker 1>But before we get there, let's jump back to The
<v Speaker 1>Karate Kid and talk about the cast for The Karate Kid.
<v Speaker 3>Wax on, right hand, wax off, left hand, wax on,
<v Speaker 3>wax off, breed in through nose, out the mouth.
<v Speaker 2>All right, do you remember when we talked about the
<v Speaker 2>out Yes, not this time last year. Basically everybody in
<v Speaker 2>The Outsiders and Rumblefish was considered for the role of
<v Speaker 2>the Karate Kid. Okay, when they were casting for Daniel
<v Speaker 2>originally called Daniel Webster, not Daniel LaRusso okay because he
<v Speaker 2>wasn't Italian yet. Because he wasn't Italian yet.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he was just an author of a dictionary. Apparently
<v Speaker 1>right by.
<v Speaker 2>The way, they liked the name Daniel because it was
<v Speaker 2>Daniel in The Lion's Den.
<v Speaker 1>Oh well, I can tell you this. I listened to
<v Speaker 1>the commentary on the Karate Kid number one. Those guys
<v Speaker 1>are just talking like they're a bunch of friends together,
<v Speaker 1>and so there was very little useful information there.
<v Speaker 2>Talked of each other.
<v Speaker 1>I just did it was not it was not helpful,
<v Speaker 1>hardly at all. But I did note. Robert came and said,
<v Speaker 1>I guess I like the name Daniel because apparently in
<v Speaker 1>every script that I write, there's a character that's named
<v Speaker 1>Daniel or Danny. Oh really, yeah, I can't tell you
<v Speaker 1>that the Daniels and Danny's another. But he specifically pointed
<v Speaker 1>out the other useful piece of information that I got
<v Speaker 1>from this. This is really great like the director was
<v Speaker 1>talking about that was it forty seven Ford Coop, the
<v Speaker 1>yellow one? You know that Danielsen gets as his birthday present? Right?
<v Speaker 1>That could have easily been in our best Cars of
<v Speaker 1>the eighties movies, right, sure choose. Yeah. John Afflison's talking
<v Speaker 1>to the commentary. He's like, man, that was such a
<v Speaker 1>great car. I wonder whatever happened to that?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>And Ralph Manci was like, do you really know it?
<v Speaker 1>And he's like, no, man, that's such a great car.
<v Speaker 1>Did it get destroyed or what happened? And Ralph Mont's
<v Speaker 1>like you really don't know. He's like no, and Ralph
<v Speaker 1>Moont's like, I have it. Yeah, he said after the
<v Speaker 1>movie was over, he offered to buy the car. He said,
<v Speaker 1>I want to buy that car. Cos talk to the
<v Speaker 1>maybe the casting director or maybe the one of the
<v Speaker 1>stage directors or something like that, and he says, I
<v Speaker 1>want to buy that car, and then it just shows
<v Speaker 1>up gift. So Ralph Mancio has owned that nineteen forty
<v Speaker 1>seven yellow Ford Coop since nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 2>That's really cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So they're looking for Daniel, So Robert Cayman says
<v Speaker 2>he's got to be a whimp, but he's got to
<v Speaker 2>be a whimp with the chip on his shoulder. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>this is who they looked at. Sean Penn, Tom Cruise,
<v Speaker 2>Emiliu Estavez, Charlie Sheen, Nick Cage, see Thomas.
<v Speaker 1>How waiting for a whamp here?
<v Speaker 2>Right, So all these guys are too too tough. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>these guys are tough guys, right.
<v Speaker 1>I saw an interview with these guys from just a
<v Speaker 1>few years ago, and John Appleson said, you know who
<v Speaker 1>one of the people to try out was, and it
<v Speaker 1>was Robert Downey Junior. Right, And he said everybody was like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>you like imagining Robert Downey Junior. You know nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 1>four Robert Downey Jr. As the Karate Kid. And he said,
<v Speaker 1>you know why I didn't cast him? And somebody the
<v Speaker 1>audience goes drugs. He goes, no, not drugs. It's a
<v Speaker 1>good guest, but no, he goes, I didn't cast him
<v Speaker 1>because he's iron Man. Daniels Son cannot be iron Man.
<v Speaker 1>He can't be a superhero, right, he has to be
<v Speaker 1>someone with extreme vulnerability. And the guy that was that
<v Speaker 1>guy was Ralph Manchio.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah it was you too much by surf, not too good,
<v Speaker 3>not by myself.
<v Speaker 2>It was you to.
<v Speaker 3>Make honey young bee, need young flower.
<v Speaker 1>Not.
<v Speaker 2>But the really interesting one I thought was when they
<v Speaker 2>hired for mister Miyagi. So the guy they wanted was
<v Speaker 2>to Shiro Mfuni.
<v Speaker 1>If you don't know who that is, you need to
<v Speaker 1>go check out some of curacare with Sawa movies right
<v Speaker 1>seven Samurai Raschaman, Hidden Fortress.
<v Speaker 2>This guy's tough.
<v Speaker 1>It would have been an entirely different Miyagi. It would
<v Speaker 1>have been a Miyagi that was more like crease.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, here's the thing to Shira. Mafuni does not speak English.
<v Speaker 2>So they bring in Pat Marita.
<v Speaker 1>The comedian.
<v Speaker 2>The comedian right now, people forget he was in Happy Days,
<v Speaker 2>So I forgot.
<v Speaker 1>I had forgotten about this. Like his name wasn't Al
<v Speaker 1>in Happy Days? Obviously the awl was Al, Al was Al.
<v Speaker 1>They were like, you're Al. He's like, no, my name
<v Speaker 1>is Takei Shmosho or something like that, and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>but the neon to change the sign was too expensive,
<v Speaker 1>and I am out.
<v Speaker 2>He was a comedian, funny guy.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so do you know his whole story? Tell me? Okay,
<v Speaker 1>So there's incredible scene in the Karate Kid where mister
<v Speaker 1>Miyagi shows his vulnerability for the first time. He is
<v Speaker 1>weeping at the anniversary of the death of his wife
<v Speaker 1>an unborn child. Right, the circumstances that you find out
<v Speaker 1>later is there was no doctor because they were in
<v Speaker 1>an internment camp. Now, Pat Marita was not old enough
<v Speaker 1>at that point to have actually had a wife and
<v Speaker 1>child at the time of the World War two interment camps.
<v Speaker 1>But let me tell you this. When Pat Marita was
<v Speaker 1>just two years old, he was diagnosed with a condition
<v Speaker 1>called spinal tuberculosis, and it literally left him bedridden, hospitalized
<v Speaker 1>for years. He was basically in a body cast, was
<v Speaker 1>told he would never walk. I mean, he had a
<v Speaker 1>very unpleasant life from the time that he was two
<v Speaker 1>until the time he was eleven, so nine years of this. Right,
<v Speaker 1>then they give him an operation, and the operation is
<v Speaker 1>successful and they are able to teach him to walk.
<v Speaker 1>They are able to teach him to move around and stand,
<v Speaker 1>and suddenly he is able to have a noise, normal
<v Speaker 1>life again. So he gets released to the hospital and
<v Speaker 1>is immediately taken to join his family in an internment
<v Speaker 1>camp in World War two. Really, yes, so he gets
<v Speaker 1>released in nineteen forty two, which is the same year
<v Speaker 1>that all of the interment camps started. Reaction to the
<v Speaker 1>Pearl Harbor bombing. A lot of Japanese citizens were basically
<v Speaker 1>given a week's notice, Hey, put your life in business
<v Speaker 1>affairs in order, you're going to have to come over
<v Speaker 1>to this camp because this is what we're doing. And
<v Speaker 1>in the nineteen eighties they said this was wrong, we
<v Speaker 1>shouldn't have done it, and they're set up a fund
<v Speaker 1>for reparations and all of that, But that doesn't change
<v Speaker 1>the fact that as soon as he breaks free from
<v Speaker 1>the prison of the hospital, he is immediately put with
<v Speaker 1>his own family in what are essentially military barracks, interna camp.
<v Speaker 1>But he goes on from that. His family starts a business.
<v Speaker 1>After that, they do a Chop Suey restaurant, No kidding, Wow.
<v Speaker 1>Then tragically his father gets killed in a hit and
<v Speaker 1>run accident. His mother and he keep the restaurant going
<v Speaker 1>for a few more years, but then he's like, I've
<v Speaker 1>got a wife and a kid. I've got to go
<v Speaker 1>get a real job. He becomes a data processor, starts
<v Speaker 1>at the DMV and works HILF up to Lockheed Martin
<v Speaker 1>as a data processor, which is pretty impressive. But he
<v Speaker 1>gets burned out and he's like, I'm done with this life.
<v Speaker 1>I want to go to la and be a stand
<v Speaker 1>up comedian. What what he you know? Who he learned
<v Speaker 1>the most from? Who he learned at the feet of
<v Speaker 1>Red Fox?
<v Speaker 2>There you go?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, Sanford and Son, which was on my list of
<v Speaker 1>best songs from the composed by Quincy Jones, by the way.
<v Speaker 2>That's right, that's it.
<v Speaker 1>And he would be he would be on that show.
<v Speaker 1>He would have guest appearances on that show as the
<v Speaker 1>you know, the Chinese guy there, yeah, or the Japanese
<v Speaker 1>guy or whatever it was.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Dane.
<v Speaker 1>Kardati here, Katia.
<v Speaker 3>Never here.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so here's William Zapka. Oh yeah, he plays John
<v Speaker 2>and Lawrence.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all the side enough, man, what is wrong? But
<v Speaker 1>Johnny enemy.
<v Speaker 2>Deserves no mercy? Right right right, perfectly cast perfectly. Here's
<v Speaker 2>who they looked at for him, Crispin Glover, George McFly.
<v Speaker 1>Well he did karate kick David Letterman's face.
<v Speaker 2>Could that have been a disaster.
<v Speaker 1>Would have completely been a disaster. I don't I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I don't even understand how he's on the list. I
<v Speaker 1>think he's only on the list because people went really him. No,
<v Speaker 1>they had to because they had to be looking at
<v Speaker 1>all of those you know, Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen
<v Speaker 1>and Emilio Estevez and all those other guys too for Johnny, right,
<v Speaker 1>they would have all been great Johnny's I.
<v Speaker 2>Would think so, Yes, Tom Cruse would have been a
<v Speaker 2>great Johnny. But Crispin Glover was the guy that they
<v Speaker 2>had originally talked about. That's nice, That makes no sense.
<v Speaker 1>Before we move on, do you want to talk about
<v Speaker 1>William Zappka's audition for the part?
<v Speaker 3>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, let's talk about it.
<v Speaker 1>I mean he had done he had done pepsi commercials
<v Speaker 1>at this point, right, he had done nothing right. But
<v Speaker 1>he reads this character. He reads the script and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>I'm this guy, which is a weird thing to say
<v Speaker 1>when you know that you're the villain. But what he
<v Speaker 1>does is he reads it and he looks at it
<v Speaker 1>from that guy's perspective, and then he gets to the
<v Speaker 1>end where you know, you're not so bad LaRusso and
<v Speaker 1>hands him the trophy and all that, and he's like, okay,
<v Speaker 1>so he's not a bad guy. He just had a
<v Speaker 1>bad teacher. But in the interview I saw him, he
<v Speaker 1>was he was like, I was a very young actor
<v Speaker 1>that time. I don't really know a lot about, you know,
<v Speaker 1>doing a backstory or anything like that. I really just
<v Speaker 1>tried to play the moment in the moment, and that
<v Speaker 1>was the way I proceeded. But in his audition he
<v Speaker 1>went a little further than that.
<v Speaker 2>He grabbed the director by the shirt collar and told you.
<v Speaker 1>Watch your mouth, threw him in the chair and stormed
<v Speaker 1>out the director. The director, Yeah, you don't, you just
<v Speaker 1>you just never ever do that. You will you will
<v Speaker 1>never get cast in anything again. I think this is
<v Speaker 1>his one saving grace, though, is that he walked out
<v Speaker 1>of the room and then he walked back in the
<v Speaker 1>room and he's like, I'm so sorry, I am that
<v Speaker 1>was that was Ny. That is not who I am.
<v Speaker 1>That was Johnny. That's not Billy. Okay, that was hilarious.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, listen to this run that Billy Zavka has
<v Speaker 2>in the eighties actually is pretty incredible. So he does
<v Speaker 2>the credit kid, he does just one of the guys. Ye,
<v Speaker 2>he does European Vacation. He plays Audrey's boyfriend Jack in European.
<v Speaker 1>Vacation eighties gold so far.
<v Speaker 2>He plays Chaz and back to School.
<v Speaker 1>Again one of the but it's the same guy basically
<v Speaker 1>in every single one. Yeah, he's always Johnny a jerk,
<v Speaker 1>you know, Yeah, always Johnny.
<v Speaker 2>By the way, at the end, when they were doing
<v Speaker 2>the final fight, even in between takes, the crowd got
<v Speaker 2>so into it they would boo John Lawrence.
<v Speaker 1>Right. His mom was in there.
<v Speaker 2>His mom was in the crowd and she's like, he's
<v Speaker 2>really a nice boy.
<v Speaker 1>She's crying. I was like, why are you moving? It's
<v Speaker 1>not that the cameras aren't even rolling.
<v Speaker 2>And then of course he goes on to do Hot
<v Speaker 2>Tub time Machine and then.
<v Speaker 1>That and that is that is a little bit of
<v Speaker 1>gold right there. Now, before he does hot Tub time Machine,
<v Speaker 1>he did a he did a music.
<v Speaker 2>Video yes called Sweep the Leg.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Sweep the Leg by a band called No More
<v Speaker 1>Kings of course, song about the karate kid.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 1>Williams Zabka directs in it, stars in it. You've got
<v Speaker 1>you've got references to Raising Arizona, You've got references to
<v Speaker 1>the cars and Heartbeat City videos. You get to see
<v Speaker 1>William Zabka in a banana hammock skating down the road
<v Speaker 1>with a boombox over his shoulder.
<v Speaker 2>It's wow.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's a great video. Go check it out on YouTube.
<v Speaker 1>It is really just called Sweep the Leg, but it is.
<v Speaker 1>It's brilliant. No more Kings. Check that one out.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's really good.
<v Speaker 1>So he does hot Tub Time Machine. Those guys then say, hey,
<v Speaker 1>we saw this YouTube video that basically says that Johnny
<v Speaker 1>was the good guy and that Danielson was the bully.
<v Speaker 1>And he goes through it and he's like, guys, I've
<v Speaker 1>kind of always had this theory in my head and
<v Speaker 1>that's the way that I played it. And they're like,
<v Speaker 1>what if we do a series where it's Johnny's perspective
<v Speaker 1>and he's he's in his ruined state of life thirty
<v Speaker 1>years later and he has to address all these issues
<v Speaker 1>and then he runs into none other than Danielson. Again,
<v Speaker 1>he's like, I'm in to do it.
<v Speaker 2>I love it. I love it. Now you've seen Cobra Kai.
<v Speaker 3>I have.
<v Speaker 1>I've seen three seasons of Cobra Kai. I can't I don't
<v Speaker 1>remember how many of there are at this point, but
<v Speaker 1>I know that I've seen it. I think I've seen
<v Speaker 1>all of the seasons up until the new one's about
<v Speaker 1>to come out in just a little while. And I
<v Speaker 1>will tell you that my fourteen year old son, who's
<v Speaker 1>been watching these for the last several years, is hardcore.
<v Speaker 1>Daniel was the villain. Daniel was a villain. He was
<v Speaker 1>the jerk. Johnny's in the right the whole time, Like
<v Speaker 1>I'm not even kidding. Halloween, Yeah, twenty twenty three Halloween.
<v Speaker 1>My fourteen year old dressed up in a skeleton costume,
<v Speaker 1>nice painted his face, did the whole thing because he
<v Speaker 1>is a Cobra Kai devote. Before we get off casting,
<v Speaker 1>I've got my a whole ometer sheet.
<v Speaker 2>I made a little spreadsheet the number of times that
<v Speaker 2>somebody was in a hole. The I rated it one
<v Speaker 2>through ten on the level of a wholeness. Okay, okay,
<v Speaker 2>and so we'll talk about that here.
<v Speaker 1>We should have done this for the police episode back.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Okay, So you've got Ron Thomas who plays Bobby.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, he goes on to be a motivational speaker.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like a pastor.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Well, I think he's I think he's just a
<v Speaker 1>motivational speaker. But what happens is later on they do
<v Speaker 1>an episode where they bring back all of the original
<v Speaker 1>well not all but the core Cobra Kai guys and
<v Speaker 1>Johnny and them all hang out together. And I'll give
<v Speaker 1>you the reason in a second. But in that episode
<v Speaker 1>he plays a pastor. Yes, and you'll remember he's the
<v Speaker 1>guy who's He's the guy he's had enough, Johnny. He's
<v Speaker 1>the guy who's always trying to ease it back. He's
<v Speaker 1>the guy who's the most reasonable of the Cobra Kai guys. So, yes,
<v Speaker 1>enough Johnny alone.
<v Speaker 3>Man, he's had enough. Shut up, Mommy, look at it.
<v Speaker 3>You can't even stand up, go.
<v Speaker 2>On hand onmie squat Johnny.
<v Speaker 1>Leave him alone.
<v Speaker 2>Man, he's had not on the side, but he's had enough.
<v Speaker 1>Man, what is wrong, Johnny.
<v Speaker 2>Enemy deserves no mercy, right.
<v Speaker 1>Right, right right. But he's also the guy that's that
<v Speaker 1>he's like, take him out. He's like, I can beat
<v Speaker 1>this guy. And he's like, I'm sorry, Danny, I'm sorry, Ma,
<v Speaker 1>you do it. So that's a great character.
<v Speaker 2>That that he's not just this evil Darth Vader. You know,
<v Speaker 2>all these guys have shades of humanity. I mean, they're jerks,
<v Speaker 2>but what high school boy revved up on testosterone is
<v Speaker 2>not done.
<v Speaker 1>Some of the stuff that they did. Absolutely, yeah, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>so keep keep going. You got you got Ron Thomas.
<v Speaker 1>Who else you got?
<v Speaker 2>We got Chad McQueen. He plays Dutch.
<v Speaker 1>Steve McQueen's son. Right. You will remember him because he's
<v Speaker 1>the guy who looks like his hair and eyebrows were
<v Speaker 1>dyed blonde because they were right, which I thought.
<v Speaker 2>Made him a little bit more menacing. It is.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and he when he has his fight in the
<v Speaker 1>tournament at the end against Daniel, I mean he is intimidating.
<v Speaker 1>His his stare is intense. And in just a little
<v Speaker 1>while earlier, he was the guy who tried to pick
<v Speaker 1>a fight with Daniel in the locker room as he's
<v Speaker 1>just trying to get dressed. Which matter, Your mommy not
<v Speaker 1>here to put your clothes on.
<v Speaker 2>For you, Yeah, mommy not here to address you.
<v Speaker 1>He was he was full on jerk jerk.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, and he was great. And he said as points
<v Speaker 2>and no points, you're dead meat. Scared me?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, all right.
<v Speaker 2>And then you've got Rob Garrison. He plays Tommy. He's
<v Speaker 2>the one who's like, yeah, get him the body bag.
<v Speaker 1>He has got some of the most memorable lines from
<v Speaker 1>this movie and doesn't seem to appear anywhere else and
<v Speaker 1>sadly He's the reason that they have to come back.
<v Speaker 1>I don't they have to come back, but they do. So.
<v Speaker 1>Billy Zapka said that these guys became his core group
<v Speaker 1>of friends after this movie. He said, this was basically
<v Speaker 1>like being in a fraternity together, and these guys hung
<v Speaker 1>out all of.
<v Speaker 2>The tilly right. Cool.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And so April of twenty nineteen, season two of
<v Speaker 1>Cobra Kai comes out. They get in the band back together,
<v Speaker 1>all of the old guys, you know, all of the
<v Speaker 1>old crew gets back together. And the reason that they
<v Speaker 1>get together is because Tommy has cancer. They got to
<v Speaker 1>have basically a one last hurrah, and it's great. They
<v Speaker 1>get in a bar fight together, they drive real motorcycles
<v Speaker 1>around together. It is really a Glory Days style of
<v Speaker 1>a show. It's super well done. And then tragically at
<v Speaker 1>the end, they discover Tommy's body in the tent. You know,
<v Speaker 1>they've been out camping together and he's passed away from
<v Speaker 1>the cancer that he's been dealing with. Oh man, well
<v Speaker 1>this came out April of twenty nineteen. He really did
<v Speaker 1>have cancer. Five months later, the actor actually passed away
<v Speaker 1>from cancer. Tragic. That is really too bad, But what
<v Speaker 1>an incredible legacy. You know, if you're if you're one
<v Speaker 1>of those guys, if you don't have the acting career
<v Speaker 1>that something like that, Ralph Mancio had sure that you
<v Speaker 1>can at least still come back because everybody knows those lines.
<v Speaker 1>Everybody knows the body bag lines, and I think he's
<v Speaker 1>gonna cry. They're great lines. So the ability to celebrate
<v Speaker 1>this guy's life just a little bit at the end,
<v Speaker 1>it's a nice send away. I like it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, love it. By the way, there's one more Cobra Kai.
<v Speaker 2>I want to mention.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I go, Larry B. Scott. Does that ring a
<v Speaker 1>bell to you? I feel like it was kind of
<v Speaker 1>a nerd You talk about Jerry, I'm.
<v Speaker 2>Talking about Jerry who that's Lamar from Revenge of the Nerds.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Wait, do you see Lamar's throw?
<v Speaker 3>How come?
<v Speaker 1>Wims is a master arrow dynamics and he designed the
<v Speaker 1>javelin to go along with Lamar's limp wristed throwing style.
<v Speaker 1>He's the first He's the first guy that Daniel has
<v Speaker 1>to be right from Cobra Kai. Pretty sure, that's right.
<v Speaker 1>He was the first fight. And he's also the one
<v Speaker 1>that when they're sparring, when Daniel first comes into the
<v Speaker 1>dojo to the Cobra kai dojo. That just gets laid out,
<v Speaker 1>what are you doing? Finish him?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, now then let's talk about Ali.
<v Speaker 1>For a second. Hey, you got a name, Hallie and I.
<v Speaker 2>Elizabeth Shoe in her film debut.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she'd done what burger King commercials?
<v Speaker 2>At burger King commercials with Lea Thompson.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, who was also about to hit it big in
<v Speaker 1>eighty five. Right, yeah, that's right.
<v Speaker 2>So they wanted Helen Hunt she was did you see that?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, absolutely right? Yeah, how about Demi Moore? Yeah, but
<v Speaker 1>I'm glad they picked Elizabeth Shoe me too, Oh my god.
<v Speaker 1>And that was the other funny thing about the commentary
<v Speaker 1>is that every time she came on the screen, like
<v Speaker 1>all of the guys, now you got an age range
<v Speaker 1>of probably forty years, yes, and every single one, I
<v Speaker 1>was like, oh man, she's so adorable, she's so cute.
<v Speaker 2>They called her a strawberry shortcake, and they called Ralph
<v Speaker 2>the Cannoli.
<v Speaker 1>Strawberry Shortcake and the Canoli. Oh and I got this.
<v Speaker 1>Here's the one other tidbit that I got from the commentary.
<v Speaker 1>Do you know who she's dressed up as in the
<v Speaker 1>costume party when when Danielsen comes up dressed as a shower.
<v Speaker 2>I would never have known that if I hadn't listened
<v Speaker 2>to commentary. Princess Leah.
<v Speaker 1>What Princess Leah?
<v Speaker 2>No way, she doesn't look anything like that. She has
<v Speaker 2>no buns, she's carrying around her Wand I was.
<v Speaker 1>Very happy about the white gown, Like, yes, great choice
<v Speaker 1>for Elizabeth Shoe. I'm all for it. But if she's
<v Speaker 1>supposed to be Leah, we need to we need to
<v Speaker 1>do something different with her hair. But that's okay. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>they were afraid of running into copyright issues. I don't know. Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 1>So one last guy to talk about in the casting
<v Speaker 1>of Karate Kid, John Crease. Here on the street in competition,
<v Speaker 1>A magnfronts you. He's the enemy. An enemy deserves no mercy.
<v Speaker 2>The problem is the Lauren. Yeah, he's played by Martin Cove.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah so Martin Marty as his NIT friends call him.
<v Speaker 1>He was in like a kind of standard role in
<v Speaker 1>like kateen Atley back then.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Yeah, I guess so I didn't watch the show.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, so he was doing that show. They liked him,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he was a he was a very like
<v Speaker 1>he was a leading man guy. He had a good look,
<v Speaker 1>a good face. He was he's an older guy, right, yep.
<v Speaker 1>And they really wanted him for the part and had
<v Speaker 1>essentially told him, Hey, we really want you for this part,
<v Speaker 1>sent him the script said get ready, we're coming, and
<v Speaker 1>then they made him wait and they made him wait
<v Speaker 1>and they made him wait, and then like literally called
<v Speaker 1>him last minute and said hey, we need you to
<v Speaker 1>be here at nine o'clock in the morning. And he's like, what, right, what?
<v Speaker 1>And so he was furious. He was He was like,
<v Speaker 1>I've you know, turned down parts, I have you know,
<v Speaker 1>been over backwards for this, and you guys are screwing
<v Speaker 1>me around. And he was talking to his wife about
<v Speaker 1>his frustration and she was like, you should you because
<v Speaker 1>if this guy's supposed to be the villain that he is,
<v Speaker 1>it'll be great for you to use your anger at
<v Speaker 1>the situation. And so that's exactly what he did.
<v Speaker 2>He does an amazing job in this. I'm intimidated by him,
<v Speaker 2>but yet he's good at teaching what he believes.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I heard him. I heard him in an interview
<v Speaker 1>talking about his perspective on this character and how to
<v Speaker 1>make this character real. And he said to himself, this
<v Speaker 1>is a guy who is growing up. He won his
<v Speaker 1>entire life, Like in school, he was always the biggest,
<v Speaker 1>the best looking, the strongest, the most athletic. He won
<v Speaker 1>the sporting events, he was top of the team. He
<v Speaker 1>did all of this stuff. And then he goes to Vietnam.
<v Speaker 1>And when he goes to Vietnam, he can't win. He
<v Speaker 1>loses his friends, he loses his identity, and he says
<v Speaker 1>to himself at that moment, I will never lose again.
<v Speaker 1>If I get back to the US, I will never
<v Speaker 1>lose again. And that's what motivates his entire character from
<v Speaker 1>that moment on.
<v Speaker 2>Eh, that's good.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean it makes him real. And they totally
<v Speaker 1>use that in Cobra Kai, right he I mean, I've
<v Speaker 1>you've only seen a couple episodes, but I've seen like
<v Speaker 1>three seasons worth, and he is a guy who you
<v Speaker 1>still You're still like he's the villain. But then you're like,
<v Speaker 1>but I see how he got there, right, I see
<v Speaker 1>how he became the villain, and I you know, but
<v Speaker 1>for the grace of God, I could have been the
<v Speaker 1>same guy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you know. He shows back up in a
<v Speaker 2>movie that you have not seen hold on your seats,
<v Speaker 2>because I hope we can cover this next summer.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, he has a pretty big part in Rambo. Oh
<v Speaker 1>right right right? Yeah? No, I yeah, yes, surprise for
<v Speaker 1>all our listeners. I have not seen Rambo or First
<v Speaker 1>Blood or any.
<v Speaker 2>Of the other I can't believe that.
<v Speaker 1>I know, I know, Okay, I was young.
<v Speaker 2>Well, we're going to cover that next summer hopefully. I'm
<v Speaker 2>thinking Rambo versus Commando for sure. Still owner Schwarzenegger at
<v Speaker 2>their eighties prime yep, Okay, I got one more for you. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So Randy Hyler plays his mom, Lucille. She plays Lucille
<v Speaker 2>LaRusso they looked at Valerie Harper.
<v Speaker 1>Oh that's right, yeah, Valerie from Valerie.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Valerie from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah yeah, so Redo RDA right, yeah yeah, Roda.
<v Speaker 2>Here's another thing I wanted to mention real quick on
<v Speaker 2>the filming of the Karate Kid. I thought I found
<v Speaker 2>this fascinating. They filmed this from October thirty one of
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty three, Yeah to December sixteenth of eighty three. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>so they not only shot this in like sequence, but
<v Speaker 2>it also fit perfectly like in the timeline of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, that's right, because it starts off in New
<v Speaker 1>Jersey September yep and ends in the fight, which is
<v Speaker 1>in December.
<v Speaker 2>The karate tournament's December nineteenth.
<v Speaker 1>Perfect. Okay, I go before we leave the cast, I
<v Speaker 1>got one. I got one lady that I got to
<v Speaker 1>ask you if you noticed. Oh, okay, okay. Remember when
<v Speaker 1>they first get to the apartments and they walk in
<v Speaker 1>and there's the lady with the dog and she's like,
<v Speaker 1>you guys are from Jersey, right. He's like, how'd you know?
<v Speaker 1>He's like, I could smell my kind and she gives
<v Speaker 1>him the directions and he's confused. Do you recognize her?
<v Speaker 1>You know she is? No, it's the grandma off of
<v Speaker 1>Happy Gilmore, the one who's losing her house that he
<v Speaker 1>has to go win the golf tournament to save her house.
<v Speaker 1>That's her. That's Francis Bay. She's in a billion things
<v Speaker 1>as the kind of funny little old lady and this
<v Speaker 1>was you know, this was one of those shows. She's
<v Speaker 1>the funny little old lady with the dog and karate
<v Speaker 1>kid too. Wow. Wow. Francis Bay born nineteen nineteen died
<v Speaker 1>twenty eleven at the Tender age of ninety two years old. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>we've gone on way too long here, guys. Come back
<v Speaker 1>for part two, where we are going to talk about production,
<v Speaker 1>we're going to talk about some of the incredible songs
<v Speaker 1>from this, and we're going to give you our final
<v Speaker 1>judgment on which is the better karate movie of the eighties,
<v Speaker 1>Karate Kid or The Last Tracon.
<v Speaker 2>Thank guys,