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Oh gez, folks, it's showtime.
People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater. They want clothed sodas, pop popcorn in. No monsters in the projection Booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Got it off?
What did strongholds? Millions are made here and not a single dollar has ever been lost until one day. This bright young man makes an innocent mistake that erupts into unbelievable consequences.
Fifty thousand dollars.
Fifty thousand dollars. Turn yourself in, boy, before someone asks who's minding them in. We're going through the sore at night.
Start up.
The presses run off the fifty thousand impossible. The plates are locked in the vault, So we get one more partner, somebody who can open safe A safe cracker ridiculous. Where do you find a safe cracker? The open A safe I got to hear it close.
I need the hearing age.
A safe cracker who can't hear this one is a solid value blocked with a school teacher.
She used it only on weekend.
You didn't mentioned who was going to get you into the sewer system. Dean drains in that part of town are awful deep.
We need what.
A boat? A boat to sail a seward. Wait a minute, no problem, I get just the guy to build this a boat. Oh no, not a captain of a kiddie park. Next you'll get a blonde who also cuts money. In an operation like this, there are a few complications, like a close call with an electric eye, a nosy little dog who insists on getting into the act, a vanishing captain. Genuine, beautiful, wonderful, real money and all tax free.
Four and a half million.
Dollars so far?
Four and a half. Can you make it go faster, Harry, make it go faster? The most impossible cast of lawbreakers ever put together. Jim Huffy, Dorothy Proline. I didn't do this for money, Milton Brow, Joey Bishop, Bob Denver, Victor Bote, Jack Guilbert, and Walter Brenham has popph.
You said, Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike Waite me once again as mister Otto Bruno.
Good day, mister White, how are you?
I'm good. Also back in the booth is mister Tim Madigan.
I've worked out a little philosophy for myself. I've learned to eliminate the necessities and live for the luxuries.
Buono Palooza concludes with a look at Howard Morris's Who's Minding the Mint? Released in nineteen sixty seven. The film stars Jim Hutton as Harry Lucas, a worker at the US Treasury who accidentally pill for his fifty thousand dollars. He needs to get it back and uses the help of a handful of colorful characters, including Verna Baxter played by Dorothy Provine, who needs to learn how to make better brownies. Otto, When was the first time you saw Who's Minding the Mint? And what did you think?
The first time I saw was a long long time ago, So I don't remember, So Tim and I because this is one of doctor Tim's favorite movies, So I sought it out maybe about five years ago or so, five or six years ago and watch again for me, and we've talked about this before. All you gotta do is look at the cast list, and I know I'm going to enjoy watching it, whether it's the greatest movie ever written or not, because there's just so many fabulous character
actors and actresses in it. So I'll let Tim make the comparison to It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World. Obviously it's not up to that level, but it's that type of film, and it's just a lot I think. I don't remember if all three of us had talked about this yet, or if maybe Tim and I were talking about this the other day when we watched it again. But unfortunately, it's one of those movies like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World, that if you're too it's almost impossible
to enjoy it or appreciate. You have to have some kind of relationship as a viewer with all the actors that in order to be able to really enjoy it.
But maybe I don't.
But that's just how I feel about it, and Tim, how about yourself.
I saw this movie countless times when I was a kid back in the Stone Age, when there were only three channels, and for some reason there were four movies that I remember being on all the time, and I would always watch them, The out of Towners, the Producers, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World, and Who's Minding the Men? And I loved all of them in part because, as Otto said, they all had actors, character actors, people
that I just enjoyed. But another reason was I watched them with my father, and he loved these movies and he would laugh uproariously. And I probably started watching them when I was too young to even know what the humor was. But if my father thought it was funny, it's funny. And Otto, as we know, did a book on the Barney Miller TV show, and Mike You had a podcast on it, that too, was something I would
watch with my father, was his favorite show. And just having rewatched this movie with Otto a few days ago, it really was like traveling back in time. I happen to coincidentally be teaching a course. I'm a professor of philosophy, so I'm teaching a course this summer on metaphysics, and one of the topics we've been looking at is time travel. And I don't know literally we'll ever be able to go back in time, but movies and TV shows and other popular culture aspects can allow us to do so.
I felt like I was a ten year old again watching the Spree.
I had never heard of this film before we set up this month. So when you guys chose the four films with Victor Bono, I said, okay, sure whatever this Who's mine the Mint movie is. So this was a brand new watch for me. Hadn't heard of it, hadn't seen it, didn't know anything about it before I walked in. I really didn't want to know anything about it before I sat down and watched this and was pretty delighted. I was getting a lot of Buena Vista type vibes
from it, those live action Disney movies. It felt like there could be magic in this movie at any moment. Flubber could be on the table at some point, but no, Instead, it's a comedy heist movie, which I love heist movies and I love comedy heist movies as well. So this really scratching it for me that I didn't know that
I had. And then yes, the cast for this is just amazing and the way that the plot plays out, and not to jump too far ahead already, but the way the plot plays out where it's okay, in order to do this thing, I need to get this guy and he needs something and we need another piece of the puzzle, so we go to another person and he needs something else, we go to another piece of the puzzle.
It reminds me of one of my most favorite episodes of Mash Ever, the one where Hawkeye orders those ribs from Chicago and he has to keep making deals with people and getting this guy this thing in order to get to here, to get to there before they can order Adam's ribs and have them delivered to the four oh seven seven.
It's a place in Chicago. You're the Dearborn Street station. I don't know the name of it. They served ribs the best in the world. Get a barbecue sauce with it, a flamboyant devil may Care yet introspective sauce, spare ribs ambrosia.
The guys on o lipus.
When I got tired of PG they sent out for these ribs.
Hah, yum yum.
I think he's going to have an accident.
Get him the barbecue ribs, Henry. I gotta have those ribs so.
I get ready to go into labor I'll get them somehow.
I love that episode, and I really like a movie like this where it's, oh, here's this person and he needs this thing. And of course when we get to Victor Bono and he's obsessed with boats and dresses as a captain and what was it. He's like one of the youngest guys in this whole movie, but he looks like he's the oldest guy, maybe only second to Walter Brennan.
I mean, this is like a classic plot device, right, I mean, I'm not a classicist and does this like Shakespeare or something, because I think.
It goes back to Alcibiades.
Actually, you can just tell that you've seen it in different ways in different vehicles before. It doesn't always work as well as I think it. Definitely, I remember that. I'm not a big mash person, but I definitely remember that episode of Match.
I always have said to my kids.
Fires is one of the hardest type of comedies to pull off. When it's good, it's really really good. But when it's bad for me, at least personally, it just falls so flat that it's hard to watch. I know, you get frustrated along with Jim Hutton in this movie Hutton basically is the star. He has to Well, I'm sure, Mike, you're gonna give the plot of the movie. It's just interesting because he makes you the viewer relate to him in that way, just sing it the myriad implausibility of this plot.
Yeah, we're not going to talk about serial numbers on these bills at all, because that would immediately just blow up this home.
I didn't say it right away. It took me a few minutes, and then I finally turned him and I said, wait a minute, aren't the bills gonna be counterfeit anyway because they all have serial numbers? Don't those have to be registers.
Another reason I've loved this movie and loved it when it was on is because of its star, Jim Hutton. That was one of the glue for that series of Hal Lyndon didn't really get the laughs, but that allowed all the other cast members or the Andy Griffiths show. And in a sense, he's the figure here at the beginning, he's a playboy. That line I said at the beginning, it comes from him. Early on he's living this playboy life. But very early on he's the serious one. And as
the characters get more and more absurd. He's the one who helps it stay together. And he also appeared in what was my favorite TV show when I was a kid, The Ellery Queen Show, because in addition to my father loving those movies, he loved mysteries and he would get the Ellery Queen magazine and we had all kinds of
Ellery Queen novels. So soon as I learned how to read, in addition to Sherlock Holmes, I read so many Ellery Queen's stories as I could, and suddenly there's a TV series with Jim Houghton and David Wayne as his dad, and it was only on one season, so it broke my heart when it went off the air. But seeing him again brought back memories of that show too.
Whendn't he break the fourth wall and say do you know how they did it? Towards the end of every episode?
Yeah? That was fun. And of course some of them I think were based on stories I had read, so that gave me a leg up. But I would read the Accual Parrots stories and the Miss Marple and then I stopped after a point when I realized I was reading. When I said, I've read this before, I still can't figure out who did it, but I said, maybe it's time to move on.
Yeah, I think that was what Levinson and Link moved on to. Right after Columbus. I think was Ella Queen.
I think it came out in seventy six.
I believe seventy six seventy seven, So sadly, even if it had not gotten canceled, it wouldn't have lasted much more than three years because poor Jim Hutton died very young in nineteen seventy, so.
I was wondering if he had lived to see the success of his son, Tim, because as soon as I see the name Hutton, I was like, Oh, I wonder if he's related to Tim Hutton. And of course he's the spitting image at times. There are a lot of moments in this movie where I'm like, oh, he looks a lot like Tim Hutton. But then there are other times where I think he looks like Dean Jones, which I think adds to the disney ness of this film for me.
I just watched on YouTube Timothy Hutton's Academy Awards speech, and of course he thanks all the cast members of Ordinary People, and Mary Tyler Moore is one and Jack Lemon give him the awards. So somebody in the description said they finally got to kiss Mary Tyler Moore because in the movie she was just and wouldn't kiss him. But it's very poignant because at the end he says, I want to thank my dad, who I wish was here. He died just before his son won the award. Yeah.
I really like him as this straight man, but he's a very flustered straight man through so much of this. And yeah, like you said, he is this playboy living this life where he's got deals that he is testing out limos and he's basically a scam artist and he's just getting all these free clothes and he's got a neighbor who comes over and brings him din din. And I love his distinction between dinner and din din, and that dinner means that you've got obligations. You know, there's
going to be kids involved at some point. You know, it's basically throwing the shackles around your arms as dinner, but means there's a little bit of fun.
Afterlud he kind of unravels because, like Tim said, starting out, he's like the cool cucumber and he's you know, I don't know if I want to say, he's serious about it, But it's one of those jobs ideas just the same day in day out. They don't film it this way, but it's a kind of job that I picture if you remember that opening shot of the apartment where Jack Lemon comes into the office, that vast sea of desks all lined up in a row. So it's this kind of mundane job that he just does every day to
make some money. But out when he's away from the job, he's a cool, swinging playboy, having a good.
Time, no worries.
And then he accidentally takes fifty thousand dollars out of the mint by mistake. He doesn't even realize he does it, and then, to add insult to injury, grinds it up in the garbage's photal. So he's got to figure out a way to not steal money, but to just make enough fifty thousand dollars to replace it so that he doesn't get in trouble.
And trying to do.
That, he has to hire the surfaces of all these lunatics, and as you said, each one keeps getting goofier and goofier than the.
One before them, And now all of a sudden.
He's the ring master of this service, which is not something he was cut out for.
No, and he is very much under the microscope of his boss, who is I can't remember his first name. A Link is the last name, so he keeps calling him the missing link and all of these different sausage link. I don't know any type of link that you can
possibly think of. And he's great. I really like the actor of the Place's Boss, And unfortunately I think he died right after this, because this is his last movie and his state of death is in nineteen sixty six, so probably right after the wraps shooting for this one.
The casting is great because we have the name actors who we love, but even the bit actors as Otto and I were watching James, Oh that guy that, by the way, is jumping to the end. Paul Winfield plays the garbage man at the end. Witch great seeing him. I'm sure when I saw the movie on TV long long ago, I know that was before Sounder, I probably hadn't seen Sounder yet, so I wouldn't have drawn that connection.
Yeah, he's not even in the credits, I believe.
Yeah, that's why it's always fun to go be for me.
To look at the people who are in the movie but are uncredited. Like at one point Tim and I are watching it in the place and I turned to Tim I said, I look like a Meal Sitka and Tim said no, really, I said it looked like it. So I immediately, you know, check it up on IMDb and I said, yeah, that's who it was. Emil Sitka was the janitor. Uh yeah, Johnny Silver is in it but not credited.
Donald A. Miliar.
A lot of familiar fits, some of these, some people I love. Once in a while you can find people who's entire your career is like four hundred credits, and three hundred and eighty eight of them are on credit.
I love the guy who plays the accountant that comes in and is telling him how much he loves his bookkeeping and loves his fours.
That's Brian O'Byrne.
Oh so good.
I love that a lot of Yeah, he was in.
A lot, a lot of stuff when we were young.
I remember him.
You know, sometimes those fours can look like nines at rank crewe to me because I have terrible handwriting, and my fours do look like nine.
So when I can, if I write a number down, then later, so I can't read it. What is that?
I can vouch for the fact that Tim has some of the worst handwriting I've ever seen.
In my wife, the hunting character is doing his job so well that instead of there being a figure missing, we've got the overseer coming in and telling him how neat a s handwriting is, just how wonderful he is, basically, and that just drives his boss into even more apoplectic behavior. And yeah, there's this whole thing in here. Why I
brought up the brownies at the beginning. One of his office mates keeps making brownies, and apparently they are horrible, absolutely terrible, but she gives them out like crazy, and he accidentally swipes a couple brownies into a brown paper bag.
He's going to try to pawn them off to one of the security guards, which is a nice little bit of business because not only does he sweep the brownies in there, but he also sweeps this big old bundle of bills in there, and you think he's just going to hand that over right to that security guard, but no, security guard's wise. No more brownies, please. I had them yesterday and they were awful.
Not again, please, No, Well, I think he's also going to put it in a trash can and then it comes out and stops. He doesn't want her to see he's throwing away or brownies. I love that.
Yeah, when he meets Bob Denver, who's the first one of these lunatics that he gets to meet, and Bob Denver, God bless him. I watch a lot of Gillis and of course Gilligan's Island when I was growing up. I love his face. I just love how expresses his face is like when he his eyes get really big and sometimes a little cross eyed, and he just is so earnest in his delivery all the time. I just love
watching him. And yeah, that little bit of business with the brown paper bag, how he's about to throw it in and then throws it behind us back and Bob catches it and then hands it it.
I admit I like Bob Denver and stuff like this, And even in Adobe Gillis more than I did Gilligan. I was never a Gilligan fan. I did them in in Dope.
He was great manner. Chid Krebs was a great, great character.
And it's kind of neat that he gets get paired up with Jackie Joseph in this movie, Big Joseph, Tim and I were saying, she's gotta be It's her and Jamie Farr certainly the only two of the main casts that are left, but maybe the only two except for some of the kids that we saw who weren't credited in there, who might still be around. But she's still a right sounds well, she's a Facebook friend and we have other freshs you know, that know her better.
It sounds like she's.
In great shape Knockwood, so that's nice that she's going.
I grew up with her mostly knowing her as Missus Futterman from Gremlin's and I love that she kind of fell into that Joe Dante camp and probably was in that camp because she was all the way back in Little Shop of Horrors, So she ended up being in things like Small Soldiers and just these other Dante things that he did because he loved those old movies. Of course, Walter Paisley, the name shows up in so many of the Dante stuff.
I remember her as Rowena from the Andy Griffiths Show.
Yeah, there's a lot of connections to the Andy Griffith Show. We should probably talk a little bit about the director of this Howard Morris, who was Ernest T. Bass on the Andy Griffiths show. My God, that guy's hilarious. And as soon as I saw his picture on Wikipedia, I was like, oh, yeah, I know this guy. I've seen him so many times, and I'm not even a fan of your show of shows, but I know the uncle goofy character, every holy cap Oh him and Sid Caesar
and that embrace that just will not end. Oh my god, so good. And then there's all this connection between him and cartoons and cartoon voices. Same thing with the actress we were just talking about. She was in a bunch of cartoons. There's a whole bunch of I think him and the two writers that he worked with on this also did a man called Flintstone. They also did with six You Get egg Roll and a few other films together. He yeah, I was very surprised that he was not
just the actor but also the actor director. And I think he does a great job in this. I love some of the use of the freeze frames and the editing, which I know is not necessarily him editing that stuff. But this film comes together very well.
It moves fast, and which is a virtue because as you know, comedies in general should be an hour and a half cops and so many of them, you know, they wear out there welcome And this lays out the plot because again going back to your earlier point, it's kind of a heist movie and a farce because the first part is saying, how are you going to do that? And we the audience know it's all laid out, very meticulous. We had an hour to get in. You do this, you do that, and then of course it all goes awry.
You know that answer the fun because we know what they're supposed to do, and then midway through the film suddenly that twist when oh no, you know, after tomorrow we're all going to be automated, so he's got to call everybody up when they're not ready. So I think the directing is great. It's interesting that Morris, as far as I recall, doesn't have a little cameo.
Yeah.
I didn't see himself in and.
He did a lot of voice work, so he could have even just put his voice in there like mel Brooks did with the producers in his first fit and he and he doesn't even do that. Was that's like maybe the only disappointment of this is that he didn't put himself in there somewhere.
But go back to the Andy Griffith thing.
Alan and Bullock, the writers of this were Andy Griffith Show writers as well, So there's there's a lot of connection. In fact, think I said to Tim at one point, I said, Wow, you got Dazzy lou Vat in this movie, because there's so many of those familiar faces who worked in those shows in the sixties or fifties. And the other thing Tim and I talked about, and I was thinking about this later, was Howie Morris, like you just said,
was famous for Ernest T. Bass on the Andy Griffith Show. Well, everybody who loves the Andy Griffith Show, if you're honest, you have to acknowledge the fact that, despite the fact that the show was set in North Carolina, there are very few people of color throughout the history of that show that you get to see. And Tim and I were saying, there's a lot of people in this movie of people of color and different backgrounds. How he's got
African Americans playing guards, police officers. No, that's pretty unusual for the time. Garbage man too, and a garbage man but yeah, but I'm saying there and I just thought
they was interesting. I'm thinking, yeah, I wonder if you know, by that time he had already been working on the Andy Griffith Show for a number of years, if he was aware like, oh, you know, you got some mixture of types even in the background, because remember he's stars with a pretty liberal, progressive group of guy, said Caesar Kyle Reiner mel Brooks, you know all those people.
On your show of show.
I just wondered how, I mean, obviously it had to be done on purpose.
You didn't do something like that by accident.
In nineteen sixty six.
I real quick want to read a line from his Wikipedia page because this just blows my mind. During World War Two, he was assigned to a United States Army Special Services unit where he was the first sergeant. Maurice Evans was the company commander, and Carl Reiner and Werner Klemper were soldiers in the unit. Based in Honolulu. The unit entertained American troops throughout the Pacific. Can you imagine
that group of guys together. And that sets the stage right there too, because he also worked not only with Carl Reiner and then of course with mel Brooks, and you see him show up in mel Brooks films. I'm trying to remember if it's High Anxiety where he's like this crazy professor with the voice and everything, no lil ol'man okay, thank you. And then ernder Klemper of course with Hogan's heroes, because all of these guys turn around
and work on Hogan's heroes as well. Yeah, looking at the writer's credits, you just see the same things between all of them, like the Flintstones, Top Cat, Wait Till Your Father Gives Home, Alice, the love Boat, And that's both in writing and in directing.
It's crazy Jackie Joseph doing voices. I remember Jackie Joseph from Josie and the Pussycat. She was one of the voices of one of the Pussycats. I don't know which one, but I know that I know for sure that was her voice. Maurice Evans, if I'm not mistaken. Was Samantha Stevens father I'm Bewitched, And of course one of the great Shakespearean actors as well.
Yeah, and of course doctor Isaiahs. And then wasn't he also a villain on Batman as well? I know he wasn't mister Freeze because that was otto premajer. But I aware that Maurice Sevens was villain. He was the puzzler.
Ah, there you go, and poor Maurice Evans if Batman wasn't lowering himself enough. He even ended up doing one of the last things he did was a love boat episode.
Like I said, these guys were doing love boat episodes. The two writers wrote and Howard Morris directed. This is probably the most restrained I've ever seen Walter Brennan in a film. He has the ability to go crazy. And of course we've seen him kind of as that little old man again, you know, like Rio Bravo and things. Oh, you guys are just upsetting me, you know, like wearing
an apron and all these things super feminized. But here I guess, well, he's feminized a little bit insofar as he's the proud papa to his dog who's about to have puppies. And that becomes a running thing through the
entire movie. And the other running joke that we have through the whole movie is Jack Guilford, the inimitable Jack Guilford, who I just freaking love watching that guy him and his hearing loss and that he's been working in the machine shops in prison for so long he can't hear anymore. So that is really the first thing. Actually, Brennan says, we need a safecracker. So the safecracker we get is Guilford, but he can't hear, so then he needs to get end the hearing aid. So that we had on over
to Milton Burrell. Yet another piece of television royalty.
That gets back to the question of how all of these characters how they know each other. Because when Harry the Jim Hutton character is asked by Pops the Walter Brennan, how'd you know how to find a safecracker? Says I asked some cops. I love the headline and say, yeah, he told me, said this guy's getting out in the day or stuff. I got the impression.
And this was one question I had that Hutton had dealt with Burl's character Luther, that he had done with him before, and I'm thinking why, like, you couldn't get a hearing aid from anybody better than Luther. So he's so Milton Burl or saying Tim and I were saying it was a perfect role for him. One of the better things he ever did, because it was so well
written for his type of character. And as I believe Tim said this that day we were watching it, it's the type of character that could have easily been played by Phil Silvers as well. But that was my first thought. I'm like, oh my god, why would you go to a guy like this just to get a cheap era of of hearing aids. I mean, you couldn't have gotten
it from someplace else. But the other funny that I thought about after, I don't know if you or Tim just said it about how he lost his hearing because of all the machine shops that he worked and in prison. I mean, it's kind of the magic of comedy because in a sense, you could play that situation as tragic, but instead they turn it around and it's a comic situation,
you know, because you know it's one of these guys. Okay, so we spent a lot of time for safe cragging, but he obviously wasn't a violent man in any way. Gentle lazed potato chip salesman be a violent you know.
Crackerjacks.
Crackerjack, Yeah, and Crackerjack that's yeah, that.
They have to cheap out and get a used hearing aid.
Hearing aids are expensive, I can attest to that. Who knows what in nineteen sixty six, so print up another sheet. There were two comedians I never found funny, Milton Burrell and Joey Bishop, and yet in this film they're they're not just bearable, they're actually very good. And also Milton
Burrell and it's a mad, bad, mad mad world. I liked him very much in both of those film And also so I don't know if you've ever done The Oscar, which is one of the worst movies ever made, but he's smart enough to realize in that movie, where everybody else is overplaying, he underplays. But this movie, it is a perfect role for him, because again it is that Phil Silver's kind of Hi, how are you? You know? Guy? You know who's gonna take your wallet when you're not looking.
And that's also I think the point in the film when you realize, okay, now they're in it real deep. But first it was just Pops who wanted to run the machinery one more time for old time's sake and wasn't expecting anything in return. And then they get Jack Guilford, the safe cracker, but they offer him two thousand dollars, which we figured outs I guess roughly about nine thousand more or less. Now not a lot of money, No,
nineteen thousand, nineteen. Now you're talking. But still once they get Milton Burl and you realize it's this is gonna get out of hand.
Burrell is the instinct of the of the money issue because he's the one who is so greedy. He keeps wanting more and more, and he keeps pushing all the rest to want more. To the little devil on the shoulder, you know, he's put to want more as well. And I just wanted to quickly say I agree wholeheartedly with Tim. I never found Milton burrole funny, and yet I loved him in It's.
A Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World.
I think it's one of he's one of the best characters in that film, and it's by far, for me, the best thing he ever did.
And we've talked about this a little bit on the show before, but as far as comedians that kind of overstayed their welcome or that were just forced down in your throat when you're younger, Bob Hope or George Burns, and then Milton Burrell now I've not gone back and rediscovered Burrel and found that he was absolutely fabulous, but I have with Burns and with Bob Hope. But of course when they're octogenarians, non genarians centurions in on my TV,
I'm just like, get these guys off of here. These are so cornball, this is awful stuff, and just still trying to be relevant. I remember George Burns on the cover of What Was a Penthouse with Vanessa Williams. I'm just like, what why is George Burns on the cover of this Born magazine? But Okay, I've never gone back and rediscovered Milton Berle and been like, oh, yeah, this is really funny stuff. He's always just been annoying to me,
but he plays it perfectly in this. And he also introduces probably the weakest link of this whole movie, and not in so far as his acting chops, but just the manner of Joey Bishop, because he is in itinerant gambler who is in for all kinds of money to so many people. And I love when they show him that he's on the phone and he's reading the racing record and just talking with Burrel on the phone, and then they cut to that wider shot and you see
just nothing else in that room. There's just the racing record, the crate that he has instead of any sort of table or anything, sitting in like a folding chair. His son's in front of the box and just seems very put out, and then of course the wife is incredibly put out, and you're just like, oh, this guy's trouble.
I would not.
Want him on my crew if I was doing anything. And don't they use him just for what it is he getting the truck for them?
No, he's a sewer worker.
The sewer worker, thank you.
He's the one who knows how to men, you know, how to get out of there. Because at some point hot and discovers or maybe he already knew it was there.
It looked up.
They have the submarine top in the in the basement of the building that goes into the super for some unknown Yeah, it.
Seems like some sort of security breach could happen there, especially the guy who just comes in is doing his rounds and closes it up, and you're like, he's not going to look to see if somebody came in here that he felt like a stormtrooper. Let's do your job.
Because it was obviously unlocked. He put the seal back on it. And well, I said to Timm, he's walking up the stairs and the stairs had no backing on him. I said, how is he not seeing those six people right behind huddle behind the stairs.
Also, all of those people were soaking wet, so there would have been water. It stands all around, and he did the city. But again, you gotta suspend. You just believe these kind of films. Elim didn't find out about this because he knew how to work at stewer and he would have been in and out, but millions of dollars far less time.
But he needed a boat, and these guys need a boat to go through the sewers. So they ended up hiring Victor Buono here as the captain the kiddie ride. And he just is very, very nautical. He reminds me of a character that a rip Torn or somebody would play later on, just like taking his job way too seriously,
has some sort of mental problems. I don't know if he's ever really been on a real boat, but I love that every time we see him, he's standing behind the wheel of a ship, like even when they cut from him out by the ride to his private chambers, and he's got that wheel in front of him and he's just, oh my god. He is giving some great speeches about the sea, and all of these nautical things love this role for him, and I just wish it was bigger.
May I say that I've looked forward life time for this very moment, when at last I'd be commissioned to construct a substantial lession.
Won't you be seated? Feel free to smoke? Will you be blue water sailing?
Not exactly, mostly inland waterways.
You might call it that.
Yeah, you aren't.
A sleep five three straight rooms brusha folks.
Show, captain. We don't want to sleep anybody.
We just want to should fit down a manhole.
He lives a very vibrant fantasy life and a great.
Scottish accent too.
And yeah this is he's still got a little bit of his hair unless he's wearing a piece, but it doesn't look like a piece. It looks like his real hair. And then it does look like he's added a lot of gray to the sides and to his mustache to add a little bit more of the age to him. Like I said, what was he like twenty eighteen, twenty eight crazy, and he looks older than Jack Guildford. The only person he looks younger than is Walter Brennan.
It's crazy, it's amazing, it's kind of funny, but it's also sad he could that he could. I mean, obviously they did have to enhance it a little bit to make them look older, but you know you can do that with young people, So he doesn't fool anybody. Leonardo DiCaprio, Right, if you didn't know how young he was, and you just showed this to somebody who had never seen him or heard of him before, they would have easily believed this was a guy in his fifties at least.
And then Bob Denver comes back into the story and he's got the best job of all. He just has to keep the woman in the window busy and that's it.
He doesn't have to get wet. He doesn't have to.
Oh, trust me, he's getting a wet that's yeah.
Well, if that's the unrated version, see what happened in that room while they're all.
In the men one night at Imageans.
We were wondering, what are all of these people living in this condemned area, there's all these guys condemned, like it's they gotta be tearing it all down. And yet there's a couple across the street with a little boy, and the father and son think it's a sex orgy going on outside their window. It's like, what's going on in that part of town?
I read about it in the magazine.
She's the artist living in that studio. I get, but that you're right, it's all they're in this decrepit back alley and there are on a couple of the buildings that it's condemned.
And yet nineteen sixty seven this movie comes, we are in the free love era, and yeah, she's definitely embracing that.
Of course, Jim Hutton character too. At the beginning, as you were mentioning with the din Din, I love that he's got this beautiful next door neighbor who wants to have din Din and she brings him as a beef strogan Off or something, and then you see that it's just left outside the door.
Dorothy Provine, who was the woman who were with him at the mint and makes him the brownies every day, who obviously has feelings for him, and he knows that and is doing everything had to avoid getting trapped in her web. But I mean, she's a wonderful suite. That's not what he's looking for right now. He's looking for the wild life, and I think he got all of the wildlife he needed in that one.
He's trying to play that tender trap.
I'd love to she's got that big sunflower dress on and everything. Of course, I was like, wasn't she in Please Don't Meet the Daisies? That was such a weird TV showers.
You know, I don't know she was in that because she was very close friends with Doris Day because they were both animal activists.
And I'm sorry, I'm still kind of hubbing back to, not to Dorothy and Provine, but to Jackie Joseph.
Yeah, Jackie Joseph was, Yeah, she was in the Doris Day show.
It doesn't look like Please Don't Eat the Daisies.
Amazing that she was in one. Was not in one of those shows.
She wasn't Gomer Pyle. Well, of course, what I most remember her in was It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World, where she plays Milton Burle's wife. I'm sure is a Dorothy Provine. Dorothy Provine and I remember as a kid having cognitive dissonance because I would watch both movies so much, and here's a husband and wife, and yet in the other movie they don't know each other, and eventually it worked things out. But when you're young, these things matter to you.
I remember Dorothy Provine, she's like the chief for that. I mean, you feel so bad for her at the end of It's a mad man. I love that little but she's she's on the whole.
No, she's a pot of money is buried beneath the big w and nobody knows what that mean. And then she sees these trees that are making a w and Spencer Tracy as she didn't know who he is. We know he's the cop trying to catch them all. But she says, I don't know who you are, but if you and I can get that money, then I can get away from my awful mother and my awful husband and my awful brother. And you feel for her because she's much like in it. She's the only decent person.
She agrees to help. She's really lied to because you know, Harry does tell her the truth at a fifty thousand dollars when I don't know if he tells her it's because of her brownies or not. But he says, I just need to get the presses going so I can replace that money. And it's only after they're printing all this, and I said, wait a minute, this is much more than fifty thousand. So I feel for her in that regard too. It's like she's just a nice person caught up a bunch of scoundrels.
Well. I felt that that little moment between her and Spencer Tracy at.
The end, it's a mad man, man man.
It just had such a wonderful feeling to it. Without being Madelin or anything. I just I always loved that and speaking like you were Tim at the beginning about how you had a certain number of movies that you felt like you saw over and over and over again as a kid. One of the ones that I remember seeing more than once as a kid was another movie Dorothy pro Vine was in, and that is Good Neighbor Sam with Jack Lemon for Sam and Under the Yum Yum Tree, The Two Jackmen.
A lot of Jack Lemon in this podcast today.
A twist of Lemon, twist.
Of you guys should start your own show just all about Jack Lemon Films. You'd be here for quite a few years.
But no Walter Brennan. But he just say Walter Brennan too. He's often too much over the top, but he's very good in this was Pops and with his love for his eagle, the beagle. Now the beagle was Inky, but it was played by Peanuts if I recall correctly.
Well, they had to change the name because some people had a peanut allergy.
Oh geez, holy cow.
And then Inky just makes sense because he's a former printer.
And Ikey like Peanuts, like she really was about to give birth at any moment. That was quite some acting on her part.
Oh yeah, no, her teats were very small enough.
Birth she was.
She was a porker too.
She's run around you know. The mint there.
Given some of the best performance, especially running away from Milton Burle.
Yeah.
We really get into a very French farce moment with that, with the sneaking from doorway to doorway and you know who's coming out which doorway and who's going in the other one. I mean, I've seen that on Scooby.
Dooe, going back and forth. You see the dog the guard in Milton Burle.
As dressed up as George Washington for even the suspending ones. Disbelieve that was a bit much.
I just love that though. I love the soul. Like you mentioned before, we have to go a night early because they're going to automate everything, so everybody stop what you're doing. So everybody's in a costume of some sort, with maybe the exception of Hutton and then even Gilford's got his YMCA outfit on. But then you know she's in the two to two and Milton Burl's and the
amazing Washington get up. Of course, as I'm seeing this, I'm just like, Okay, here's the poster image of Washington crossing the Delaware with Milton Burle as Washington and having this tiny little boat that they're crossing through the sewers. It really worked for me, and that poster art is fantastic.
Was there the famous mad artist?
It had to have been that looks so much like his style?
He Jack Davis, Jack Davis on my walls here, I've got two of the posters that he did for Mad Mad, Mad Mad World. I think if it wasn't him, it was someone like him. Would just loved being able to do these caricatures that people would have known at the time.
Did More Drucker do a lot of those two I'm sure.
I'm trying to remember who did The Long Goodbye, because that poster was the second poster that they did. They actually re released The Long Goodbye with a new poster that was all Mad magazine style, with even the overlapping word bubbles, those square word bubbles that they would use, and that was what really helped sell that film, to show that it was much more comic than this kind of neo noir thing that they were doing with the first poster with Ellie Gould and his cat.
I remember the first time I saw that, and I'm like, this is an odd movie.
No, yes, I hated it the first time I saw it and out.
Yeah, exactly films totally. The first time I saw it, I didn't like it, and then went like ten years and saw it again and.
Then I loved it.
So I think I was probably just too young the first time I saw it.
As they break into the mint, you know, you mentioned the orgy scene before the people up on the window sill looking down.
The unrated version has that, but we're not talking about that one.
Yeah, that's that scene, plus then what happens with Bob Denver later on. We leave that to the mind, but I love the whole thing of them breaking in and having to go through these steps like the electronic eye. The electronic eye bet with her. That is so good.
N seven.
As soon as they started going under that eye, I was like, Oh no, they gonna get around this. And then when these throw on her stomach to avoid her boobs triggering it, and then I'm like, oh no, that freaking skirt that too too.
She's in what's gonna right exactly.
There are a lot of good moments in this film. I really have to thank you guys for turning me on to this because even those people looking at the quote unquote orgy love when the kids sticks his head out of his looks like they're having an orgy.
It reminded me of the Producers where they had the woman outside the building with the Nazi saying I'm not a concierge. Just these little bits that add so much to these films.
So the movie poster for Who's Minding the Mint was designed by Jack Ricard, No, not the more well known Frank Frizetta or Jack Davis, as some mistakingly believe. Ricard was an artist known for his work in Mad magazine as well.
So there you go.
Did you guys know that there was a Dell comic that was based on this movie?
No?
No, They were doing a whole series of twelve cent comic books to tie in with movies, and this was one of those.
Wow, wow, I want that, Yeah, especially if it's twelve cents.
Yeah.
I don't think it's twelve cents anymore.
I was gonna say, sure, won't be twelve cents now.
Yeah, but no, I did get a copy of that, so I was able to all Right, it's a CBR file and those are difficult to read. But if I change it to a ZIP file. Here's a little hint for you comic readers out there. If you change it to a ZIP then you can open it up as a ZIP file. It is actually drawn out. There's one on Etsy.
Oh yeah, because the cover is just not a drawing.
Yeah.
Wow.
Them at the Mint and Samson Link was the guy's name. Okay, and they even have their little numbers on because one's twenty two, one's twenty three, wins twenty four. This looks pretty legit. And then a nice ad for a Daisy bb gun. On the back cover, they.
Have the one with the guy kicking sand and Charles Atlas. Yeah. Well, you know we haven't talked about one last major cast member, who if has been on your show, the great Jamie Farrm. You mentioned Mash earlier, but I think that if I recall Craig, I love that episode too you talked about, but that might have been before Clinger came on.
I'm not sure. For season three, episode eleven, I looked it up so I could actually go back and watch it and he Clinger. Yep, he would have been perfect for that, and I think I see a picture of him in this right now. After they try unsuccessfully to persuade Klinger to have one of his relatives ship the order because he's right there in Toledo and he probably has relatives over there, Trapper remembers a woman he wants
knew in Chicago. He calls her and persuades her to pick up the order and put it on a plane labeled as medical supplies bound for South Korea.
I remember it well, and I think I enjoyed it the first time I saw it because it did remind me of who's my ding to mint.
I can see that, and then yeah, Jamie Farren here with very little dialogue and even less dialogue in English, and I love to see those Lemonese guy and Joey Bishop, obviously Jewish, just going back and forth like they're native Italians.
I used to write for a Chicago magazine called Fra Noi. It was an Italian American magazine. It's still around. I still write for them every once in a while. But years ago I wrote a piece for Mother's Day about all the Italian American mothers on television over the years.
The editor wanted me to do one for Father's Day.
So I'm trying to think, you know, and I didn't want to just do negative people like Frank Barone and stuff like that. I wanted to find someone positive, and I said, you know, for me as a little kid, although I wasn't consciously aware at the father that seemed to me to be the first Italian father I saw on a television show was actually Damn Williams of The Danny Thomas Show, who of course was Lebanese and who help ours career because they were both from Toledo. They
were both Lebanese. He said his character on Make Room for Daddy was make an Italian father, because in that time in the fifties, remember you, Yeah, Ward Cleveland, Ozzie Nelson, Ozzie Nelson, Robert Young and father knows Best. So you had all these real waspy, milk toast kind of guys who were these armchair philosophers. And then you had Danny Williams, who would yell and scream at his kids at the same time he would hug and kiss them. He'd kissed his son Rusty. I don't think you ever saw Ward
kiss the beaver. It's a family podcast, out of ease. But as an Italian American kid, you know, our fathers kissed us, We kissed our uncles. It was very common for I like that that he was to me like the first Italian American father. So yeah, you can look at Jamie Foarr. He certainly had the nose to be an Italian as well as did Danny Thomas.
They give him kudos for his enthusiasm. He throws himself into that role.
And of course, as Tim can tell you, I have a deep personal connection. I got on a question and answer episode of Gilbert Godfried's Amazing Colossal podcast and Tim. Do you remember it had to be Gil. I don't know who else would have said. Yeah, gil Gil for whatever reason, was convinced that I sounded like Jamie Farr. No one had ever told me that before. I've been on the radio for twenty five years here in Rochester,
no one has ever said that. But Gilbert Godfried for some reason put me together under the same category for vocal stylings as Jamie Foss.
So I wore that as a badge of honor.
Can you say something about the mud No.
I didn't say anything about them.
I knew who the mud Hens are.
I mean I saw them play for many years here in Rochester because they were in our league, the same league with the Rochester Red Wings the Toledo.
Now Jamie Fowre had also been a guest on the Gilbert Godfrey Amazing Colossal podcast, and he told an interesting story. He didn't unlike many of the guests, he didn't like to bad mouth people. And of course they were trying to get into bad mouth Joey Bishop in particular, and
he said end because he's Joey Bishop's brother. Oh cousin, that's right, but he doesn't speak English, and so he mistakenly thinks that the garbage collectors are the police, and he runs in and all the characters are together, and he said, I had to do it in one take.
And how he wanted me to come into the room and he was going to have the camera just follow me from one person to the to to explain in Italian that the money has gone off, you know, and I need somebody. And Joey, of course is my cousin. He's the one that brings me into the the caper. And Joey's not in the room at the time. He's trying to get some ink off of his face that he had gotten when they were trying to get print
money in the mint. And so I had to go to Victor Bono, Walter Brennan, Dorothy Provine, Jack Guilford, Milton Burrell and everybody explaining to him, and finally come out, Joey comes out, and I finally I have one line to Joey, and Joey comes to me actually, and he comes to me and I have ready to give my one line now because we're only doing this in one take. We're not doing any cover shots at all, and Joey stops the thing he says, hey, you're standing in my
key light. So and now I have to do the whole thing all over again, going to everybody, everybody again, and we get to Joey. We come out to do the thing, and again he stops the camera. All I had was one line to him, creve hold up, so let's see. Yeah, and he stops it again. He was doing it on purpose. And finally Howie Moore said, you know, Joey, you're not working with the rat pack, and he says, the next one I'm gonna print.
Don't you dare?
Don't you dare? Cut this.
So we got to the thing and I made sure that nobody was in anybody's key light or anything else, and finally got the line out. But he really wasn't very nice at that point. That those are got to rest his soul.
He passed on.
But you know, those are cheap tricks that you do in the business when you don't care for somebody and you pull those those stunts on people.
Yeah.
I've seen a lot of comparisons between this movie and Ocean's eleven, the original Oceans eleven, which I still haven't watched, even though I like the Soderbergh Ocean's eleven a lot, not twelve, not thirteen. I'm okay with eight about eleven. I like a lot.
I like the eleven. The Soderbergh the original one not so much.
Yeah, the original Oceans eleven is not a great movie. The best part about it is Dean and Sammy's songs and the end and Angie Dickenson wow, oh yeah, and Antie Dickinson. But no Ocean of the original Oceans eleven is the best part of the whole story. And in that way, yes, there's similarities to this one, absolutely well.
And it's similar also to Mad Mad, Mad World in a sense that here you have these elaborate plots. They look like something who's gonna send them awry, but then they succeed, they get the money, but then at all three movies they lose the money. So it's almost the remains of what was left of the Hollywood code. I guess the crime doesn't pay. We can't let them get away with it. But if we could jump to the
end of Who's Minding the Mint? I love the last scene during the credits, because all of the money that was stolen gets taken by the garbage men who don't know that these boxes are filled with the dollars and they dump it into the river. And then the last scene you see the characters all in scuba gear, including Inky.
That is one hell of a way to end this movie, to have your credit roll call being with them wearing these scuba masks. And of course you know they're nowhere near water at all.
It's supposed to simulate them being underwater. So I said to Tim, why are they all taking the thing, the mask out of their mouth.
So we can see their faces a little bit?
Bactly are they committing mass suicide because they can't find the money.
I can't remember if Victor Bono has his pipe in his mouth when he yeah.
I think that's what broke the illusion for me, because otherwise I bought hook, limb and sinker pun intended well.
And Victor does a great job earlier after his boat sinks dutiful, so he's got to go get another boat, and he's doing a backstroke. I mean, that's not a stunt actor. That's Victor himself.
And holding aloft that American flag for fear of getting it wet.
Too, very patriotic.
I thought that little with Buono going to get another boat. I kind of liked how earnest he was about his responsibility to these people. It wasn't just the money, it was also you know, like Tim Smike, he just loved anything to do with the sea or with boating or whatever. He took it very, very seriously. And as soon as that boat fell at part, he's like, oh, I gotta go and get something, figure out something. I think I
read in the trivia on IMDb. Then when we see him coming back with presumably all the boats that he had stolen from the kiddie park ride that he worked on, I think they said we see him coming in with four boat and then them going back out with six or something.
Well, these nitpicks, jeez.
They planned this out so well.
But obviously they didn't plan it out so well because even if that boat hadn't fallen apart with just them in it, which obviously it was going to because there were too many of them, how did they think it was gonna stay together when they had the I mean, you're printing like six million dollars and one hundred dollar bill.
Yeah, the weight of that money, even as how ane hundred dollar bills would have been way too much. And I just kept thinking about that while they were printing it. I was like, how are you guys going to carry this thing out?
I said that to Tam while we're watching them. I'm like, that's so heavy. That is really really, really and plus you know, God forbid you get it any water on it.
Now it's going to really be Yeah.
I guess it just dries instantaneously too. But we can't pick a partible.
Yeah, this film start picking that thread, it all falls to be. You know. The Captain reminded me. We talked earlier about Robert Aldrich and filmed The Flight of the Phoenix. As you remember that, the Hardy Krueger character who has this elaborate plan for how they're gonna rebuild the plane, and then it turns out all these built our model planes.
So here you got the Captain. It's like, you know, he's finally got this chance to you know, he's asking about how big of a boat and then when they tell we just need something to fit in the sewers, okay, but he seems to be one of the few characters who would have done this for nothing, just because it appealed to his love that could finally do something with boats.
And despite Inky leaving the room and all of the shenanigans going on with Milton Burn and then Jim Hutton having to come after him, things are going okay for a point until I don't remember if it's Inky starts to have babies, and then things just kind of blow up from there because then we've got the ink. Joey Bishop fucks around with the machine, he gets a whole thing of ink in his face, Jim falls in the machine, he gets his shirt ripped off and has money being
printed up on his shirt instead. It's just everything starts to go to hell pretty darn quickly, and yet they make it out. They make it out okay with nobody catching them, and it's really just the whole misunderstanding of the garbage men that really fucks these guys over. I was surprised that there's chase scene in the middle of this, though.
They're chasing each other because they're trying to get away from that revival van, which I think if they had just sat a little differently, they probably could have just all sat in like the two vehicles that they had, the ice cream truck and the open jeep that they have.
I don't remember now, why they had that but didn't have to do again with what we were talking about earlier because the plans got changed and they had to all just come that night, so they had to come with what they had. In fact, we talked about that earlier. How basically almost all of them other than hunt And are costumed in one way or another. Of course, Bob Denver was costumed to begin with, as was Victor Bono ice cream Man, as was Victor Buono, but then you
get everybody else. Tim kind of likened it to that Twilight Zone episode of the.
In the six characters in search of an up.
He's right, exactly the ball.
We had a Scotsman in both cases, Tim Soldier, Yeah, I think why they ended up that van, which was kind of funny.
We loved that. Shall we get into Auto pointed I was one of john Ford's favorite tunes. Apparently a lot of john Ford movies.
That would have been a perfect time for the director to do z audio commentary and have him be the one giving the sermon.
It's a Lollo Shiffer in score, and Tim correctly pointed out that you can hear shades of the Mission Impossible theme at the beginning of it, and of course Missing Impossible I think went on the air the next year. I liked the score of this as well.
I thought it was really good for me.
Something that's kind of important for conn added if you have a great score that fits with the movie, well then it's just gravy.
And this was the worst thing in comedy movies is when they add a silly score or when they you know, speed things up. But we don't need that. It's much better to have the jazzy score or mad mad Mad Mad world that's got a great score too. Oh, I love this score on that.
Yeah, it's really surprising that there is the inevitable breakup between Jim and his love interest, but it takes less than ten minutes for them to come back together. Usually it's the entire third act or the beginning of the third act there's some sort of misunderstanding and then they come back together right towards the end and embrace and
all that. But no, it's just ten minutes. He finally gets confronted about all the money they lose, the money, they go after the money, don't get the money back, and then he's about to go in and turn himself in, which is surprising, and then they all show up with fifty thousand dollars that had been stuffed into Inky's box while she was giving birth. We don't want to think about what else is on that money.
I think that is a good point. But it's nice to see all of the characters. Jim Hutton is surprised that they're giving up this money, and they're all like waving giving him a thumbs up.
It's nobody was more surprised than me. And I kept waiting for a punchline for that. I kept waiting for them to say, Okay, good thing, we got all the rest of the money back, or something not necessarily the deep sea diving thing that they're doing. But I just thought there would be some sort of Milton Burle punchline there to be like do you think he knows it's counterfeit or something like that. Like I was waiting for some punchline.
The scuba diving scene at the credits as the punch punchline, because because, like Tim said, such a it's really sweet because these guys like Evan, you know, like you always see in these movies, had gotten carried away with their greed.
But then at the.
End, you know, they had forged some kind of camaraderie with this guy, and they felt bad that he was going to be in trouble and go to jail.
For really that was that.
Was intentional, and they'd come together and say, here we found this, we forgot we had this fifty thousand youd take it And you're thinking, oh my god, that's so nan Yeah. Then for me at least, the punchline was they're not giving up though, because they're going and looking for that. They're not going to just let it go.
When I just verified Victor does not have his pipe at the end, but Milton Borl does have his cigar.
Not going to go without that. The guy Tim You might cut out for a minute before. What is that famous Ford song that we were talking about?
Is it Shall we Gather at the River?
Yes?
That's it, Shall we Gather at the River? That's what it was, Yeah, because that was one of Ford's favorites.
I bet you he.
Uses that in at least half a dozen films.
Well, we'll credit Howard Morris with knowing that, and watch the Jock Ford.
And then to tie things up at the very end when she is there to give back the money, Pop comes up and all this, and she says, oh, let's have dinner, and he goes dinner, and we realize the implications of what dinner is going to mean for him for the rest of his life, and it's finally time to settle down and put down some roots with this wonderful woman with horrible brownies.
Technically speaking, it was his playboy ways, because remember he comes in with the sexy neighbor and he's so busy paying attention to her that when he's putting the brownies down the disposal, he doesn't even notice that the money's there. That was of the beginning of his problem. So better you should have the domestic bliss problems with Verna than all these other headaches.
I don't know. I blame Verna for not being a better cook. I think it's really a woman's responsibility to learn how to cook and plays a man, and by her failing in those motherly and wifely duties, she really is the one that screwed up this whole thing.
Those times I'm glad I'm on Zoom with you and not sitting next to.
You, punch me in the.
Mouth, nokening lightening my comments.
She should have been a better tread wife, is what I'm trying to say.
If you're going to go for that traditional ideal, technically you should blame Verna's mother then, because in those days the daughters learned how to cook from their mothers, so maybe her mother was a terrible cook.
Of course, Berna thought her brownies are great because she thinks he's eating them all the time. No, he's Cassidy throwing him out or giving him the security guards who will not take him a second tick.
Once is enough, despite Jacqueline Suzanne.
Because I was thinking out and our watching it that that Top Copy had just been year or so earlier, which has similar you know, a group of disparate characters come together to perform a robbery and then things start to go awry. So I don't know if that was deliberate or coincidental, but I'm sure when I saw Who's Minding the Men long long ago, I didn't know that other film or wouldn't have made that connection.
It's funny I grew up on Top Copy and not this film.
I love Peter houstonof so Yeah.
And then for a little while I was like Top Copy, we're fife these but very different. One absolute classic. The other one, okay, it's good for a Sunday afternoon.
Never on a Sunday.
Oh but you know, there are those movies. They're a Saturday afternoon movie or a late Saturday night movie, you know, and of course it has everything to do with what you remember from your childhood and stuff. But they're not great movies. Well, Tim and I used the phrase when we're watching this this week. They're comfort movies, you know, in one way or another.
Yeah, no, and a lot of them. Of course, they have lines that you then use. I remember the out of Counters with Sandy. Dennis keeps saying tobout, Oh my god, we would use that my father and mother and I when things are going wrong. And do you get the references? Or there's countless ones and the producers but one white
white is the color of our carpets. It's these just silly lines that do you use, almost like to connect with people obviously wouldn't get the reference if they didn't know the movies.
Well, Tim and I still regularly will.
He just did it to me this week.
I don't remember who it was, but he'll text me and they'll say he's still, which of course is from the Godfather when Solozzo unsuccessfully tries to take the Godfather out at the beginning of the meeting and he comes back to the meeting with them and he's still alive. You know, that's the stuff that sticks with you, man. You know, there was a.
Time, as going back to the early days in nineteen sixties and seventies, when the same movie would be shown like five days a week because I got four point thirty, and that was before we had videotapes or other ways to kind of preserve them. But they were preserved in my memory. I mean, I knew these movies I mentioned earlier by heart because I just saw them all the time.
And Otto mentioned The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption. There's certain kind of movies that you just see them, even if they're already in the middle when you turn the TV on, You'll just watch them. You know everything about them.
But they're well made, you know. In the case of the ones I mentioned earlier, I don't think I wouldn't make the case that Who's Minding the Mint should be on the one hundred Greatest Movies of All Time, But it's certainly one of my ten most favorite movies, and you know, everyone has their own choices such matters, but in a way, it's like you can't even argue because
it's like, you know, arguing whose baby is prettiest. I love this movie, and I'm very grateful thanks to our tribute to Victor Blono that we got to revisit it again. And I'm not going to wait another thirty years or so before I watch it the next time.
Nor should you, because it is It's a lot of fun, and I'm really glad that you guys turned me onto this movie. I feel better for having watched it.
You are better for having watched it, Mike.
Well, as we finish our month long tribute to Victor Blono, it was nice to end on a comedic note, and some of the other movies we watched were pretty disturbing. I'm glad we chose this one to end the month with.
And as I think we said last week, all three of those first movies we watched work of you know, creepy movies. And if Victor Blono is remembered at all by anybody outside this circle of three, I think it is primarily for his comedic roles more than anything else. He really was a great comedic actor. I mean, obviously
he could do drama without any problem. But I'm one of those people who believe comedians can do drama successfully, probably more not than a great you know, tragedian what's the word, can do comedy, you know, zezy comedy as hard as what was his name?
Edmund?
Something said, who's the guy that played Sam? It's a miracle on thirty fourth Street when.
Gwen, yes, Edmund. Gwen was apparently the guy.
Somebody went to see him when he was on his debt and he said, they said, how are you doing? And he said, dying is easy, comedy is hard. I mean, I know that's been attributed to many, many, many people.
I think Aristophani said it first. Victor brought us a lot of joy, and it's been a lot of on paying tribute to his memory. I gotta miss this. We might have to do an all Victor Blono podcast, All Victor, all the Time.
All right, guys, let's go ahead and play a preview for next week's episode right after these brief messages. Looking for something superior to streaming, a place with more than five times the selection available on all streaming services combined, check out Scarecrow Videos rent by mail service. Select from an unparalleled collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand films and get Blu rays, four ks and DVDs delivered directly to your door. Get it now on scarecrow dot com.
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And the Shimbo.
And sorry, We'll be back next week to kick off our check Timber Extravaganza with Cozy DNS. Until then, I want to thank my co host for this month, Otto and tim So Otto. What is keeping me busy?
Sir well?
I just discovered last night on Amazon McFarland has my new baseball book up there for pre order, so they're saying it will be available in the end of August, which is August twenty twenty five, So looking forward to that and just get to and write.
Fantastic and Tim, how about yourself.
I'm going to help Auto promote his book when it comes out. So we need to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's been a long time. We give our tribute to Abbot and Costello when we get there.
Well, you usually when I do a podcast with Mike, I wear my Jackson Booth T shirt, but today I have to wear my Pirates thirty nine T shirt because just today, long overdue, Dave Parker was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. And of course, as always, the Hall of Fame dragged their feet and waited about twenty
five years too long. So at least Dave got to know that he was going to go in, but he didn't live to see it because he died about three weeks ago because he had been very sick with Parkinson's disease. Always kind of made me mad because I thought he should have been in many, many years ago. But again, you go back to those things that meant so much to you as a kid. The nineteen seventy nine Pirates we are Family Sister Sledge was their theme song. We
are family. I know you two don't care anything about sports. I know you come from a big sports town, Mike.
It was very big in nineteen thirty three.
Come on, the Vigers have won of World Series more recently than the Pirate I.
Was watching in eighty four, so I definitely saw that as the eighty four Tigers. Thanks again, folks for being on the show, and thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support physical media and get great movies delivered by mail, head on over to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in the world. You'll find films
there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you want it, without the scrolling, and yes, who's minding the mint is available at scarecrow dot com. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on today are all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
visit Patreon dot com. Slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
My name is Victor Blano and I'm fat I've always been fat. I was a fat baby, the fat boy. Now I'm a fat man. My acquaintances seldom used the word fat in my presence. They feel that it would be as unkind as using the word drunk in the presence of an alcoholic, and so they use other words plump, stout, chubby, big boom. For a long time they said it was
baby fat and would burn off sometime an adolescence. But along about my thirtieth birthday, that particular theory bit the dust because it was evident that it had not burned off and was not about to burn off, and that any attempt to burn it off would constitute a public fire hazard. I was happy to see that particularly adolescence theory die. Anyway, the age of thirty, there's nothing more unsettling than the thought of a delayed attack of puberty.
I'm resigned being fat, and I wish people would stop using euphemisms because I'm fat. I'm fat, That's all there is to that.
You might think it.
Etiquette to say that I am heavy, set a just big bone. You want to bet I'm fat, I'm fat, I'm fat, portly, chubby, plump, and stout. Everyone's a diplomat. Why not let it all hang out and go ahead and call me fat? So please don't think you're being kind by pretending to be blind. Just take a look at my physique. There's only one word, fat, and I'm
not really unhappy being fat. There are times when it's inconvenient, such is what I'm trying to ladle myself into a theater seat, or trying to get all of me through a turnstile at one pass, or calling the lobby to tell them that the bed has broken again. I'm fat. It would be untruthful to deny it. It would also be impossible because my failing is my flag.
Some men can sin and conceal.
It they're bandits, but no one gets wise. When I sin, my seams will reveal it. My crime is proclaimed by my size. Some folks are awful and lawful. They're loaded with loot, but who'd know it. I try to sneak in a waffle, and five minutes later I show it. The fella who sells marijuana can walk down the street like a saint, and his sister may Seema Madonna, the
vice squad can prove that she ain't. Since pounds are like crimes, they can nail me on well over three hundred counts and try me for each pound and jail me. I hope I'm not fined by the ounce. I'm guilty of imperfect diet. My weight shows I'm pizza pie prone. I know it's no good to deny it. Now, who wants to cast the first stove for to be a bit more blunt? Although my belt may not be swelt, I've never felt disgusted. The kind of part that I have got will never get me busted.
And sat and.
Ing and sensing such.
You know
By