Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles w/ Eddie Pepitone & Matthew Berry (Classic)

Summary

How Did This Get Made? — "Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles" (Classic)

Release Date: July 28, 2026

Hosts: Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Jason Mantzoukas
Guests: Eddie Pepitone (comedian), Matthew Berry (co-writer, "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles")

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the notoriously ill-fated sequel "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles" (2001), dissecting what went wrong with the third film in the once-popular franchise. The HDTGM crew is joined by comedian Eddie Pepitone and special guest Matthew Berry—the film's co-writer—to examine the misguided humor, bizarre plot, underwhelming gags, and behind-the-scenes drama, including Berry’s candid, revealing anecdotes about working with Paul Hogan.

Tone: Playful, sarcastic, deeply irreverent—a classic HDTGM takedown full of sharp observations, wild tangents, and memorable quotes.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Opening Reactions and Episode Setup

• Paul explains the episode’s technical hiccups and welcomes guests Eddie Pepitone and Matthew Berry, plugging Berry’s book Fantasy Life.
• They clue the audience in: This episode will be “a little all over the map,” not their usual format.
  (02:45)

2. Initial Impressions of the Movie

• The hosts and guests agree: The movie is “so crazy," especially the slow, meandering opening set in Australia.
• June Diane Raphael: “I had a very tough time... I genuinely could not hear and I could not understand the words.” — on the thick Australian accents (08:05)
• Jason Mantzoukas: “Do you think the movie would then take place in Australia? And it doesn’t.”
  (03:43)

3. Mediocre Gags & Flat Humor

• The film's "comedy" gags are lackluster compared to the original. The hosts analyze tedious scenes, like the oversized garbage pail, outlandish animal encounters, and convertible-concealing fights.
• Eddie Pepitone: “When the big garbage pail goes on top of these kids... those are your thoughts instead of having anything of interest in the movie.” (05:49)
• Jason Mantzoukas: “If you’re watching a city that you live in going, ‘Oh, that’s interesting, that’s what that looked like back then,’ it’s a sign of a bad movie.” (65:32)

4. Plot Confusion and Absurdity

• Much of the conversation is spent untangling the convoluted, late-breaking main plot: an art heist subplot involving Yugoslavian paintings, nonsensical studio logistics, and tensionless villains.
• Jason Mantzoukas: “The main plot of the movie isn’t introduced until like an hour into it… then the movie is like an hour and 28 minutes.” (18:34)
• Paul Scheer: “Why did they have to keep on making sequels to unsuccessful movies?” (21:16)

5. Strange Scenes and Logical Gaps

• The team marvels at the dog/skunk highway pileup, the "urban jungle" mugging, and the random animal attacks.
• Jason Mantzoukas: “He’s walking around the middle of the freeway holding a skunk, which he thinks is a dog, by the way.” (14:43)
• Eddie Pepitone: “He has no emotion. And we as the audience have absolutely no emotion. Yeah, so it’s just a flatline.” (14:49)

6. Missing Character Consistency

• Recurring confusion about Crocodile Dundee’s intelligence and his “fish out of water” capabilities—sometimes a genius, sometimes a fool.
• Jason Mantzoukas: “Sometimes Croc is violent, sometimes he’s very much a pacifist… Did he have rules for the Croc character?” (39:41)

7. Animal Handling and Ethics

• The show notes the dubious treatment of animals on set.
• Eddie Pepitone: “One of the lions… looked very sick. This looks like a lion in captivity that’s not doing well.” (22:32)
• Jason Mantzoukas: “Probably trying to shake off whatever anesthetic they’ve given her, like, just, like, shaking her head, like, ‘Oh, why am I so groggy? I’m a lion.’” (22:37)

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Behind the Scenes: Interview with Writer Matthew Berry

(Matthew Berry joins at 26:46)

1. How Did This Get Made… by the Writer?

• Berry recounts how he and his partner were sitcom writers, recruited by Paul Hogan’s agency to pitch for Crocodile Dundee 3, because “everyone else pitched Croc in space.”
• Berry: “We were the only ones who pitched, ‘Go to LA, there’s bad guys, walk around, it’s Crocodile Dundee, we’ll make it funny…’ And he’s like, ‘You guys are the only ones who get me.’” (34:15)
• Paul Hogan chose their approach for being simple and “true to character.”

2. Paul Hogan’s Control and Egos

• Berry reveals Hogan’s total financial and creative control; the movie was a vehicle for himself and his younger wife, Linda Kozlowski (Sue in the movie).
• Berry: “I think he wanted to be a star again. And frankly, I think he wanted his wife to do something.” (29:48)

3. Writing Process & Credit Disputes

• Berry & his partner wrote a first draft; Hogan rewrote much of it, often just tweaking names or trivial details to claim writers’ credit.
• Berry: “He just basically makes everything much more obvious and much more dull… every punchline was not nearly as sharp.” (45:03)
• A protracted Writers Guild credit arbitration ensued; eventually, Berry’s team won, but Hogan trashed them in the press:
  • Berry: “It’s this horrible, awkward thing where we have to very publicly say: ‘No, we’re the writers of this horrible, shitty movie.’” (56:25)

4. Notable Scenes: Inspiration and Blame

• Discuss how certain gags made it in (the headshot/limo driver swap was Berry’s favorite small moment).
• Berry: “That was a small moment and I thought that was very true to the character.” (59:32)
• The infamous “spider in the hat” scene was pure Paul Hogan—and left the writers baffled.

5. Ego-Driven Moments

• Multiple scenes of women inexplicably fawning over the aging Hogan were all, allegedly, his additions.
• Berry: “…that scene is entirely about his ego, which is sort of emblematic of the whole movie.” (62:37)

6. Memorable Quotes from Matthew Berry

• On their approach:
  • “We literally are saying, there’s not gonna be any pee pee or poo poo jokes. This is a movie you can thank Something About Mary for—so we’re saying: family comedy.” (59:48)
• On Paul Hogan:
  • “He never seemed to really say, like, ‘Oh, Crocodile Dundee does A, but he doesn’t do B.’ …It was all sort of in his mind.” (40:08)

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Notable Quotes & Funniest Exchanges

• Paul Scheer: “Well, that’s not a sequel. This is a sequel.” (01:42)
• June Diane Raphael: “I genuinely could not hear and I could not understand the words.” (08:05)
• Eddie Pepitone: “Let’s wallow in the mediocrity of subpar art.” (01:58)
• Jason Mantzoukas: “So we tell everybody we don’t know them, right?” (55:51)
• Berry: “No one talks like that. It’s not real at all… that scene is entirely about his ego…” (62:52)

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Best Segments and Where to Find Them

• Opening host banter and Eddie Pepitone introduction (02:13–02:45)
• Movie deconstruction: proposing plot holes, “urban jungle” mugging, comical garbage pail (03:43–06:10)
• Skunk-on-the-freeway scene & LA stereotypes (13:22–16:30)
• The introduction of the art heist plot (18:26–21:27)
• Discussion with Matthew Berry — writing the film & real stories (26:46–57:46)
• Writers Guild arbitration, Hogan’s antics (52:30–56:31)
• Second Opinions Amazon reviews riff (63:20–69:40)

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Memorable Moments

• Eddie’s take on animal welfare: “A couple of the animals looked sickly… I’m a big animal lover. That second lion… not a badass lion.” (22:32)
• Berry’s proudest screen moment: “He gets in the limo and the driver hands him a headshot… and Paul Hogan takes out his wallet and hands him a picture of him and his kid, thinking, this is what you do in LA.” (59:06)

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Listener “Second Opinions” (Amazon Reviews)

(63:20–69:45)

• The hosts read, dissect, and lampoon real 5-star Amazon reviews, marveling at descriptions of the film’s “sophisticated humor” and the hilarious suggestion that the DVD is “better.”
  • Paul Scheer: “One thing that makes this such a great comedy is it doesn’t have the feel of trying to be funny.” (68:10)
  • Jason Mantzoukas: “It’s not burdened by that need to be funny.” (68:19)

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Takeaways & Final Thoughts

• Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles is a textbook example of a franchise revival gone wrong—too late, too tame, and derailed by the star’s ego.
• The most interesting parts are behind the scenes: Paul Hogan's creative control, the surreal arbitration for writing credit, and the revealing confession of rote "family comedy" as a failed counter to 90s raunch.
• Paul Scheer: “Thank you to Matthew Berry for actually telling us how Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles got made.” (63:09)

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Recommended Listening Segments

• For the making-of Hollywood lore: Matthew Berry’s full interview (26:46–63:09)
• For the best laughs: Skunk scene breakdown (13:22–16:30), Second Opinions (63:20–69:40), and any time Eddie Pepitone riffs on the plot.

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Summary in One Sentence

If you’ve ever wondered how a beloved 80s legend ended up wandering through a bewildering, unfunny, ego-driven mess of a sequel—this episode answers everything, with relentless hilarity and shrewd insight from both the comedians and the film’s own beleaguered screenwriter.

Transcript

[Paul Scheer]

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[Paul Scheer]

That's not a sequel. This is a sequel. We saw Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, so you know what that means.

[Matthew Berry]

Now it's time for how to discover.

[Paul Scheer]

We're gonna have a good time celebrating

[Matthew Berry]

failure, not just be a hater. Could you know you won that habitat?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Let's wallow in the mediocrity of subpar art. Perhaps we'll find the answer to how

[Paul Scheer]

did this get Made? Hello, people of Earth, and welcome to how did this Get Made? I am Paul Scheer, joined as always by my two co hosts, Jason Manzoukas.

How are you, Jason?

[Jason Manzoukas]

I'm good, Paul. How are you?

[Paul Scheer]

Very good. And June, Diane Rayfield.

How are you, June?

[June Diane Raphael]

I'm great. How are you, Paul?

[Paul Scheer]

Very good, very formal. We have two special guests here today. First off, this guy is a very funny, talented comedian who has a brand new documentary about him out called the Bitter Buddha. Please welcome Eddie Pepitone. Eddie, welcome to the show.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Hey,

[Paul Scheer]

that's a very good intro.

[Jason Manzoukas]

You know, that's Eddie Pepitone's classic salutation.

[Paul Scheer]

Let's go.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I am so ready for this podcast.

[Paul Scheer]

So we actually have a very interesting episode. Due to some technical difficulties today, this podcast is gonna have a lot of moving parts. It's not gonna be like the regular podcast. So I'm gonna ask you guys to bear with us. We have a very special guest coming up. We have Matthew Berry, the writer of Crocodile Dundee, later in the episode, to talk to us a little bit about the movie. He's also here to plug his book, Fantasy Life. And you can go check that [e-mail] but before we bring Matthew Berry in, let's talk about this movie, Crocodile Dundee 3. This movie. To me, it's so crazy what is going on here, because the beginning is so kind of slow. I do feel like I got a sense in that beginning part of the movie. They're like, we don't have enough to fill the 88 minutes. Yeah. Like, let's have another shot of these gazelles, another shot of these elephants going around. Cause I had a whole sequence in Australia I didn't even understand.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

What you're saying.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Do you think the movie would then take place in Australia and it doesn't?

[Eddie Pepitone]

No. I knew it was coming to LA from the title.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, from the title.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, really?

[June Diane Raphael]

So that's how you figure that out.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I didn't get that. I didn't understand the title.

[Paul Scheer]

Again, he is moving from one jungle to another.

[Jason Manzoukas]

An urban jungle.

[Eddie Pepitone]

The urban jungle, by the way, the urban scene. That scene where the Latin people come up in a car. How cliched was that? How bad?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

You're going to give us the money.

[Eddie Pepitone]

You remember, of course.

[June Diane Raphael]

And they were boys. I mean, they were very, very young.

[Pacific Life Advertiser]

Also.

[June Diane Raphael]

What was strange about that scene? I know you did. I know you did. What was strange about that scene? Not to jump all around. No, but they're in a convertible. This is when the croc is in la.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[June Diane Raphael]

Is with the croc.

[Paul Scheer]

The croc. The croc. The croc of shit. That would be better.

[June Diane Raphael]

Croc is in LA and these kids come up to him and they try to mug him. And then he and his friend disarm them. And then very quickly, to seal the deal, they're in a convertible and he lifts up the soft top and then jumps on it.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Oh, yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

It was very odd to me.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That was odd. But I knew the thinking. It's like, what a nice picture this is. They're all beneath the convertible top. And Paul and with his friend Paul

[Paul Scheer]

and his friend Jocko. What is his friend Jocko? Jocko. Not the Jocko from the Energizer Comm. But Jacko.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Michael Jackson.

[Paul Scheer]

Not Jacko Jocko. Yes. There's a lot of Jacko Jocko's, but this is his.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Jocko is in a famous Italian clown too. In Commedia dell'. Arte.

[Paul Scheer]

Not the same one.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Not that guy.

[June Diane Raphael]

Not that guy.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. So they jump on that convertible.

[Jason Manzoukas]

But there is a character in this movie named Arlecchino, another comedian dell' Arte characters that would be funny if they combined Arlecchino. Arlecchino.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And then they put a big garbage pail to kind of button.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah, just a nice little. Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And I was thinking. And this is how bad the movie was. You know how bad movie is when things like when the big garbage pail goes on top of these kids. You're going, wow, that is a very big garbage pail. Like, those are your thoughts instead of having anything interest in the movie.

[June Diane Raphael]

I thought that, too. It's a giant round.

[Matthew Berry]

Where did they get that?

[Paul Scheer]

I had the same thought. I was like, that is a very large garbage pail. And what is it doing in that alley? It looks clean to be a.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Neither.

[June Diane Raphael]

Not a dumpster.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's neither dumpster nor garbage can. Some hybrid.

[June Diane Raphael]

It's not a can. It's something other.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Can I say this? That the movie also had this incredible street cred, that it had the Badass from Breaking Bad and then Aida Todoro from Sopranos. So they had Sopranos and Breaking Bad strains in this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Just to talk about the things that you get confused about in this movie. And this goes to. In the terms with the garbage can. There's a scene early in the movie where, like, him and his wife are talking about going to Los Angeles. By the way, no conflict. No conflict at all.

[Zepbound Advertiser]

None.

[Paul Scheer]

She's like, I want to go to Los Angeles. He's like, okay, great. Like. Yep, okay, sure.

[Jason Manzoukas]

While they live, like, in the outback in Australia, basically, he lives a life

[Paul Scheer]

where him and an Aborigine pick up their sons from school.

[Matthew Berry]

That guy.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I mean, like, was that not the weirdest? That was. The Aborigine guy is dressed in his. It would be as if he was in America waiting to pick up his son. And there was a Native American person who was there in full feather headdress and loincloth. Like, the Aborigine guy is dressed like. Like, Like. Like traditional, like, Australian Indian garb. It's crazy.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Didn't he say he was doing.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah, he was a tourist. He was doing that as a part of a show. I assumed he just got right.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, you see the movie.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That was so dull though. That was so dull that it's easy to miss that.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I fully missed that.

[Eddie Pepitone]

You start operating at that level when you're watching this movie. You are lulled completely asleep.

[June Diane Raphael]

I also had a very hard time, as Paul knows, with the accents. In the beginning, really, I had a very tough time. I don't know what it was. It was maybe specific to that accent, but I genuinely could not hear and I could not understand the words.

[Eddie Pepitone]

The Australian.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Were you freaking out?

[Paul Scheer]

I can't hear it. And we kept on jacking up the volume. But I think, Junior, you have a problem with accents because you have the same problem with Downton Abbey and things like that.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh my God.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Can you do cockney? Cockney is hard. Like when you. When a real like train spotting.

[June Diane Raphael]

They just have a hard line.

[Paul Scheer]

Eddie, you know how to do accents like that?

[Eddie Pepitone]

I can't get that fork. I'm flying off my feet. Long flight. What I said was there is a great place to go to college in New Hampshire.

[June Diane Raphael]

See, I didn't get that.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah, you did not get it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Was it Dartmouth? Is it the college? Dartmouth?

[Eddie Pepitone]

I don't want to talk about it.

[Paul Scheer]

I will say though, but yeah, the things that make no sense in this movie. So as he's. As they're deciding to leave Australia for no real reason, I guess.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Well, it's about her taking. I thought it was about her getting a job.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, her.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, this is the crazy thing. So the setup for her reason to move to la.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

And I'm genuinely asking this. Cause I didn't understand is that somebody worked at Newsday in la.

[Paul Scheer]

Newsday in la?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Her father's paper. Father owns it. Her father owns the paper.

[June Diane Raphael]

Another person who's not her father got into a car accident and died and died and died.

[Rachel Demita]

Yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

And who is that man to her?

[Jason Manzoukas]

He is a non person.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He is just the guy that ran that newspaper. And so the dad then turns my question. The guy that runs that paper is dead. Will you come and run it for me?

[June Diane Raphael]

And we never meet her father, correct?

[Zepbound Advertiser]

No.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Crikey.

[June Diane Raphael]

Sweet. Why did you not make that person her dad?

[Paul Scheer]

Because we didn't want to make it a sad movie.

[June Diane Raphael]

It wouldn't be sad. It would have been like more of a reason.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I agree. Why not either make the person that dad or have the dad be a character.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, the plot.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Now here's the thing. Now I've been getting into old Hollywood lately. Like reading stories about Laurel and Hardy. Chaplin, Keaton, all that stuff. And basically their movies were vehicles for them to do gags. So this was kind of supposedly, like, it's a vehicle to see. But then I was watching the movie and what were the gags?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, the gags.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, there was this spider in the hat.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, this is the one I want to talk about. This is exactly what I was leading to. The spider in the hat.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

I would say that's a gag.

[Paul Scheer]

This is the whole thing. Because the spider in the hat, to me, I didn't understand what was going on. Like, basically, he's talking to her and he sees a spider out of the corner of his eye.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's just a spider. A tarantula. Tarantula, yes, in Australia. Like a giant venomous tarantula.

[June Diane Raphael]

And by the way, have we set up that she's scared of spiders?

[Paul Scheer]

Well, that's. No, no, no. Is he scared? We don't know what's going on.

[Eddie Pepitone]

But she's a woman, right?

[June Diane Raphael]

Women have stuff. Yeah. I'll talk about the woman in this

[Matthew Berry]

movie in a second.

[Paul Scheer]

But she does. He doesn't like. So he sees it and it's acting like something like, this should have been a scene later on when you establish, like, I don't wanna live in this house if there are spiders. You know? And like, so he's covering this spider in such a way that he puts

it in his hat.

And then he puts. And then spiders in his hat. And then she makes him put on his hat and then the spider's on his head.

[Jason Manzoukas]

His wife and child are both in the kitchen with a poisonous deadly spider. And he neither reacts, says anything to them, gets them out of harm's way. He just keeps distracting them from the spider.

[June Diane Raphael]

And don't you. Wasn't there an energy that was coming off him that it Almost for a second I thought, did he bring the spider with him? Is this his friend's spider?

[Paul Scheer]

No, no, I swear to God.

[June Diane Raphael]

Because the look on his face was like, oh, no. Like, I been. I've been caught.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's. I agree. It almost is like when the guy brings, like, his drunk buddy to the house and then it's like, oh, my wife is here. Hide over here. Yes, it was that. To a spider.

[Paul Scheer]

So maybe that's because he does talk to animals. Maybe the spider is his friend and he's like, yeah, but then he had to.

[Eddie Pepitone]

But here's what I wanted to say because, like, to Keaton, Chaplin, they had amazing gags for their characters. The gags here were so weak. Like, the Clean the bear trap.

[Paul Scheer]

He's even at the kitchen sink cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And then he's like, bear trap or maybe gator trap. I don't know.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I even missed that.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah, he closed the gator trap.

[Jason Manzoukas]

What he's doing in the kitchen is washing an animal trap. Like a very archaic kind of like metal snap trap. Like, that's the other thing is he's watching a trap that definitely causes huge amounts of harm to animals.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Right? I was, yeah, there was a couple of things like that.

[June Diane Raphael]

Like that I liked though. I liked when he. He killed the fake snake at laughed out loud.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Me too.

[June Diane Raphael]

I liked when he was talking to the two dads who were waiting to pick up their kids.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That was funny. I thought that was good.

[June Diane Raphael]

There were some gags. And by the way, Crocodile Dundee won. Those gags worked.

[Eddie Pepitone]

They did. I did not see

[Jason Manzoukas]

the 7 year

[Paul Scheer]

old version of me.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I was gonna say, have you seen it since?

[June Diane Raphael]

No, I have not seen it since.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That's true. I would wonder if those would hold up for you.

[June Diane Raphael]

I feel like they would.

[Paul Scheer]

I don't know, because I agree with you, Eddie. Like, I feel like the gags here were just sort of like. All right, well, that's why we were

[Eddie Pepitone]

laughing at the snake gag when he stabbed the snake. Because comparatively that was funny, but wasn't hilarious.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, here's the thing. There's a thing with Crocodile Dundee is sometimes his intelligence level is at an all time high. Other times it's at a groundbreaking. Here's an example on the spectrum side

[Jason Manzoukas]

for me, here's an example of where I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is happening right now? Wherein he and his son are driving and his son says, oh, look dad, look, there's a dog in the road. So Crocodile Dundee hits the brakes on his Subaru Outback.

[Paul Scheer]

By the way, I love that he was driving out in Outback. By the way, he was a spokesperson for Outback at that time. So that's why he had to be driving it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He hits the brakes on his Subaru. Outback comes to a screeching halt. Okay. At which point all of the freeway traffic, they're on the freeway. They're all of the freeway traffic. 405, basically the freeway then turns into like a two dozen car boat almost pile up.

[Eddie Pepitone]

But Jason, this is like hammering home the point. We are now in LA.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

The traffic is horrible, crazy. And Mr. Australian is stopping to save a dog, which is.

[Matthew Berry]

But this is the thing.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He goes like this. He's like. It's like an 18 wheeler everything. And then he just says to his son, where's the dog? Like, he just says he's not. It's as if he's not aware of the fact.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And then I'll go.

[Paul Scheer]

I'll go even one step further.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He's so stupid in this scene.

[Paul Scheer]

Fucking helicopters and police things are surrounding him. And he doesn't know, even looking up. Nothing.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He's walking around the middle of the freeway holding a skunk, which he thinks is a dog, by the way.

[Eddie Pepitone]

What Paul just pointed out was why the movie is so flat is because it just exists in this world that he kind of just walks through with no emotion. He has no emotion. And we as the audience have absolutely no emotion. Yeah, so it's just a flatline.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, but here's the really weird thing about that scene. So he doesn't know what a skunk is.

[Matthew Berry]

And that is what we're. So he's never seen.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He does make a point to say, we don't have those back home. But he's an animal expert. He doesn't know what a skunk is.

[Paul Scheer]

I don't think he's an animal expert. I think that he is good with animals that are around him because I

[Eddie Pepitone]

don't think he's good with the skunk.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, he's very good.

[June Diane Raphael]

What's also strange, though, about him going to save the dog is that. And maybe I was reading too much into it, but it's like if he's somebody who is used to animals being in the wild, what was he saving that dog from?

[Matthew Berry]

The cars.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, the cars.

[June Diane Raphael]

The cars.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I guess it was just on the highway.

[June Diane Raphael]

Okay, fine. So he was going to save the dog. Here's the other crazy thing about this.

[Paul Scheer]

I have a question about this.

[June Diane Raphael]

The police, the lapd, think that it's a bomb.

[Paul Scheer]

Well. Cause someone says, when they pull out, it's like someone casually just says, I think he has a bomb. And then that was a game of telephone.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He said, it's a dog. And then it was a game of telephone as it gets communicated back through traffic. And then somebody says. I think he said, there's a bomb. And then somebody goes, he's gonna blow it up. And then everybody. Chaos ensues.

[June Diane Raphael]

But my question is, you know, the whole movie is his experience in la and sort of they hit a lot of the Los Angeles. The stereotypical, like, Los Angeles.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, my God. I want to talk about the roller skater on van.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah, we got that clip, by the way.

[June Diane Raphael]

The crazy thing is. Well, what I was wondering is, were Bomb scares at that time?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, well, freeway shootings maybe, or maybe.

[Jason Manzoukas]

No, I don't think it's trading on any kind of cultural, you know, like situation, I think.

[Eddie Pepitone]

What year did it come out?

[Jason Manzoukas]

2001.

[Paul Scheer]

2001.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Before September 11th.

[June Diane Raphael]

But the other strange thing though is when. And when that news footage is playing later on and he's in the house with his wife and he's so embarrassed cuz they're showing it on TV that he caused this thing. But I genuinely don't understand why he was embarrassed. Because the LAPD should be the one sort of embarrassed about thinking it was a bomb.

[Jason Manzoukas]

No, no, no, he is. I don't think he's embarrassed. He doesn't want his wife to know. He says to the kid on the highway, he goes, best not to tell your mom this happened.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Man talk. Man talk.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, wait, but can I. I wanna bring up the one thing that we're not talking about, the more disturbing thing about everything in this scene, which is when it is clearly established he has a skunk in his arms and he approaches the cops. The cops pull guns to shoot him.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Because they don't want to get sprayed. Which is an overreaction.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean that is a heavy over

[Jason Manzoukas]

justifiable self defense. If somebody was walking towards you with a skunk and could you, could the LAPD shoot that person?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Is there a standard law as far as skunks?

[Jason Manzoukas]

He was wearing the skunk like a hoodie.

[Paul Scheer]

And this is in the age of Rodney, you know, I guess Rodney King, you know, so maybe these cuffs are a little bit more Rodney King.

[Matthew Berry]

9 11.

[Eddie Pepitone]

This is deeper than I thought.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I didn't know there was such overtones.

[Jason Manzoukas]

This is post Waco. I mean, I'm getting a lot of like post Waco.

[Paul Scheer]

I just want to talk about the Beverly Hills copy part of this movie.

[Jason Manzoukas]

The art heist, like procedural.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah. Was so.

[Jason Manzoukas]

And it like was introduced real late.

[Paul Scheer]

Really late. Like the, the main plot of the movie isn't introduced until like an hour into it. And it's. Then the movie is like an hour and 28 minutes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

And I don't even quite understand what the, what the, what it is. It's like they're.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Me neither.

[Jason Manzoukas]

So the bad guys. The bad guys. The guy from Dear John and the

[Paul Scheer]

guy from Breaking Bad, Jerry Burns.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yes. Thank you. They have come across hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art that was in Yugoslavia that was thought destroyed.

[Paul Scheer]

But did they destroy crime?

[Eddie Pepitone]

By the way, which by the way was hilarious to me, that all of a sudden there's this serious issue.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Like a political.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yes. Like, all of a sudden we're talking about war. Cr. In times of war, which was a big thing when the US invaded Iraq. There were burnings of fucking museums.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Totally heavy duty stuff. And all of a sudden this.

[Paul Scheer]

In this vanilla as hell that's introduced.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah. It's war profiteering is basically.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

So they find these paintings in Yugoslavia and their method of bringing them into the United States was to start a movie studio that makes movies in Yugoslavia and then brings the paintings back as props. It was so confusing to me as well.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And here's the thing. And again, this is my problem with the movie. There was not one iota of tension about any of that.

[Paul Scheer]

No.

[Eddie Pepitone]

So it's sort of like you just have to go in your head, okay,

[Paul Scheer]

that's the bad guy. Because you really don't know. The other thing is, but these bad guys are bad news because they killed this newspaper reporter. They killed someone. Just keep their. But my question is, were they selling this art? Because at one point, like, Jerry Burns goes, yeah, if they don't want to buy it, we'll burn it on screen. It's like, wait, wait, what is that?

[Jason Manzoukas]

This is what I couldn't figure out at the end of the movie. So, like, these guys are bad guys who run a movie studio and it's Paramount. The Paramount lot.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

They shoot is their lot. So they shoot on the Paramount lot.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I think they wouldn't need a lot.

[Jason Manzoukas]

As if it's this thing. Right.

[Paul Scheer]

So, yeah.

[Jason Manzoukas]

So at the end of the movie, they're like this. These paintings are said to be worth at least $300 million. Okay. If you have enough money to have the Paramount lot and you're making huge budget action movies, you need way more than $300 million. $300 million is insignificant money to people who are running a studio that big.

[Paul Scheer]

It is a giant studio. And they were like a micro budget thing. But I didn't.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I didn't get it.

[Paul Scheer]

I didn also, why did they have to keep on making sequels to unsuccessful movies?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Like, I think they keep going back to Yugoslavia.

[Paul Scheer]

Couldn't they just make another movie in Yugoslavia?

[Jason Manzoukas]

I don't know, but I wish I knew.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I knew how he. How he, you know.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Tornado Chasers 2. Sorry.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, I know. Oh, by the way, when he does his, like, Pee Wee Herman running through the sets.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

The sets are so cheapo.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean, they are terrible.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Really bad.

[Paul Scheer]

They're really like. They're cartoon bad.

[Eddie Pepitone]

But another Horrible thing is, when he finally does get the bad guys, you know, he beats the bad guys at the end with animals.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And I noticed that a couple of the animals look sickly. I don't know if you did, but I'm a big animal lover. And the lion,

[Jason Manzoukas]

I hate him.

[Eddie Pepitone]

A lot of people don't care about them.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I wanted to see a lot of people eat them.

[Eddie Pepitone]

A lot of people eat them. Anyway.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Are you a vegetarian? Anybody? I'm a vegan.

[Paul Scheer]

You are?

[Jason Manzoukas]

I am fascinating.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That is fascinating for me.

[Jason Manzoukas]

For how long?

[Eddie Pepitone]

For about a year now.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, okay.

[Eddie Pepitone]

But it's a big deal for me and, like, a consciousness that has totally gotten into my life.

[Paul Scheer]

And one of the lions, the second one who came out, looked very sick. I was like, this is not a badass lion.

[Eddie Pepitone]

This looks like a lion in captivity that's not doing well.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah, well, the lion.

[Eddie Pepitone]

So it was just a note.

[Jason Manzoukas]

The lion doesn't roar or anything. She just keeps moving. Moving her head. Moving her head very oddly as a ve. I was looking, like, probably trying to shake off whatever anesthetic they've given her, like, just, like, shaking her head, like, oh, why am I so groggy? I'm a lion.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean. And also just the fact that the whole movie is based on the concept that the. When they're not shooting the scenes with the lines that they stay on set in cages in the. Like, in. In the stages.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Like, they're. They're just in cages on.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's what we should presume. Like, all right, we're gonna lock up the studio for the night. Put the lions in the cage that they live in in this. This studio where there's nobody looking after them.

[Paul Scheer]

And there's also that thing where Paul Hogan becomes the animal trainer on the set. And he's given that job so freely. So, like, oh, my God.

[Jason Manzoukas]

How about when he's an extra in that movie with. They're walking down their background, they're just walking down the street and the main guy is running towards them.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

And Paul Hogan clotheslines him. Well, then Paul Rodriguez goes, oh, he

[Eddie Pepitone]

was tripping him up.

[Jason Manzoukas]

He tripped. We were just trying to catch him. And the guy who he clotheslined. High fives. Paul Hogan is like, thanks, Dan.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That made no sense.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That made no sense. Paul Hogan, very clearly on film, clotheslines this guy.

[Paul Scheer]

And by the way, that's another example of Paul Hogan being really dumb. He gets that he's in the movie. He gets that he's an extra in a movie, but yet He. Oh, yeah. But yet he is. But yet he hurts this guy. So that's a lot.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Amazing.

[Paul Scheer]

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[Paul Scheer]

Today's podcast is obviously about Crocodile Dundee 3, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. And we felt that we would be remiss if we did not have someone from this movie. And we have the writer of this movie, Matthew Berry, who, you know, from espn. He has a brand new book called Fantasy Life. It is available right now. You can go to Fantasy Life, the book.com to pick up the book. Please welcome Matthew Berry. How are you, Matthew?

[Matthew Berry]

I'm good. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be talking about this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

I am blown away because. Let's first get this out. Crocodile Dundee came out in 1986. Crocodile Dundee 3 came out 15 years later. Now, when you were approached with this project. Cause I imagine this was not a spec script. Were you like, are people, like, were you surprised that this is something that people were interested in? How did you get involved in the crocodile Dundee franchise 15 years later?

[Matthew Berry]

Well, of course, of course, my writing partner and I were busy working on our Gremlins 4 spec when they called up. But, yeah, you know, like, it's interesting. So I was a sitcom writer and I'd written on a bunch of sitcoms. My writing partner, I. And we'd just gotten off a sitcom had just been canceled. We were on Union Square, which was another. If you ever do a sitcom version of how did this get made? I'll tell you about Union Square. But so anyway, the show, of course, gets canceled. So our agent calls us. We'd been talking about getting into movies, but we hadn't even written a spec or anything yet. And our agent calls us and he says, you guys want to get into movies, right? Yes. He says, well, you know who Paul Hogan is? Of course. You ever seen Crocodile Dundee? Of course.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Wait, if you know who Paul Hogan is, you've seen Crocodile Dundee.

[Matthew Berry]

There is no.

[Eddie Pepitone]

That's true. How else do you know who he is?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Well, I'm a fan of his other work.

[Matthew Berry]

He was in Showa movies. But Flipper, I loved him as Flipper. Right, of course. So he. So he says, you know, he's like, well, I'm one of the agents in charge. Paul Hogan is a client at the agency, wants to do a third installment of the franchise. I'm one of the agents in charge of putting writers in a room to Pitch him ideas for the movie. If you want, I'll throw you in a room with him and you can, you know, get some practice and. Yeah, my writing partner, I like. You know, screw it. Let's meet Paul Hogan. That'll be a funny story.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Of course.

[Matthew Berry]

This is sort of a backstory here. Paul Hogan owns, like, 60% of the movie. Paul Hogan was a TV star. Like, he had a variety show in Australia. So he's a TV star, and with a couple of writers from the variety show, he cobbled. He. You know, he wrote the first one and cobbled together, like, $5 million from investors to make the first movie made on a shoestring budget. And he owned it. So he owned, like, 60% of it. And then he went around piecemeal to all the different countries and just sold the distribution. Right. I mean, he made billions.

[Paul Scheer]

So. Yeah, he's a rich, rich dude.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Wow.

[Paul Scheer]

And now. Yeah. But it is still 14 years later, though, you're going into pitch. It's a little. I mean, were you a little bit struck by that? Like, why now? I mean, because it is. It's a long gap.

[Matthew Berry]

I honestly think he just. He wanted to be a star again. And frankly, I think he wanted his wife to do something. Oh, right, because he's married to work again.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Oh, that's his wife.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[June Diane Raphael]

No.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes, that's his wife.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And a lot younger.

[Zepbound Advertiser]

No.

[Paul Scheer]

And he had two.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Are you okay?

[June Diane Raphael]

Because. Okay, Matthew. The one thing I was gonna say is they didn't seem to have one ounce of pass. Those were the stiffest scenes.

[Matthew Berry]

Oh, yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

By the way, I am genuinely shocked.

[Paul Scheer]

Not only is this his w, but he had a very, very public divorce in Australia, like in the tabloids, with this woman, because he cheated on his wife with Linda Kozwaski or whatever her name is, and.

[Jason Manzoukas]

No, his other wife with this woman.

[Paul Scheer]

You mean Linda, the one in the movie? Yes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Cheated on his mistress.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Yeah. So he. Yeah, so he. This is a guy. He went. You know, he went through fire to have this love, this love that could not be contained.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Please tell me that's their real son.

[Matthew Berry]

We never. It's weird in writing the movie, I mean, we're jumping all over the place. But just as you talk about it. So there were a couple of times where we had. He had a house in Santa Barbara, and when we would go up and pitch him various things from the movies or go over things with him, we never met her. She was always around. But, like, it was just weird, you know, we would go to this guy's house for there were like two or three days where we spent like the entire day with him pitching him ideas and he'd say yes to some stuff and notice some stuff.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I want you to stay out of the picture, sweetheart. Make yourself busy in a kitchen.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Now you know why we asked Eddie Pepitone to be on this podcast. Flawless.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Well, I was just in Melbourne, so

[Jason Manzoukas]

I was Paul Hogan. Impressive.

[Matthew Berry]

So, I mean, it really felt. It honestly felt like there were the only two rules that we had. The only two, you know, we were told to go pitch and we were like, it had to take place present day.

[Paul Scheer]

Got it.

[Matthew Berry]

Which means, you know, we couldn't like go back in time and like do it like, you know, two years after. It had to take place present day and she had to be in it. Everything else was up for grabs. Okay, so, so, so we go in and we rewatched the first two movies. And you know what, what we realize is they're very simple movies. Obviously it's just him reacting to stuff like that's the whole movie, right?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

And he's funniest when he's reacting to stuff. So we're like. And we don't want, we don't want this job. We don't think we're getting it. So we basically, the premise we come up with is this. We come up with it in maybe half a day. We're just like, we go in and we say like, look, you did New York in the first two movies. You've never done la. Let's say you're moving, you're living in Australia, you're still with Linda, but let's say you've never been married, but you've got a little kid. So he's a little crock. Because there was the other thing. I don't know if you guys remember when this movie came out, but basically Something About Mary was like the big movie. At least at the time we were pitching it. Something About Mary was like the big movie in Hollywood. And all the things that were getting sold and made were like these raunchy R rated comedies.

[Paul Scheer]

Right?

[Matthew Berry]

Really sort of over the top Farrelly brother type movies. And we were like, there's no way this movie can compete with that. So the only shot it has is to try to go the other way and just be like super family and friendly and, you know, sweet that the people that enjoyed the first one could take their kids to.

[Paul Scheer]

Sure.

[June Diane Raphael]

So it was like made for me.

[Matthew Berry]

Yes, exactly. We pitch them that simple story of like, hey, you go to la. You go to la, there's some bad guys. You get a job at the studio because you can talk to the. Talk to the animals. Your wife gets a job at, like, you know, News Day in la. And, you know, you basically, you're going to show your. Because your kid's never been to America, so you're going to show him around. It's the blind leading the blind. Because you're telling them, you know America, but obviously you don't. I said, and it's mostly. There's going to be some bad guys at the studio. You saved the day. But most of the movie is you walking around la, which everybody.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Everybody does, walks around laughing.

[Paul Scheer]

It is funny. The amount of times that they drive past and then are back out in front of Hollywood Boulevard. They're like, they're always going down Hollywood Boulevard. And it seems that they've driven away and then they're. Right. And they're walking around the corner and they're at, like, the Guinness Book of World Records Museum.

[Matthew Berry]

Right, exactly right. I mean, so, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

So you're basically taking the formula two

[Matthew Berry]

days to shoot in LA or something like that. Basically, we just said that. We said that's the movie. And then you end with a wedding, because everybody loves a wedding.

[Eddie Pepitone]

The LA montage was electric, by the way. It made me want to go out on the streets. I just wanted.

[June Diane Raphael]

You couldn't believe you had it available to you.

[Paul Scheer]

So now all three of you are listed as writers. Did he get in the mix and writer, was he just supervising you?

[Matthew Berry]

No, he's not listed as a writer. That's part of the whole dispute. So anyway, so just just to put a bow on this. So basically, so we give him that pitch and it's like, that's simple. It's just super simple. Like, you go to la, blah, blah, blah, there's bad guys there. You walk around la, it's Crocodile Dundee, we'll make it funny. You know, how tough is it? And he's like, you guys are the only ones who get me.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Oh, my God. It's like the producers are like, we

[Matthew Berry]

have no thoughts that we're ever getting this job. We're literally going in because we think it'll be a funny story to tell. Hey, we met Paul Pogan and, you know, it was practiced to pitch, you know, pitch to a movie star or something like that. And apparently everyone else, every other writer he met with pitched him like, crocodile Indy Saves the Universe From a nuclear explosion. Croc 3 in space. Like, all these, like, crazy, terrible ideas is. And we were the only ones. You're saying Croc three in space to react to them.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I do want to see Croc 3 in space, by the way.

[Paul Scheer]

By the way, that would be great.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I will pay you $500 to write that.

[Paul Scheer]

That would be the sequel to Sharknado.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That would be amazing.

[Paul Scheer]

All right. So, yeah. So he then. Now you're trapped.

He's.

You're in.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah, Well, I mean, they basically. So he wants to. It becomes one of these things where he wants to co write it with us. And so because Paul's writing quote is so insanely high, people don't realize Academy Award Academy Award nomination for writing for the first movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Paul Hogan got an Academy Award for

[Jason Manzoukas]

writing the Crocodile Dundee one.

[Matthew Berry]

Yep, yep. It did not win, but he was nominated. Him and the two other guys that wrote the first movie. And I don't know who contributed what to that, but the three. June London, Paul Hogan, Academy Award nominee for the screenplay of you are blowing my mind.

[Paul Scheer]

Golden Globe winner for best actor.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's mind boggling.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

And a Razzie nominee for Crocodile Dunny in Los Angeles along with me. Thank you very much. We got screwed. I thought we should have won.

[Paul Scheer]

Who did you lose to in that year's Razzies?

[Matthew Berry]

We lost to just a random story. I wanted to. I made my. I was. We were. My writing partner and I were represented at Endeavor at the time.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

And we literally asked our agent, you know how like in the trades back then you'd see all these big ads, you know, CAA congratulates its client or William Morris congratulates its cl. So on his Academy Award nomination. And we were like, hey, Endeavor, we want you to take on an ad. Like, you know, Endeavor congratulates, you know, Matthew Barry and Eric Abrams on their Razzie nomination. Because I thought that would have been hilarious.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's amazing.

[Paul Scheer]

They would not do it.

[Matthew Berry]

They would not do it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Cowards.

[Matthew Berry]

We lost to. We lost to Planet of the Apes for worst remake, remake or sequel.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Matthew Berry]

Mark Wahlberg, Planet of the Apes.

[Eddie Pepitone]

He deserved it.

[Matthew Berry]

So anyway, so. Yeah, so. But because Paul's writing quote was so high, what they. What Paramount was going to pay us to do this movie was insane amount of money for first time movie writers.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

So we were like, you must have

[Eddie Pepitone]

been happy about that.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah, well, exactly. Like if you're gonna sell out, sell out big.

[Jason Manzoukas]

But at that point, I mean, you've got those Union Square dollars.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

So I mean, listen, so we did it, you know, and let's bought me a house. God bless Crocker. Sure.

[Paul Scheer]

So now you're signed up, you got a lot of money. You are. You're off to do this movie. So now, what is this process like as you embark on the action?

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah, right. So the plan was for us to, quote, write it together, but the last thing my writing partner and I want to do is sit in front of a computer screen with Paul Hogan for three months. Right? And we know he doesn't want to do that either. So we say to him, we say, look, let us write the first draft. We'll run everything by you and everything like that. We'll write the first draft and then we'll hand it to you, and you can. And you can take your pass at it, and we'll go from there. So we go off and we write our script, and, you know, there's. We pitch him a bunch of stuff and some stuff he likes and some stuff he doesn't. And he gave us notes and whatever.

[Paul Scheer]

Give me an example of. Give me an example. If you remember, like, something that he liked, something he didn't like. Is there.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Is there.

[Paul Scheer]

Do you remember anything that you're like, oh, I wish we would have gotten that in like that. Do you remember anything?

[Matthew Berry]

Yes. I mean, here's one thing that we pitched that he didn't like, that I thought would be funny. That I thought was a very kind of Crocodile Dundee type thing.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

I mean, remember, it's all sort of gentle humor, right? It's all sort of observational, gentle humor that he's reacting. He's a guy from the outback. But, like, you know how, like, when you're in la, everyone valets?

[Paul Scheer]

Right?

[Matthew Berry]

Right. You go, no matter where you valet, you can't just find any part parking. And when you get a valet ticket, it says, read this. You know, it's all the disclaimer stuff on the ticket that's funny.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

So we thought it would be funny if Paul Hogan actually reads it. But, like, you know, there's a. There's a long line of cars and everything like that. And he gets there, you know, of course, everyone just takes the ticket and walks off and they go. But, you know, it limits your liability. And so he won't give the keys until he's read the whole thing and he's considering it and people are honking and everyone's going nuts, and he's just, hold on, I'm thinking about this, you know, and so it was just. Yeah, it was a whole thing.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

That he just doesn't understand.

[Eddie Pepitone]

No, I think he was right to deny that.

[Jason Manzoukas]

There is still a valet joke in this.

[Eddie Pepitone]

There is still where he attacks the valet.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah, right. And that's. That's what it turned into.

[Paul Scheer]

He's a. Sometimes we were talking about this. Sometimes Croc is violent. Sometimes he's very much a pacifist. And sometimes he's very much aware of things, and sometimes he's very much unaware of things. Was there. Did he have rules for the Croc character? Because he goes to punch that valet real quick, but then you see that he seems like he's a pacifist most of the time.

[Matthew Berry]

There were no rules. I think it was just whatever worked for Paul.

[Eddie Pepitone]

All right.

[Matthew Berry]

He would say sometimes, like, I wouldn't do that. Got it. But he never seemed to really say, like, oh, crocodilendy does A, but he doesn't do B. He never sat down.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

It was all sort of in his mind.

[Paul Scheer]

He didn't have the Crocodile Dundee bible that he passed off.

[Matthew Berry]

No, we didn't get that. We didn't get the secret hand.

[Eddie Pepitone]

He wasn't that detailed.

[Paul Scheer]

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So you write that you write the first draft.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And.

[Paul Scheer]

And then what. What happens here?

[Matthew Berry]

So we write the. Whatever we write that. We write the first draft based on, you know, his notes, everything like that. And. And so. So basically, he then rewrites pretty much the entire script. He throws A couple of new things in there, but generally this is the example I give. So let's say we're doing a scene like we wrote a scene like sort of like interior podcast studio.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

Matthew's talking to Paul Scheer. Matthew Berry is talking to Paul Scheer about his movie. Okay.

[Paul Scheer]

Yes.

[Matthew Berry]

You know, Paul, Matthew, welcome to the show. Show. And he would rewrite that.

[Jason Manzoukas]

This movie is amazing.

[Matthew Berry]

TV studio, you know, Nick Kroll is interviewing Eric Abrams.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, wow. So he was just going through and just changing names so he can get credit. So he was trying to steal writers credit from you, essentially.

[Matthew Berry]

Correct. I mean, so not. There's not one word that's the same. So like, you know, but the intention is all the same, guys. And they're talking about his book. And so it's, it's. Yeah, it's like a college kid, you know, changing his term page paper, you know, from Wikipedia or something.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, man, that's really, that's like, really.

[Eddie Pepitone]

So he could justify his writing it, huh?

[Matthew Berry]

Right, Exactly. And just everything was just sort of like a worse version of what we had. You know what I mean? It's just like every punch line was just like not nearly as sharp. It wasn't as funny. There you go.

[Paul Scheer]

There you go.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I think it's all fixed.

[Matthew Berry]

I think there was like something like. I think we at least try. I mean, I don't know, like we're starting with a 16 year old sequel. Right. And it's Croc 3. But we at least tried to make it at least semi smart sort of things.

[Paul Scheer]

Sure.

[Matthew Berry]

I think the gay bar scene, I think the gay bar scene that we had was he goes into the gay bar, has a drink and has a great time.

[Paul Scheer]

Got it.

[Matthew Berry]

He doesn't understand why there's no women there, but has no idea.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

Like we didn't want to make fun of like we thought it would be funnier if he's just like, I met the greatest group of guys. No concept of what was going on in the scene. We thought that was true to the character.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yes, you're right. I think Croc. I think Croc works best when he's sort of joyfully innocent.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah. Where he's like truly a fish out of water.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yes.

[Matthew Berry]

Right, right. And has sort of this pot in the first movie. He has like a super positive outlook, you know, and everything. And it's, it's literally like. And you know, jokes aside, the most, you know, obviously the most famous scene. It's not even a threatening like, you know, it's like that's not a knife. This is a knife.

[Paul Scheer]

Right, right.

[Matthew Berry]

It's not like a. It's not an angry thing. It's a bragging thing. He's just pushing it aside.

[Eddie Pepitone]

By the way, Matthew, you know, in our very cynical world, I think we need Crock four.

[Matthew Berry]

Can I tell you something hilarious?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

Our agent. We actually had a great agent on this particular deal. Our agent.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Agent.

[Matthew Berry]

We actually have a contract when we agree to do it. If there is a Crock four, he has to offer it to us first.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Amazing.

[Matthew Berry]

We still have the rights of first refusal on Croc 4.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, you know, Matthew, you might be getting that, because I'm looking at this article on IMDb that says that his money manager stole $34 million from him.

[June Diane Raphael]

What?

[Eddie Pepitone]

No.

[Matthew Berry]

Yes, I saw that. He's having some tax problems, too. You know what's amazing is that $34 million probably doesn't mean that much to him. He's literally that wealthy.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Wow, that is wild.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Which is why the guy could steal it. Which is why the guy could steal it.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, I mean, it says here that, yeah, he allegedly helped him hide money in a Swiss account in order to avoid taxes.

[June Diane Raphael]

Oh, jeez.

[Paul Scheer]

And he made off with $34 million. And Australia has a warrant out for Philip Eagleshaw, who is behind this country's largest tax evasion scheme.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Crikey.

[Matthew Berry]

There's the plot.

[Paul Scheer]

There's the plot.

[Matthew Berry]

He's got a crock in Switzerland.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Croc in Switzerland. That's.

[June Diane Raphael]

Can I ask you, Matt, Can I ask you about the spider in the hat scene?

[Paul Scheer]

Yes. We were curious about the spider in the hat scene.

[Matthew Berry]

It's been a long time. I should have watched it again in anticipation of this podcast book tour, and I haven't.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, he sees a spider in the

[Jason Manzoukas]

room, like a tarantula. A tarantula in his kitchen.

[Paul Scheer]

And he seems very scared by it, and he doesn't want to show his wife that it's there. And he kind of scoops it up in his head, but we don't know why.

[June Diane Raphael]

I think what was confusing to us is it almost seemed like the intention that was coming across was like, oh, the reaction on his face was, one of. Oh, one of my friends is here, and he's not supposed to be here, or he felt guilt or something that the spider was there.

[Paul Scheer]

Do you remember the spider?

[June Diane Raphael]

Do you remember anything about that?

[Paul Scheer]

This might have been Apollo.

[Matthew Berry]

We didn't do that. Was all Mr. Hogan's genius.

[Jason Manzoukas]

There is a number of scenes in this movie where a deadly animal is present Paul Hogan is safe. Somebody else is in harm's way, and he does not warn them. Like, because there's also the scene. There's also the scene where he. The. The big giant Jaws croc eats Paul Hogan's boat. He gets up in a tree and then his buddy comes along in a. Jacko comes along. Jocko comes along in a tiny little canoe and is like, what are you doing up in the tree? And Paul Hogan's like, oh, don't worry about it. And then it doesn't warn him. Isn't like, there's a gigantic croc and the croc eats Jocko's boat. Jocko easily could have gotten eaten in that scene. Was there any effort? Yeah, go ahead.

[Matthew Berry]

And you would have. I was just gonna say, you would think in the Australian outback, because that's where Jacko lives, that he's aware of this.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Well, now you alluded to the fact that he's kind of a jerk. So when did the jerk side pop out? Besides.

[Matthew Berry]

So here's when the jerk side comes out. So, okay, so we turn in the movie, he rewrites it the way he does, where he just basically makes everything much more obvious and much more dull. And, you know, and whatever, whatever, whatever.

[Eddie Pepitone]

It's all fixed now.

[Matthew Berry]

It's never gonna be a great movie, but we were trying to make it at least slightly clever.

[Paul Scheer]

Right, right. And were you writing. And just for one, were you writing to cameos, too? Because I know, like, Mike Tyson's in this movie and George Hamilton. George Hamilton. Were you guys. Was that a mandate in here, too? That just was like, okay, great.

[Matthew Berry]

Yes, but. But it was a mandate to write cameos. But, you know, it was always, like, generic because they were like, I will see what we can get. We actually. We wrote in hef.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, that makes sense.

[Matthew Berry]

You know, and at one point, he gets basically a Hef look alike or something like that.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Right, right.

[Matthew Berry]

But yes, so that was one of the ideas. I think that was one of the pitches, is that he would run into. That he would run into celebrities and not know who any of them were. That was an LA thing that he

[Jason Manzoukas]

would run into celebrities doing normal celebrity stuff. Like Mike Tyson, everybody always knows, is always meditating in a park in Beverly Hills.

[Matthew Berry]

Right. By himself.

[Paul Scheer]

Right, exactly.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Everybody knows that.

[Matthew Berry]

Excuse me, mister.

[Eddie Pepitone]

What are you doing while I'm meditating, young man?

[Matthew Berry]

What's meditating?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Meditating is a special place I go in my mind where there's no distraction and I receive a great source of power.

[Matthew Berry]

Cool. Can you show Us?

[Rachel Demita]

How? Please?

[June Diane Raphael]

Sure.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Come forward and have a seat.

[Matthew Berry]

My name's Mikey.

[Eddie Pepitone]

What's yours? Hey, Mikey, I'm Mike. Hi, Mike. I'm Mick, Mikey's dad. Mikey, Mick, Mike. You gotta be kidding me, right?

[Zepbound Advertiser]

Okay.

[Matthew Berry]

Okay.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Hold your legs like in a Buddha position. Grab your ankles to save yourself from some discomfort. And we'll take a easy, close eyes, relax. Inhale the positivity, exhale the negativity, inhale the positivity.

[Paul Scheer]

And the Mel Gibson. Mel Gibson stuff, which I actually. I did like them. I mean, that to me was like a perfect example of like a croc one. Like, yeah, you know, Tom Cruise.

[June Diane Raphael]

What does he look like?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, like. I like those jokes. Sorry. So now he.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Now the true Mel Gibson doesn't like the Jews.

[Matthew Berry]

Right?

[Eddie Pepitone]

That would have.

[Matthew Berry]

That was in the first draft.

[Paul Scheer]

So. So, all right. So now you hand in the script, it's watered down, and now he becomes a jerk. How is it.

[Matthew Berry]

So whatever, it's fine. So he does it. But basically he then takes our name off the script, and we need to have. So he turns it in and he wants soul writing credit again. This is a guy who is. This is Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Croc 3, produced by Paul Hogan, based on characters created by Paul Hogan, starring Paul Hogan. He's in every frame of the movie. Paul Hogan, Yeah. But he still needs sole writing credit. And it would have been fine with us. It's not like we were proud of it.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

The problem was, is that because the contract we'd signed and, you know, anyone listening that's, you know, a member of the Writers Guild, like, to get residuals and to get. And certain contractual bonuses, we needed to have writing credit. Like we were going to get a bonus if, you know, if it got made and we had writing credit or at least partial writing credit. So we needed to have writing credit because, I mean, the whole reason we wrote the damn thing was for money. You know, it was a pure money take, obviously. So once Paul Hogan basically said, I want soul writing credit, the line was drawn in the sand, and it was either us or him for writing credit.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, man. So you had to go against him and fight him for.

[Jason Manzoukas]

You had to arbitrate against him.

[June Diane Raphael]

You have to go, like, sit there in arbitration with him. Or you went, oh, yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

So that's not a pen.

[Paul Scheer]

This is a pen, Right?

[Matthew Berry]

That's not a first drop. This is a first drop, right? So, right, we go and we turn in our draft to the Writers Guild and we have to make our presentation to a three person Board. He does the same thing. He turns in his draft of the second version of the script, and then they look at the final shooting script. And because he's a producer in the movie, he needed to have created 50% of the movie. Like, that's the sort of the writer's guild, at least at the time. That's the rule. And. And basically, he loses. He loses three to nothing. They both brought.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Wow, amazing.

[Matthew Berry]

So he then appeals the decision, which is allowed. The appeal goes through. He loses three to nothing again.

[Paul Scheer]

He could have just shut his mouth and shared screenwriting credit and made more money.

[Matthew Berry]

He never would have fought it. We turned it in, actually. The first draft of the script that we turned in had all three of our names written by the three of us.

[Paul Scheer]

So he just was trying to get more money. That's crazy.

[Matthew Berry]

So now I don't. Paul, I don't even think it was money. I think it's literally ego. I think the whole reason you asked, like, why he wanted. He wanted to be a star again. He wanted to, you know, be in a universe where, you know, hey, this. We're making another Croc movie. He's the big star. He's got the big trailer. It's all about him.

[Paul Scheer]

It's kind of like the Sylvester Stallone. His name is on, like, every movie as a writer. And I'm looking at Paul Hogan's IMDb page, and he wrote Lightning Jack, Almost an Angel. He's listed as a writer on every one of his movies, right?

[Matthew Berry]

So that's sort of his thing or whatever. So once it was. So now he's lost nine to nothing. He's lost the appeal. He's lost the appeal of the appeal. So we're like, okay. So then he starts threatening to sue the Writers Guild, and he starts doing all the press, and he's basically. He's trashing us in public. Like, if you search for Paul. If you Google, like, Paul Hogan, Sue's Writers Guild, or Paul Hogan, you know, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles, wga, or anything like that. You'll see he talks about wanting to sue the Writers Guild for writing credit and that he really wrote it and that these two guys, Matthew Baron, Eric Abrams, don't deserve credit and everything like that. So now we're in this, like, really public battle about this movie that we're not real proud of. Like, you know, one screen credit for the movie, but it's like. It's one of those things that's like, you know, like. Like, you know, maybe you date somebody that you're not real proud of.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

You're at a place and you're, you know, like, you're like, look, I need some companionship, but really don't want to publicize this too much.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

Sort of thing. It's sort of that we've all been in relationships like that, right?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah, yeah. Where we're dating a horrible person that we want our friends to not know about and we want to keep them secret.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Jason Manzoukas]

So we tell everybody we don't know them, Right?

[Matthew Berry]

Correct. So this is the thing. Like, we didn't want. Like, we're all horrible people. Right. Matthew Croc, three writers.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, yeah, of course.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yes.

[Matthew Berry]

We just. We wanted screen credit for. So we could. So we could make the money. Yeah. So now we have a big public dispute where we literally have to get up and fight very publicly. Yes. We wrote the movie, not Paul. You know, I mean, like, we can't. We can't sit there and say we didn't write. You know what I mean? Like, it's this horrible, awkward thing where we have to very publicly say, like, no, we're the writers of this horrible, shitty movie. You know what I mean?

[Eddie Pepitone]

And we're fighting to be the writers.

[Matthew Berry]

Right, Exactly. We are fighting to get credit for this terrible movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Right.

[Matthew Berry]

Oh, that was the. Oh, that's the hilarious thing, too, is when the poster first came out, when it said written by, it said pending names were there initially.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's awesome.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God.

[Eddie Pepitone]

A lot of people are like, who's pending?

[Paul Scheer]

And then who's pending?

[Matthew Berry]

I want to read more from this.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah, it's, like, directed by Alan Smithy. It's like a fake name that they put when they don't know.

[Paul Scheer]

Did you guys ever have a face off of all? Like, did you?

[Matthew Berry]

We sort of. I mean, you know, we went to the. We went to the premiere, and, you know, they were, like, contractually obligated to give us, like, four tickets to each for the premiere. And, like, they're the last two seats. Like, the rest of the cast and the director and everything, they're all, like, front and center. We were literally in the last row in the back corner. Like, you go to the premiere. Like, they wouldn't let us walk the red carpet then. It's just, you know, it's just a horrible, horrible experience because we're just treated like pariah. And, you know, the guy that was sort of hand. That was whoever was the lowest person at Paramount got stuck with handling us, and he's just like, yeah, sorry. Paul Hogan said, you know, you guys can't be anywhere near him. And, you know, like, really. Because we want. I don't know, you know, so it was just a horrible experience from start to finish. And he was just. He was such a terrible human being to us. And.

[Eddie Pepitone]

And he was such a liar because you wrote the daily thing. So he was living this life and

[Paul Scheer]

he knew that he was living a lie.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Right.

[Paul Scheer]

So do you come face to face with him?

[Matthew Berry]

We, at one point we ran into him after the movie. Like, we sort of, like we were exiting at the same time he was. Or something like that. And we're like. And I think I said something. I was like, hey. I was like. I literally said, hey, Paul. Gosh, the movie turned out swell. Like, I said something really like that. And he just. He just looked at me and he didn't say anything. He just. He walked on.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Wow.

[Paul Scheer]

What a dick.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Now, do your children play with his children these days?

[Matthew Berry]

Yes, yes. I'm working on clock four now.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Your children have, like a Romeo and Juliet, like, Star Crossed Lovers scenario happening.

[Paul Scheer]

But then this is basically what took you from the world of writing TV and film into. Into writing a very successful fantasy football column and giving you all your success now. And you can read about this story and even more in your new book, Fantasy Life, which you can [e-mail] but this is an amazing story and good to get some insight on what this is. So for our last question. Hi, Lo. One thing you're proud of, one thing

[Matthew Berry]

you're embarrassed by, one thing I'm proud of. It's a very small moment. It's a very small moment. At the beginning of the. At the beginning of the movie, he gets in the limo and the driver hands him a headshot, thinks somehow that they're important and hands him a headshot. And Paul Hogan takes out his wallet and hands him a picture of him and his kid thinking, this is what you do in la.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I like that too.

[Paul Scheer]

I did like that joke too.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah, I liked it too.

[Matthew Berry]

So, yeah, I thought that was a small moment and I thought that was very true to the character and I thought that was kind of funny. So that's one thing that, like, that sort of survived as we were wrote it. In terms of what we're embarrassed by pretty much the rest of the movie.

[Eddie Pepitone]

I was hoping you'd say that.

[Matthew Berry]

Hey, we're pitching family comedy. That's what we are trying to do. We're. We are. We are literally saying, like, there's not gonna be any, like, you know, pee pee or Poo poo jokes. This is, this is a movie you can thank. Something about Mary was the thing. So we say, so we're saying this and like, and the whole thing is building towards a wedding. He's actually going to make an honest woman of Sue. That's the name of the character of Linda's character, I think. And so, and so he says, ah, he says, what about something where, you know, he says, I think the teacher's probably got the hots for me or something like that. Likes my, you know, charm, like. All right, fine. So we like, we do that. He tells us basically to write a woman hitting on him.

[Paul Scheer]

Sure.

[Matthew Berry]

So we're like, okay, fine. So we do that and we do that and we, we'd actually said, well, like someone should hit on you, but let's, let's do it at the gay bar. And you're not aware that he's hitting on you at all?

[Paul Scheer]

Really?

[Eddie Pepitone]

No way.

[Matthew Berry]

Yeah. Again, this is, whatever this is. However long was the movie out, like 15 years ago. I mean this is what, what sounds old, like kind of old stale jokes now was at least slightly fresh back then.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, 11 years ago. It was good.

[Matthew Berry]

It was right. So anyway, so he's like, he didn't want to do that, but he wanted the teacher to hit on him. So we're like, fine, find the teacher. So we write that, we write that scene, you know, and then we like, we take long silkworm showers after it. But whatever, we write the scene and then, and then the movie comes out and we see it and not only has the, is the teacher hitting on him, but do you remember the Rollerblader?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, that's where we were just.

[Matthew Berry]

Oh yeah, right. And we're just like, good job. How many women are hitting on this like 50 year old dude in LA?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Not only hitting on him, but she stops short rollerblading on Venice Beach Boulevard there to throw herself at him and then have a mini, she has a mini monologue to herself where she's like, I mean, what am I doing just talking to a cowboy on the side of the street? I'm sure he's gay.

[Eddie Pepitone]

My experience out here, it's cold distant eyes.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

Oh, this is too good. I finally bump into a cute cowboy. He's a little more Robert Redford's vintage

[Matthew Berry]

than Brad Pitts, but that's okay.

[June Diane Raphael]

Cause he's got a mansion in Beverly Hills and plus he's got custody of his kid. That means he'd be a good dad to my Cindy. And this is. Oh, there's A cat tray. Nothing this good ever happens to me.

[Rachel Demita]

Are you.

[Matthew Berry]

You're not available.

[June Diane Raphael]

You're. You're gay, right?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Um, most of the time.

[Matthew Berry]

Pretty happy. Yeah, of course.

[June Diane Raphael]

Cute cowboy. Venice page.

[Pacific Life Advertiser]

How could you?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Gay.

[Rachel Demita]

As I see.

[Pacific Life Advertiser]

Why?

[June Diane Raphael]

She was a chatterbox.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah, mate. An American woman.

[June Diane Raphael]

She's got a nice ass.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

If you want to ask me what's the most embarrassing scene like for me, it's that.

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah, that's a good.

[Paul Scheer]

That is a big one.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Matthew Berry]

Well, because it's. It's so. It's so out of place in the movie. It makes no sense. No one talks like that. It's not real at all. It's not based in any sort of thing. It's entirely about his ego. That scene is entirely about his ego, which is sort of emblematic of the whole movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, Matthew, this is awesome to hear from your firsthand account about this movie. Thank you so much for joining us here.

[Eddie Pepitone]

You were great. Thank you.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, you could check out his book, Fantasy Life you can [e-mail] Matthew Berry, thanks so much for joining us.

[Matthew Berry]

Paul. Fun as always. Thanks, guys.

[Paul Scheer]

Bye.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Bye.

[Paul Scheer]

Big thanks to Matthew Berry for actually telling us how Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles got made. Unfortunately, Eddie, Pepitone and June had to leave. So, Jason, it's you and I right now.

Here we go.

So obviously we had an opinion about this movie, but there are some people who had different opinions. So it's now time for Second opinions. These are five star reviews culled from Amazon.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I feel like Second Opinions needs its own theme show movies.

[Paul Scheer]

We used to have

[Jason Manzoukas]

second opinions.

[Paul Scheer]

I like that. Somebody make that into a track. And we will play that every single

[Jason Manzoukas]

time until we hate it. Which will be three episodes from now,

[Paul Scheer]

but it will be a glorious three episodes. All right. This was actually a great treasure trove of Amazon reviews here. This is from Go Birds 2, who, if you look in the five star reviews at Amazon, posted the same review at least five times just with the

[Jason Manzoukas]

nouns changed to other places or. Always for this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Always for this movie. Same review for this movie.

[Matthew Berry]

Got it. So here.

[Paul Scheer]

Here it goes. You might say that Paul Hogan has his own brand of sophisticated humor. Sophisticated may sound like an odd word to describe his outback brand of slapstick, but it really is. Crocodile Dundee is a slick character that you don't know that you're really being

put on or not.

I think we're all getting tired of the fast paced, slam bang, rapid fire, so called sophisticated humor. This film is a welcome return to good old Fashioned homespun grassroots comedy. There's so many things to unpack in this. Sophisticated is not a word that you want to. Nope, nope, not at all. And I guess they're hypothesizing that this is like a Borat kind of character. Is he or is he not this character? Not that either. It's not Borat style. And we are all getting tired of that fast paced, paced rapid fire comedy.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Aren't we all just so tired of laughs coming quickly at me?

[Paul Scheer]

Slow it down, slow it down, slow it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

One laugh per every 15 minutes. Like that's the thing in this movie. They're in Los Angeles, California and they walk everywhere. They're walking the equivalent of 25 miles a day. It's crazy.

[Paul Scheer]

And again, like I said, they never get too far away from Hollywood.

[Jason Manzoukas]

No, never.

[Paul Scheer]

They're just walking in a constant circle. The only thing that was interesting to me, and this is again, a sign of a bad movie, when you're watching a city that you live in go, oh, that's interesting. That's what that looked like back then. That's what that looked.

[Jason Manzoukas]

But it is old timey. It is. There is an old timey element to like him picking his kid up from school and then them walking home like Andy Griffith style. Yeah, there I get what that person is saying, even though that person is a fucking idiot.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, let's listen to what Liz has to say. Liz says, oh, Liz.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Don't get me started with.

[Paul Scheer]

Liz loves it. She goes, this is a great movie. I like the first one, but this is much better. It is very funny. I'm a comedy freak and I love funny movies. And this is definitely funny. The DVD is better. So rent it today because I'm sure you'll come back and buy it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

The DVD is better.

[Paul Scheer]

5 stars. I don't know how the DVD is.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I guess it'd be the extras.

[Paul Scheer]

Maybe just going. The process of going to the theater is a pain. So maybe, maybe it's just the extra

[Jason Manzoukas]

features were like unstoppable on this.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, this is the one that I think. Oh, man. These are. Oh, man. Okay, I don't know which one. This one is a genuine note here. The writing on Dundee LA was excellent with some very funny material. One minor flaw in light of its family movie class would be to change the unwed status of the couple to some sort of aboriginal outback type of hookup, maybe with flashbacks to some kind of ceremony before the child was born and use that as the film's beginning. Beginning marriage status. And then they could have ended it with a traditional western marriage. That way they wouldn't look like the standard Hollywood shack up type of situation so common in liberal Hollywood scripts.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Wait a second. Five stars, Obviously. Five stars.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Obviously. Five stars. But so like, even with that, this person's love for the movie was undeterred?

[Paul Scheer]

Yes. I mean. Cause I mean, the liberal nature of this film, I mean, that's the thing I don't get, like the couple getting married at the end. That's a liberal agenda. That seems like.

[Jason Manzoukas]

No, the liberal agenda is that it's okay to have a child out of wedlock.

[Paul Scheer]

Okay, got it.

[Jason Manzoukas]

The liberal. The agenda is, you know, that being married to have a family isn't important until the end of the movie. Like. Like what he wants is for them to have some sort of marriage, even if it's like a aboriginal. What he's. What this. What this fucking asshole is saying is like, give them a pretend wedding, like the pretend people in the outback, which is by the. A real wedding, you fucking asshole. And then give them a real wedding at the end. Like, that's. This. What is wrong with people? Come on.

[Paul Scheer]

Five stars.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Five stars.

[Paul Scheer]

And here is my favorite one here, the final one. One thing that makes this such a great comedy is it doesn't have the feel of trying to be funny.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's not burdened by that, by that need to be funny.

[Paul Scheer]

There are some movies where the humor doesn't seem that fun funny to me, which is kind of embarrassing. What? But in this, every single joke got a laugh out of me. There's even an inside joke where she goes. Which I understand. And I don't even live in la where the news broadcaster says one fourth of an inch of rain was a downpour. Cause the rainfall is so infrequent. Plus the comedy is never sleazy or degrading.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Such an inside joke.

[Paul Scheer]

I know. It's such an insight and goes. I've seen quite a lot of movies and I would put this among my top five comedies next to. Are you ready for these? All right, this is the best part of the whole review.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Top five comedies for who? Who is this person?

[Paul Scheer]

Just it's. Her name is a customer. The Disney movie Blackbeard's Ghost.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yep.

[Paul Scheer]

Jean Arthur's the devil and Mrs. Jones, of course. Danny Case, the Court Jester.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh boy.

[Paul Scheer]

And Dick Van Dyke's Never Dull Moment.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Okay, this person is easily in his

[Paul Scheer]

or her mid-70s, but Crocodile Dundee 3 gets put into that panther.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's crazy. My favorites. Paul Hogan, Danny K, Dick Van Dyke

[Paul Scheer]

and the Disney movie Blackbeard's Ghost. Oh, my God. So that's a fun.

[Jason Manzoukas]

And I like Ron Jericho Jeremy's pornographies.

[Paul Scheer]

So there they are. Those are the five star reviews from Amazon. We'll close it up as you can. May or may not realize our guests, everyone had to leave one by one. So it's just Jason and I in here. But I do want to tell you that Eddie Pepitone is a hilarious, funny stand up and this documentary that he did about himself is awesome. You go to the Bitter Buddha Duck, you can get the documentary. It's on itunes. For anyone interested in the world of alternative comedy, it is a must. I say this not only as a fan of Eddie, but this is a true statement. This documentary is very good. You can follow him on Twitter dddypepetone and go to eddiepeppetone.com for me. You can check out the Arshirio Paul show. We have seven new episodes up. You can check those out. Just type in Arshirio Paul.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's spelled just like it's like. Sounds Arshirio Paul.

[Paul Scheer]

Just like it sounds Arshirio Paul. And you can also watch NTSFSD SUV every Thursday night and month. Final plug is that June is in that as well. And Hell Baby is on VOD right now, which is on itunes. I hope you guys like that. Jason, you want to plug anything I

[Jason Manzoukas]

wrote on Children's Hospital this season? So watch that very funny Children's Hospital, very funny show. And then I don't know. Yeah, you can always follow me at Twitter at. Just kidding. I'm not on.

[Paul Scheer]

You were on Twitter, though?

[Jason Manzoukas]

Oh, yes. 30 minutes last week I was on

[Paul Scheer]

Twitter so people can look up Zooks230.

[Jason Manzoukas]

That's what it was.

[Paul Scheer]

And you could. They can follow your tweets. They will never come back.

[Jason Manzoukas]

But no, no, that account was immediately deleted.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, was it okay?

[Eddie Pepitone]

Yeah, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Okay.

[Jason Manzoukas]

I don't know if you can fight. Can you find old tweets? Is that a thing?

[Paul Scheer]

You probably can find it somewhere.

[Jason Manzoukas]

It's very boring what I was doing. But. But I was on Twitter for 30 for John Daly's 2:30 show, whatever that's called.

[Paul Scheer]

How did you like it?

[Jason Manzoukas]

You know what? It was for half an hour. And a large portion of that was me trying to figure it out. You know, like a lot of it was me asking questions like, now how do I do this? But it was like within 20 minutes, I had over 400 followers. Wow. Which was hilarious.

[Paul Scheer]

That is pretty impressive. And you just got rid of them instantly.

[Jason Manzoukas]

Yeah, yeah. Then I rejected them.

[Paul Scheer]

So you can try to find that you can actually watch Jason doing that live. That the 230 PST podcast is actually a video podcast. It's on the Video Podcast Network. So you can see Jason on Twitter. For all of you asking, you can see him on Twitter even though it doesn't exist anymore. And again, Fantasy Life by Matthew Barry. You can go get that. And a big thanks to everyone that helps run this show. Our engineer, Brett. Thank you so much for doing this and this is a complicated one. Today, our researcher, Nathan Kiley and of course our new clip puller, Avril Halle. Thank you guys for listening. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, Daytime sleepiness I'm Shaquille o' Neal and this shouldn't be anybody's experience Ask your doctor about Zepbound Tirzepatide, the first and only FDA approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

[Zepbound Advertiser]

Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, apnea, OSA and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5 or 15 milligram injection. Zepbound contains Tirzepatide and should not be used with other Tirzepatide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing pregnant, plan to be or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

[Paul Scheer]

Talk to your doctor, call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound Lilly.com what's Up Sports fans?

[Rachel Demita]

I'M Rachel Demita, here to tell you about my show, Courtside Club. If you love hoops and hot takes, then you're in the right place. Want to hear about Caitlin Clark's unstoppable rise in the wnba? How stars like Wemby and Luka Doncic are dominating the NBA? Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments. Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us Courtside. You can listen to Courtside Club wherever you get your podcasts. OOI and ah.