Wild Wild West w/ Kevin Smith (Classic)

Summary

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How Did This Get Made?

Wild Wild West w/ Kevin Smith (Classic)

Air date: May 26, 2026
Hosts: Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Jason Mantzoukas
Guest: Kevin Smith

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Episode Overview

The award-winning movie podcast dives deep into the blockbuster disaster Wild Wild West (1999), joined by filmmaker and raconteur Kevin Smith. The hosts and their guest eviscerate this steampunk western’s failings, both hilarious and offensive—from mechanical spiders and misguided casting to baffling studio decisions. Kevin Smith also shares his infamous "giant spider" John Peters story, linking his own Superman scriptwriting woes to Wild Wild West’s most infamous set-piece.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Wild Wild West Was Expected to Work—and Why It Didn’t

• “It's Men In Black in the old west, but way more racist.” (Jason, 01:36)
• The movie had big stars (Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Salma Hayek), a high-profile director (Barry Sonnenfeld), and was based on a beloved retro TV show.
• Production pedigree included hits like Men In Black and Independence Day.
• Jason: “Everyone, I think, expected this movie to be great...all the right elements in place, but it's just...a mishmash of nothing.” (10:50)
• Six credited writers. The script is clearly the product of many, often conflicting, hands.

2. TV Show vs. Movie Adaptation

• Jason relishes the TV show’s “James Bond in the Old West” vibe; Robert Conrad starred.
• Producers sought a similar two-hander buddy format, but the movie’s script never gels.

3. Origin of the Giant Mechanical Spider (Kevin Smith’s Hollywood Legend)

• [21:03–37:35]
• Kevin details his surreal encounters with producer John Peters, who obsessively wanted a giant spider in the third act of every project—including the Superman film Smith scripted.

  “He sits me down, he goes, ‘So they tell me that you like Superman. ...I don't want to see him in that suit. I don't want to see him flying... And he has to fight a giant spider in the third act. Swear to you.’” (34:45)

• After being shot down in Superman, Peters gets his spider in Wild Wild West.

  “I went to the movies to go see Wild Wild west, also produced by John Peters… this giant mechanical spider appears, man, and I was like, he got his spider. He finally got his spider.” (37:25)

4. Script Issues & Studio Interference

• Extensive rewrites evident, especially in the attempt to fit Will Smith’s casting into the original post-Civil War context.
• June: “The rewrites in this movie are so evident, like they don't have anything to do with the plot… making him, you know, that character played by a black actor. It's just sort of integrated into the lines here and there.” (13:22)
• Kevin rants on the test screening process, which led to even more incoherence.

  “When you start making cuts based on an audience reaction that you’re never going to meet again, it’s a slippery slope.” (14:00)

• Jason relays how bad test screenings led to PR spin: "People thought they were seeing The Matrix. That's why..." (15:16)

5. Bizarre, Problematic Humor and Set-Pieces

• The group mocks the infamous “living paintings” scene, the mechanical contraptions, endless moving gears, and the nonsensical plot devices.
• They deep-dive the robot villain, the spider discs, and Salma Hayek's character, who June points out “just appears on the train for no reason” (46:19).
• Point out the strange fixation with bodies: Kenneth Branagh’s “robot dick” speech; Will Smith’s nudity; constant focus on characters' butts.

  “Does he use a robot wiener on her?” (41:41)

• They recount the "fake boobs" scene and how much of the comedy falls totally flat with any audience over age twelve.

6. Race, History, and Tone-Deafness

• The hosts criticize the film’s jarring mix of slapstick, sex jokes, and halfhearted engagement with serious racial history.
• June: “Every about 15 minutes or so, the movie drops into some real historical, social context that’s very dark and upsetting. And then we’re lifted right at it. A second later, it's the creepy with some goofball invention from Kevin Klein.” (44:18)
• Will Smith's character’s backstory as an escaped slave is referenced but never meaningfully explored.

7. Studio Culture, John Peters as Character

• Jason and Kevin suggest Kenneth Branagh’s crazed spider obsession is modeled after John Peters.
• Kevin shares more wild stories about Peters’ Hollywood self-mythologizing—e.g., his credit for small moments in Batman:

  "He'd say things like, 'You know why that movie made $300 million? ...Because that was real jeopardy...Batman in action.' So, that's why that movie works." (59:00)

8. Bad Guy Defeats & Anticlimactic Action

• All major villains die unceremoniously; the final deaths are circumstantial, not heroic.
• The hosts roast the missed comedic and dramatic beats in the ending, plus random “robot fights” that short-circuit without reason.

9. Critical Reception—And Amazon Fans

• Reading out five-star reviews for Wild Wild West:

  "Honestly, this is in my top 100 favorite movies of all time out of the thousands that I have seen." (62:38) "Wild Wild west is the greatest and most funniest movie in the world. A true classic. The best of the best. Bai Ling is so sexy and has the sexiest ass. Buy this movie." (63:04)

• The panel marvels at these defenders’ priorities and grammar.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• John Peters and the Spider Obsession

  “So he, he was a guy, I guess he'd come from not so much money... but what does fucking Superman have to do with the streets?” — Kevin Smith (31:03) “If he's not in the suit and he's not flying, what do you got?” — Kevin Smith (34:45)

• On the Movie’s Racial Dynamics

  “Absolutely no attention paid to race and maximum attention paid to race in the worst way.” — Paul Scheer (44:08)

• On Studio Comedy for All Ages

  “There should be a studio mandate... you have to have a representative from every generation that you're actually trying to court in the theaters on set when you're doing comedy.” — Kevin Smith (50:18)

• On All the Contraptions

  “This movie might as well be called Gears and Pointless Contraptions because that is... every shot is just the background is just moving parts.” — Paul Scheer (38:58)

• On the Pointlessness of the Spider Discs

  “This disc is meant to be thrown away... Why would you bother to be like, imprint a spider on it?” — Kevin Smith (39:54)

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Segment Timestamps

• 00:36 – Movie intro: “Men In Black in the old west, but way more racist.”
• 03:14 – Kevin reveals his tangential connection to Wild Wild West.
• 10:50 – Explaining the “too many cooks” writing dilemma.
• 13:22 – Racial rewriting and plot incoherence called out by June.
• 15:08–16:49 – Actors perform some of the script’s clunky, racially-tinged dialogue.
• 21:03–37:35 – Kevin Smith’s John Peters “giant spider” saga; Superman project war stories.
• 38:58 – Movie dubbed “Gears and Pointless Contraptions.”
• 40:35 – The robot-dick scene (“speaking of hard pumping”).
• 44:03 – The lynching/stand-up scene and abrupt tonal shifts.
• 49:31 – Breast/fake boobs comparison scene.
• 50:18 – Kevin Smith’s rant: Studio reps for every age on set.
• 62:38–63:59 – Reading real Amazon 5-star reviews of Wild Wild West.

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Additional Notes

• Salma Hayek: June observes how her character vanishes and reappears without explanation—mirroring the movie’s narrative chaos.
• Bai Ling: A “show favorite,” and the group recounts her legendary improv in Crank 2.
• Kenneth Branagh: Cast against type as the cackling villain; the group riffs on his endless wheelchair spins and “robot genitalia” monologues.

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Conclusion

This episode is a wide-ranging, hilariously scathing breakdown of Wild Wild West—from writers’ room chaos and producers’ eccentric obsessions to steampunk misfires and racial insensitivity. Kevin Smith’s behind-the-scenes anecdotes bridge the gap between Superman Lives and the wild, wild mechanical spider, showing how Hollywood’s strangest stories just keep recurring. The hosts and guest never lose their irreverent, rapid-fire tone even as they engage genuinely with what makes a big-budget flop so fascinating (and sometimes, unintentionally watchable).

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Recommended for:
Bad movie aficionados, 90s pop-culture junkies, anyone who ever asked “How did this get made?”

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Transcript

[Paul Scheer]

From origin to legend.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I need to become a symbol.

[Kevin Smith]

I need to become Batman. Become the hero.

[June Diane Raphael]

Someone's gotta step up, build the legacy.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Let's get to work. You wanna get nuts? Let's get nuts.

[Paul Scheer]

I'm allergic to nuts.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Lego Batman.

[Kevin Smith]

Legacy of the Dark Knight.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

This is my favorite part.

[Paul Scheer]

Out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series XS and PC.

[Kevin Smith]

Rated E10 for ages 10 and up.

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[Jason Mantzoukas]

It's Men in Black in the old west, but way more racist. We saw Wild, Wild west, so you know what that means.

[Kevin Smith]

Now it's time for how to discover. How to discover. Let's wallow in the mediocrity of subpar art. Perhaps we'll find the answer to the

[Jason Mantzoukas]

question, how did this get made? Hello, people of Earth, and welcome. Welcome to how did this Get Made? We have a very fun show for you today. The movie is Wild, Wild West. I am joined by my two co hosts, Jason Manzoukas.

[Kevin Smith]

How are you?

[Paul Scheer]

Pretty good. How are you?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Paul and June. Diane Rafan. How are you?

[June Diane Raphael]

Hi, Paul.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Both back in the studio and today, a very special guest writer, director, podcaster, Kevin Smith. Welcome.

[Kevin Smith]

This is just a proactive way to make sure none of my flicks ever get discussed on this fucking show. The moment I saw this podcast pop up, I said, I gotta get on that show fast. Otherwise is going to be like episode 16, Jersey Girl. How the fuck did this happen? So now you'll have to think twice,

[Paul Scheer]

by the way, before that happens. We'll do Jersey Girl if you're the gay.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Totally.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, because I could tell you what happened there.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, perfect. That's a. That's a great version of this show.

[Kevin Smith]

This one I. I don't have as much insight into how it happened, but I do play. I. To say a role would be putting it to grand.

[Paul Scheer]

You play Will Smith's role in this movie?

[Kevin Smith]

I play what nobody ever realized is

[Jason Mantzoukas]

how black really does it. Really?

[Kevin Smith]

And no. And nobody gave me credit, you know, because they're so mad about Mallrat.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

No.

[Kevin Smith]

This is a movie that I have such tangential connection to.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But when I heard about this, it made me laugh so hard. I mean, so the big. The big thing in this movie is the end piece is a gigantic 80 foot mechanical spider.

[Paul Scheer]

Totally normal.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, totally normal.

[Kevin Smith]

Which to be fair, before, before we skewer to flick. When you saw this trailer, you were like, holy shit. They may have cracked the code.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like this may be the best movie of all time. They found a way to combine the old west and fucking steamp and all this stuff.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And the track record's great. You got Men in Black. He's been. Will Smith has been like Independence Day. Like, all right. These guys.

[Kevin Smith]

Barry fucking Sonnenfeld, man. Like a legendary director. Hell of a shooter. Like he knows how to work. Humorously.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes.

[Kevin Smith]

Big budget.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And also like a good movie to be transferred. Translated. Or a good TV show to be translated into a movie.

[Kevin Smith]

Have you ever seen. Has anybody ever watched the TV show?

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, I haven't.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, the TV show's great. It's like James Bond in the old West. I mean.

[Kevin Smith]

And who was the star?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Robert Conrad.

[Kevin Smith]

Conrad who? The dude who was like put a battery on my fucking shoulder?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, knock that off.

[June Diane Raphael]

Is the TV show a two hander like the movie?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Exactly.

[Kevin Smith]

And basically, Robert, don't be dropping the industry lingo and whatnot. You lost me. We lost half the audience going two handers. This a porn.

[Paul Scheer]

Is this the first episode of a

[Kevin Smith]

meet cute explain two hander for those.

[June Diane Raphael]

They just hold hands the entire time.

[Kevin Smith]

It's an equal.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It's an equal balance.

[Kevin Smith]

I didn't know it was gonna be one of these shows.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

This is like a Nicky Fink. Yeah. Industry. It's sickening. Well,

[Jason Mantzoukas]

it was supposed to be. At one point Mel Gibson and George Clooney was the original incarnation of the Wild Wild West. But then Richard Donner was gonna direct it. He went off and did Maverick and then.

[Kevin Smith]

And he took Mel Gibson with him.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Exactly. Made like. I think I remember liking Maverick. I haven't watched it recently, but I

[Paul Scheer]

remember not liking Maverick.

[Kevin Smith]

Maverick. All I remember is Jodie Foster's chemistry with him, and more so than the movie itself. And this is, I guess, when, like, publicity and hype machines started actually going to work in a big, bad way. Cause there was an era, kids before the age of podcasts and the Internet, where you didn't know that much about movies unless you went fucking digging for it in a zine or a convention.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I remember being on AOL online and downloading, like, movie posters for, like, Beverly Hills Cop 3. And it was like, slowly just going down.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Smith]

It was almost like masturbating to porn.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Just like watching line by line. What does it look like? You ever met a roller coaster in the background? Axl Banana and its tailpipe? This will be amazing. But they. But there was a period where you didn't know that much that you weren't inundated. It wasn't like, you know, now during the production of a movie, you hear about it all throughout images.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

You're seeing left and right. This was when they started, like, putting stars out there big time and doing, like. And. And again, a pre. It's not like this is where it was born, but this is where I felt it, like, kick in, where publicity became an art form all to itself. In an industry almost as powerful as the financiers in this business and the marketers, publicity is just as powerful. Jodie Foster went out and told this story a zillion fucking times about what a prankster.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Mel Gibson was on Maverick. Yes. Yeah, always. Anytime you heard about Maverick, it wasn't about, like, oh, it's the old show, or fucking James Garner makes appearance. None of that. It was, Mel Gibson is such a practical joker. And Jodie Foster is going to tell you how. And she's like, three very tame examples, but also kind of cute. We were like, oh, who knew he had a sense of humor?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

That's all I remember of Maverick. Cut to years later when they're like, Mel Gibson hates Jewish people.

[Paul Scheer]

All I can gaze.

[Kevin Smith]

And gays as well. All I can think about is like, so what were those practical jokes? Yes.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

There was a lot that did not make the story, the publicity story.

[Paul Scheer]

Inexplicably, Jodie Foster is Mel Gibson's greatest apologist.

[Kevin Smith]

She's a staunch defender, but she's becoming the person that comes out in defense of anybody that goes off the path.

[June Diane Raphael]

And Kristen's.

[Kevin Smith]

She just did it with Casey, who was the. She comes out going, leave her alone. She just likes fucking dick. I shouldn't Say that, by the way,

[Paul Scheer]

how great would it be if Jodie fell? Aster was like, leave her alone.

[Kevin Smith]

She likes fucking dick, of all people. She's like, I don't.

[Paul Scheer]

I don't. To each his own or her own, I guess.

[Kevin Smith]

Or bone, if you will.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

You know, it's like. But you're right. Like, this is like the era of. It was 1999. Like, where it was like, where Godzilla had, like, all summer long was like, it's coming. It's bigger than this, Mother.

[Kevin Smith]

Yes. They had. They have a billboard in New York on the side of a building. It would be like, it's. He's bigger than this. Yeah. Holy shit.

[Paul Scheer]

But this movie, it was terrible.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It's so bad.

[Kevin Smith]

What they forgot was to put up an ad that was like, it's as interesting. About an inch between two.

[Paul Scheer]

It's giant, but scratch and sniff, sticker of a fart.

[Kevin Smith]

The problem with that movie is, like, you take Godzilla, which is a design everybody fucking knows fundamentally, and change. It would be like if they, you know, they did that Smurfs movie, and whether you saw it or not, you looked at the poster, you're like, that looks.

[Paul Scheer]

We did it for this show.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Did you do it?

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

They look like Smurfs.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, they do look like Smurfs.

[June Diane Raphael]

Those are Smurfs.

[Kevin Smith]

Godzilla doesn't look like Godzilla.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. You can't change what the character is. You have to keep in there.

[Kevin Smith]

Insist to people that it's the same thing.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. This movie so bad that Robert Conrad was asked to cameo in the Wild Wild west because he was the star of the TV show, and he said no and then accepted all the Razzie Awards for the Wild Wild west because he hated him so much. And then Will Smith eventually apologized to Robert Conrad for wrecking the Jim Smith character. Oh, wow. So, yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

So they.

[Kevin Smith]

Do you think that's even owed.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I don't think he needs to go and apologize to Robert Conrad.

[Kevin Smith]

Did Robert Conrad create that show?

[Paul Scheer]

No.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, he played the character the first time, right?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. Yeah. I think.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm saying.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I think.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

I think.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm not saying. I don't want to pick a fight because he's even at. He must be 70. He must be a tough guy.

[Paul Scheer]

And he'll come in and put the

[Kevin Smith]

fucking battery on my shoulder. Knock it off, you bitch. That was the commercial of my youth. He was the scary guy who was like, knock a Duracell off my. Yeah, that would.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, totally.

[Kevin Smith]

And for some reason, that would prove that it was a better battery than most yeah, it's like, if you could get in my. Then this is a good battery. You're like, what's the logic?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I buy. I'm gonna buy that battery. You're gonna do that better.

[Paul Scheer]

This is before they decided to market things based on how good they were. This is just like. Like associating them with tough guys.

[Kevin Smith]

Well, then they had the rabbit, and all of a sudden they had the bunny. And people like, fuck you and your fucking shoulder.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

What was it?

[Kevin Smith]

What was this rabbit will sell batteries. Way more batteries.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

What about that guy? Wasn't there that Australian guy who sold batteries too?

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, big bald guy.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, that was Jacko. Jacko.

[Kevin Smith]

Elijah.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. Oy, that guy again, nothing to do with batteries. Just really anti.

[Kevin Smith]

Anti Semitic. Yeah, he was like, oi, oy, oy. No, he was Australian.

[Paul Scheer]

That was their thing. It was their oy. Not the Jewish Oi. Although he might be Jewish.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

We don't know. We don't know.

[Paul Scheer]

We don't know.

[Kevin Smith]

We need to find out the language of Oi like, that it goes to all cultures.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, I mean, Gwen Stefani had that Oi to the world. She did have on. That's on like the best Christmas album.

[Paul Scheer]

I feel like that's the oy of punk rock. British, like the same oi, you know, that would be from that era, from that.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But maybe that's what Jaka's oi was.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it was.

[Kevin Smith]

That Oi still lives, man. I was at a. We had an event once, a Vulgarthon, and there were. There's a lineup before people get in. And there were these three dudes who were like their own homegrown punk band. And, you know, I'm walking down the line going, hey, welcome, everybody.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Welcome.

[Kevin Smith]

They stop me like, dude, you gotta hear this. Cause we wrote this with you in mind. Ready? They fucking pull out a guitar, sing Oi for Captain America. And they did five minutes of punk about singing away for Captain America and how awesome he was. And mind you, this is like 1990. These guys were ahead of the curve.

[Paul Scheer]

I like it.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

These guys got it late and a little early.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

So, yes, this movie was. Everyone, I think, expected this movie to be great. The track record was lining up perfectly. And it's an example of one of those movies that has all the right elements in place, but it's just. It's a mishmash of nothing. Six writers on this movie, two story by credits. Like two separate people wrote the story and then six different writers are credited. That's a hard thing. To even get done in the WGA to get that many writers out.

[Kevin Smith]

Let's look at how many cooks may have been involved in this scene. Yeah. If you're coming off of Men in Black, you've got, of course, Will Smith. He's at his apex at this point. And Barry Sonnenfeld, the director is also at probably his most powerful. Who else is in the movie? Kevin Klein doesn't have that much juice. And by all reports has always been a guy who's like, I'm an actor. I'm here to do the work.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And actually really good in this movie too.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh yeah, Kenneth Branagh.

[Kevin Smith]

Kenneth Branagh. He doesn't have enough juice to really mess with.

[Paul Scheer]

But this is a weird move for him at that time.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

I feel like.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm sure he was just like, this will make me hip.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, yeah. It's like he went.

[Kevin Smith]

He was great, Ken, working on it. The moment I knew we were doing this, I brushed up on Brenna. Wait till you hear my Kevin Klein.

[Paul Scheer]

Listen, Kenneth Branagh is not in the studio. That was Kevin Smith.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But that. But this is like, you know, this is like that Jeff Goldblum doing Independence Day. And Jurassic park is like, oh, this is my big ticket. Like I'm a.

[Kevin Smith]

Normally I'm an act and now I'm gonna be this actor.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Exactly. I'll just jump into this movie and. Yeah, so. But you imagine all the Warner Brothers people. It's like a big. It's the most expensive movie made in 1999, this movie. So, you know, so that also says that there's a lot of people.

[Kevin Smith]

Salma Hayek. No juice whatsoever.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

No juice at that point.

[Kevin Smith]

So really the responsibility, if you're gonna look Play to blame Game probably falls squarely on the shoulders of Emmett Walsh. And Emmett Walsh, good point, man. The guy, everything is shit.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. The minute I see Emmett Walsh, this

[Jason Mantzoukas]

guy came in with a.

[Kevin Smith]

It is all about bushel raising Arizona. Could have been amazing for the first five minutes.

[Paul Scheer]

Mmet Walsh, Blood Simple. Oh, come on. M Emmet Walsh.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Come on.

[Paul Scheer]

Shot by Barry Sonnenfeld.

[Kevin Smith]

Actually well connected.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I would also argue too that there is one flaw in this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

One?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, yeah, there's many. Like when they rewrote it for a black actor to play this role, it is a little odd to be like he's an undercover agent right after the Civil war. He would stick out like a sore thumb wherever he would go.

[Kevin Smith]

Everywhere.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yes. And the rewrites in this movie are so evident, like they don't have anything to do with the plot at all. Like making him, you know, that character played by a black actor. It's just sort of integrated into the lines here and there.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, not here and there. Every time he comes.

[June Diane Raphael]

Also every time he enters a scene.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, like, it smells like they had a test screening and everyone responded. And they're like, just more of less of that. Having been through the fucking process. Yeah, that's what happens, man. I mean, we talked about Jersey Girl before, but Jersey Girl is the movie I test screen the most. Was forced to 12 separate times. And when you start making cuts based on an audience reaction that you're never going to meet again, it's a slippery slope. I've always said, look, you bring me a crowd and if they all say shit, I'll cut to their notes. But then give me that same exact crowd to then show them the second pass. Because otherwise it makes no sense. But what they do is you meet one audience, they go, this sucks. This blows. And the studio goes, you heard him, Fix it. So you go in and change it. And they're like, let's test it again. Then you test with a completely different audience. And you're not answering the old notes anymore. You're answering. They're all brand new notes.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, it's a mess.

[Kevin Smith]

It's a terrible mess. So you go through. And you know, it's not as bad as like, home invasion. That's a terrible mess. Things like that.

[Paul Scheer]

But like the idea of a real home invasion, but at least the home invasion is not.

[Kevin Smith]

That's hard, disheartening.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

A home invasion. Never noted, though. You get the. You go in, you do your stuff.

[Kevin Smith]

Like you could have done that better, but. But in that process, when you look at this flick, you have the same feeling. Like they sat there and screened it. The first screening. They were like, this is gonna be money jacked up. Here we go. And they got a bunch of fucking revelatory notes like, shit, take everything out. That blows. And everything that got a remote chuckle. Let's just throw money into more.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

You're exactly right. Because I did some research and this movie tested so badly that it became a news story in the time where this wasn't a big deal.

[Kevin Smith]

Right?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And Barry Sonnenfeld and Will Smith had to come out in front of that bad test screening and be like. And Barry Sonnenfeld's thing was people thought they were seeing the Matrix. That's why they didn't know they were seeing a comedy movie. I read the whole article today.

[Kevin Smith]

I've thought of so many excuses for why? My films underperform. But never have I thought to say somebody thought this was something completely different. People set in the future, not the old West.

[Paul Scheer]

Nothing more than for every time you test screen a movie now, you come out in front of it and say people thought they were seeing the Matrix.

[Kevin Smith]

I am so.

[Paul Scheer]

Always the Matrix, though.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Always the Matrix. They thought it was going to be in 3D and IMAX, but just to give you a sense of how the dialogue kind of plays, here we go.

[Paul Scheer]

How nice of you to join us tonight and add color to these monochromatic proceedings.

[Kevin Smith]

Boom. 1. Well, when a fella comes back from

[Paul Scheer]

the dead, I find that an occasion to stand up.

[Kevin Smith]

Ding.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I can see where it'd be difficult

[Kevin Smith]

for a man of your stature to

[Jason Mantzoukas]

keep in touch with even half the people you know.

[Paul Scheer]

Zing.

[Kevin Smith]

Perhaps the lovely Miss east will keep you from being a slave to your disappointment. Zing.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That is this one little scene.

[Kevin Smith]

And that.

[Paul Scheer]

That. That dynamic. Yeah, that dynamic between them happens throughout the mo.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And by the way, there is a. That's the first time that Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh meet in this movie. And there's also, like a little funny scene here, too, because, you know, Will Smith is trying to steal some documents, and you find out that Kenneth Branagh's office is full of paintings that are just like his security guard standing in

[Paul Scheer]

the painting, exposed as parts of paintings.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Living paintings. Living paintings.

[June Diane Raphael]

That's right.

[Kevin Smith]

That's how rich he is.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. And they don't kill him. Him. When he's in there by himself only.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

They wait for him to, like, scan the paper, learn the information. They wait for a very long time to get him, and then they don't get him. Yeah, he manages to somehow shoot them all.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, he shoots. He realizes that every painting is in there, is. It's a really waste.

[June Diane Raphael]

Even the one on the ceiling.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God.

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[Jason Mantzoukas]

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[Kevin Smith]

It's great.

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[Jason Mantzoukas]

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[Jason Mantzoukas]

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[Jason Mantzoukas]

But so. Yes. So there's so much to talk about.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, wait, we still haven't heard Kevin's story.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. So, yeah. So obviously the producer of this movie,

[Kevin Smith]

one of the producers of this movie was John Peters, who goes back in this town in this business for.

[Paul Scheer]

This is Streisand's John Peters, right?

[Kevin Smith]

Yes, Streisand's John Peters hairdresser. Back in the day, he was a hairdresser. That's how he gained entree into this business. He was Barbra Streisand's hairdresser who then became.

[June Diane Raphael]

That's an unusual trajectory.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Isn't it weird?

[Kevin Smith]

Especially because when you think of her hair, you go. Especially then circa 70s, like, oh, it's that rat's nest.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, it's literally just a frog. So he was her hairdresser and then he became her lover.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Oh, really?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Paul Scheer]

I like that you brought it down there.

[Kevin Smith]

And then she started bringing him onto

[Jason Mantzoukas]

flicks as he, like, produced the Star is Born. He executive producer on Caddyshack.

[Kevin Smith]

Main event he put her into. That was the boxing movie with Ryan o'. Neill.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, I mean, he has great movies. I mean, you know, American Werewolf in London, Flashdance, D.C. cab, Youngblood. Caddyshack too.

[Kevin Smith]

No, the Shaq is Back.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Batman, Tango and Cash. Batman Returns.

[Kevin Smith]

And this is what I know. He's definitely responsible for the main event. Cause he can talk about that to no one end. And Batman, he was heavily involved with Batman.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, really? Okay.

[Kevin Smith]

I spent a lot of time with him because I was working. I got a job in 1996 working on Superman Returns. It was called. Oh, now, was it?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

No, that wasn't. You weren't gonna put Tim Burton in the suit. That was.

[Kevin Smith]

But I suggested like, again, my. My opinion didn't mean at that point, like Chasing Amy, I think had yet to even come out. I was coming off Mall Rats. But when I handed in my script, I was like, you guys should get Tim Burton, man. He did a great job with Batman, even though his sensibility is different than, you know, Batman, Superman. The char. Like, that dude knows that because there were nobody else that you can point to to be like, there's a comic book guy. But at the point that I was involved with it, nobody was attached yet. Tim Burton would come later. Nick Cage would come later on as well. But when I was working on it, the, the. I had to go meet with Peters in order to go through the approval process because when he. He used to run Warner Brothers with Peter Goober. And then. I'm sorry, they were. Let me backtrack. They were at Warner Brothers during. Basically, Batman movie went huge. Over on the other side of town, the Japanese buy Sony, okay? And then they say, we need someone to run this studio. Let's just turn to the premier producers who made the most successful movie of this year. And they brought Peter Guber. They bought them out of their Warner Brothers contracts, brought them to Sony and had them run the studio. If you're interested in this kind of shit, there's an amazing book called Hit and Run, which is all about Goober Peace taking over Sony and running it into the ground. And the Japanese fleeing Hollywood in a big bad way because they're like, this is a fool's errand. It's just a hole to put money into. So those dudes wound up with golden parachutes dropping out of Sony. And when it was in its worst financial conditions in years and they landed separately, John Peters landed with an overall deal at Warner Brothers. One of the two projects he requested when he came in the door was the Muhammad Ali Strike story and Superman. And he won. And I can't say this is why, but I've been to his office, and if you recall, back in the 70s, there was an issue of Superman where he fought Muhammad Ali.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, no.

[Kevin Smith]

And he had a giant blow up in his office framed of those two characters fighting him. And I often suspect he was just like, what will my next two movies be? And he goes, here it is. So he was the guy. And so I had to go meet with him. And when they sent me to meet with him, I was warned, like, he's a bit eccentric and, you know, he's gonna tell some things that he wants in the movie that we don't. But go meet with him. Blah, blah, blah. You gotta get. He's the guy. If he likes you, you're on the job, we like you here at the studio. He's gotta like you. So you go to meet him. And he literally lives in an estate, like here in Hollywood is over in Beverly Hills that is reminiscent of going up to Batman's house, to Bruce Wayne's house. Like, very large property. And this is 96 at this point. So I'm not. I haven't been around big, affluent properties.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

At this. This early in my career, this is the biggest one I'd seen. You get in and there's a fucking butler and maid and somebody parks your car and there's, like, stables and shit.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Like, wow.

[Kevin Smith]

Grounds. It was crazy.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

So they bring me into a living room and he comes in. He's got his, like, tennis shorts on and he's tan and shit. And he's very affable, but very like, I know who I am. I run Hollywood kind of guy.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

He sits me down, he goes. So they tell me that you like Superman. Like, let me hear it. Let me tell. I didn't see the movie. And this is all coming off of Mall Rats because I. In Mall Rats, I made a joke about Superman. They were like, you know a lot about Superman. I swear, that was it. I met with an exec named Basil Iwanick who's gone on to do cool things. He works with Ben on, like, on his last movie on the Town or something. But when I met with him, he's a junior exec, and they had a few projects. They were like, we've got this one called. It was. It was. Remember the end of the Watch? Of the Watchmen. It was based on an episode of the Outer Limits. I think it was called Architecture.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

They had that.

[Kevin Smith]

It was an episode of Outer Limits that they wanted to do as a feature. And they gave me a script which I. To this day, I can't remember who wrote it. But they gave me the script to read. They're like, this is just weird. Like, see if you could do anything with this. And I read it as, hands down, one of the best scripts I've ever read in my life. And I hand it back. I was like, this is flawless. You should make this and they're like, it's an art film. And it kind of was. It was definitely more of, like a Chris Nolan type of action flick than anything else, and which in those days would have been a tough fucking sell. So I like that. I was like, I got another them for this. I think you should just make this. And they're like, we're not going to. And they. And they offered me two other things. One was Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, which I was like, I love Beetlejuice. But I was like, I think we said everything we need to say. I love.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Just go.

[Kevin Smith]

Literally, that was what they wanted.

[Paul Scheer]

Did they have a script for that?

[Kevin Smith]

They had one that looked like this. There was a draft, and they wanted me to go in. I was like, I ain't going to be that guy. I also came in with, like, I liked working. I was happy to be in a business, but I also didn't want to be the guy that was. Was, like the person I would have made fun of if I hadn't had Clerks picked up. Like, who the fuck does a Beetlejuice sequel without Tim Burton? You know that guy? So I said no to that. And he said, there's one more that's a real long shot, but we're trying to redevelop Superman. I was like, oh, Superman. I know comics. And. And he's like, yeah. And I was like, yeah, man. I talked about. I'm in. In Mall Rats, like the Brody character, big fan of comic books. And he goes, that's why you're here. I said, why? He goes, because someone saw Mall Rats and said. Said, like, you talk about Superman and a kryptonite condom. And I was like, yeah. And he goes, well, they figured you had an original take on Superman. And I was like, that's not even original take, man. That's based on an essay called man of Steel, Woman of Tissue, or something like that from back in the day.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

They're like, well, you want to read that essay, by the way? I didn't know that.

[Kevin Smith]

It wasn't even based on that. Years later, somebody was like, did you ever read man of Steel, Women of Tissue, Women of Tissue. I said, no. They said, in it, they talk about how Superman and Lois couldn't have sex because. Because his sperm would, like, kill her fallopian tube. Mine was based on an issue of a comic book, a Superman annual that must have been taken from that.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Sure.

[Kevin Smith]

In the story on the COVID I can't remember what issue it is, but Superman is making out with Maxima on the Grave of Lois Lane. And in it, in the story, one of these Elseworld stories, he has sex with Lois Lane and kills her because the. He, He, His. His sperm didn't do it. She got pregnant, the baby kicked and killed her.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, man.

[Kevin Smith]

So I always remember reading that issue and being like, that's fucked up. So when I was writing Mall Rats, I included the joke about like, kryptonite con and blast through like a shotgun. And because of that, they were like, you know, something about Superman.

[Paul Scheer]

So I sat down and there's something, you know is sexy. Yeah, we like, we want some of that X rated Superman condom in this movie.

[Kevin Smith]

Dude turns his lights down. He's just like, just tell me that story again.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. And I'll show you naked pictures of Streisand.

[Kevin Smith]

I was like, can I go, man? It's really unnerving for me. I just want to work on Superman. But he, he, he goes, he listens to me. I. I don't have a pitch. I'm. They want it. They have a story they want to do, which is the death of Superman. There had already been a script before me written by Wesley Strick, which they didn't like. And I read it, and the thing that stuck out to me was that there was a moment where Superman goes into a therapist's office to be like, I'm Superman.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And that would never happen. That felt. But that felt like a Hollywood beat. That's almost, to me akin to Batman in the Dark Knight. Rise. Everyone see that?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay. But spoilers if you haven't. Yeah, there you go. They're on the roof and Catwoman's with them.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And then she leaves. And then he turns around and goes, so that's what that feels like. That would never happen in a million years. He would never do that. Why would he a. Why would he use that voice out loud if he was alone?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That's the thing I thought of too. Why is he talking to himself like that?

[Kevin Smith]

Dude, there's nobody here. He's like, yeah, you're right. All right.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, but he was like, no. Like, he has a third voice.

[Kevin Smith]

That would be memorable, man. When people were like, holy crap.

[Paul Scheer]

Or if he's like, oh, fuck, you really did it again.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

He is a Daniel Day Lewis superhero. He gets into the character. Once he gets into that comic costume, that's it.

[Paul Scheer]

Once the cowl is on,

[Kevin Smith]

the all sense goes away as it cuts off the brain part and he decides to go with the voice. So he. So I'm sitting there telling Peters, okay, I guess if you're gonna do this, you do this. I wouldn't do this kind of stuff. I wouldn't, you know, be winking and knowing and in terms of like saying Superman's going to psychiatrist. So I'm all done with whatever my pitch is. And again, it's not really my pitch. It's based on the storyline they want to do, which is the death sentence. Superman. So he looks at me, he's sitting on his couch, big living room. He looks at me for a long heartbeat, man. And he goes, you and me are going to get Superman, right? You know why? And at first I felt good because I was like, it sounds like I got a job, man. I said why? And he goes, cuz you and me, we understand Superman. Do you know why? I said no. He goes, cuz you and me are from the streets now.

[Paul Scheer]

And he is from the streets originally.

[Kevin Smith]

I don't know where he's from, but I am not from.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Came up on those streets. Hard hairdressing, hard knocks the streets that

[Kevin Smith]

led to Barbra Streisand. Very hard streets. And I didn't want to say like I grew up in the suburbs.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, it's true.

[Kevin Smith]

This dude was a hairdresser. Neither of us know the streets. And he was litter and also remove that. What does fucking Superman have to do with the streets?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Not the least street smart character really. He's just an alien who's. Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

So he, he, he was a guy, I guess he'd come from not so much money because he talked about, about like, you know, I used to go to wherever city he lived in. They had a department store. He's like. And I used to go and just look at the window displays of the things they put. One of those people with nothing looks at the image of something one day.

[Paul Scheer]

A very movie moment. His life is a movie moment.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

He.

[Kevin Smith]

And he only brought this up because when I came in, there was a setup in the middle of his living room that I swear to God looked like the floor of Nordstrom's. There was a piano and there was like what looked like a display with sweaters and shirts on it.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

No sweaters and shirts.

[Kevin Smith]

I keep kidding. And I thought so. I was like. When we were in the middle of the place, I was like, well, maybe they were doing some kind of benefit here or something like that. But he was explaining to me that he always dreamed about having what? The splatter.

[June Diane Raphael]

This is really crazy though, because on Oprah Barbra Streisand was interviewed and in one of her homes her entire basement is set up like a store. Like a department store.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah. It's crazy.

[Paul Scheer]

No money.

[Kevin Smith]

Is she one of these, like, I came from nothing?

[Paul Scheer]

No, she came from nothing. That is. I do know she came from nothing and had like a horrible mother.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, but it's a funny image to come from nothing. Instead of just buying a lot, you create a store. That's very funny.

[Paul Scheer]

It's like, I gotta get dressed today. I'm just gonna go downstairs and buy an outfit.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Cause I can.

[June Diane Raphael]

That I already own.

[Kevin Smith]

You could literally make the argument like she can't go to the store anymore. And maybe she misses the experience of like walking onto the floor. So she's created her own version in a Truman show like way. But it really comes down to like. I think it comes down to. We always see saw this as being a sign of wealth. And so once we had so much crazy wealth where we had a house and many cars and everything's taken care of and we're just looking for shit to buy. We start buying our childhood back or images of what we think we wanted.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I want to buy that Nordstrom's.

[Kevin Smith]

And he did.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh my God. That would be the equivalent for me, I feel like would be if I became incredibly wealthy and you came to my house and there was an arcade there.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh yeah.

[Paul Scheer]

You know what I mean? Like that to me would be the

[Jason Mantzoukas]

like that is what stand up games my head around.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh yeah, like that.

[Paul Scheer]

But that to me was like, oh God.

[June Diane Raphael]

My.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh my God.

[Paul Scheer]

Can you imagine if you had dragon

[Jason Mantzoukas]

flare in my house?

[Paul Scheer]

Always had access to joust.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, but that's okay. But you got a bunch of arcade games in your house. That's almost like, hey, everyone take a turn. This ain't like no, no, no. This is like a private. What kind of discount?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

What kind of sweaters do you have? Cable. Ooh, I want these sweaters.

[Paul Scheer]

The best thing would be if he's out there and he's like, ah, none of these are my size.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That's how he keeps himself grounded. He keeps on like he just never is in his size.

[Paul Scheer]

I love this sweater. But it's sold out in my.

[Kevin Smith]

He's the dude that's just like. As his wealth decreases, the displays decrease. So it goes from Nordstrom to like right now in his career. He's got a Ross set up.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Pay less in the garage. He.

[Kevin Smith]

He was a very strange man.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

So you're from the streets?

[Kevin Smith]

Yes, he's from the streets. I'm from the streets. He. He's the one essentially Says, we're going to do this. And. And he. In the process of. Of the movie, he has had, like, notes that he wanted to do, which were very important. Number one, he goes, I don't want to see him in that suit. Number two, I don't want to see him flying. I think that looks fake in movies. So right away you're like, if he's not in the suit and he's not flying, what do you got?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, what do you have?

[Kevin Smith]

Do you want to just make Batman again? I'm into that, yeah. And then his third thing was like. And he has to fight a giant spider in the third act. Swear to you. And I was like, really? He goes, yeah, yeah. He's gone, man. Do you know anything about something Spiders? I said, no. He goes, I watch a lot of Discovery Channel. He's gone. I watch this documentary about spiders, fiercest predators in the insect kingdom. Absolute killers. He's going, and when I was a kid, I went and saw King Kong. And in King Kong, there's a moment where the doors open up and they reveal not King Kong for the first time, but some other monster or something like that. He's like. And it was horrifying. And I envision a moment in this movie where the doors open up and Spider man has to. Spider. Superman has to fight this giant spider

[Jason Mantzoukas]

and a real spider.

[Kevin Smith]

Giant, real spider. So I'm like, okay, if that's the directive that wasn't in the death of. And I've never seen that in the comics, but so be it. So I went back to the studio because they're like, report, you know what. What's going on over there. Because they're already. They're like, he's a nut bar. So. So I was like, well, he said this, this. And they go, oh, as if they've heard it before.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Right, right.

[Kevin Smith]

And then I say, and then also he talked about. And they go, wait, he wants to put a giant spider? I said, yes. How weird is that? He said he watched a scarecrow discover. He's going, john and that spider. That was Lorenzo's Bon Mature. He goes, john and that spider.

[June Diane Raphael]

I was like, he's sounding eerily familiar.

[Kevin Smith]

He's. He's. The dude was so into this spider thing, he tried to shoehorn it into the flick. And I was like, what do I do? And they were like, just call it anything but a spider. And I said, really? And they're like, just give him what he wants, but do not call it a spider man. Research shows nobody cares about a spider And I was like, okay, what if I call a Thanagarian snake airbeast? They're like, perfect. So Thanagarin. I was like, right on. Connects to Hawkman. Yeah, like that. And I literally. And so Peters was like, what is this? And I was like, is Thanagarian snare beast? He goes, what is that? It's like giant spider and DC Comics. He goes, oh, perfect. So I put that in and. And he. And I worked on that for a little while when I submitted the script. You can hear the entire story of that over at the Evening with First Evening with Kevin Smith, which is great. I tell the long Superman story, but in the interest of moving on to what Wild Wild West, I eventually I. The project comes to an end for me. They bring on Tim Burton. And Tim Burton was like, I'm gonna start from scratch with my own script. He brought on somebody else. My shit goes to the wayside. And that was it. Never thought about it again. I mean, thought about like, man, I worked on Superman, but I got a great story out of it. And I was telling that story Q and A's for years. Then it went on the dvd. And that was like, to me, that was the end of it. Then in 1999, I guess it was, I went to the movies to go see Wild Wild west, also produced by John Peters. And I'm watching the flick and what it is, this bizarre little train wreck combination of many genres. But all of a sudden, this giant mechanical spider appears, man. And I was like, he got his spider. He finally got his spider. It took him a long time, but he got a much more expensive one.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And it also doesn't really make sense. It feels like. And what was so great about that story is that it is so shoehorned in. It's like, okay, there's steampunk and there's stuff like. But now we got this 80 foot giant fucking spider.

[Paul Scheer]

As if the giant spider and the presumption in the movie, what the movie contends is that Kenneth Branagh's possession of this giant spider is enough to bring the United States to its knees.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yes, sir.

[Kevin Smith]

This one.

[Paul Scheer]

This one device itself will bring about the destruction of the Union.

[Kevin Smith]

This is the equivalent of a nuclear weapon in the age of the Civil War.

[Paul Scheer]

It might as well be. I bet that was their justification, his deterrence.

[June Diane Raphael]

There's nothing to this even metaphor of the spider. There's nothing that Kenneth Branagh says about what the spider means to him. There's no connection at all to this spider that just appears.

[Kevin Smith]

If he could, I Think Kenneth Branagh would have been like, ladies and gentlemen, I have nothing to do.

[Paul Scheer]

Hold on, guys. Kenneth Branagh just walked in the studio. Just walked in the studio. We have a special guest right now. Kenneth Branagh.

[Kevin Smith]

I regret cheating on Emma so much. It's truly affected my career all the way up to Thule.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It is. I mean, this spider is just.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And yeah, I don't know, it's badass,

[Kevin Smith]

if that's the word you're looking for. It's total badass.

[Paul Scheer]

This movie might as well be called Gears and Pointless Contraptions because that is. Every shot is just the background is just moving parts.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Moving parts. Just like if things are happening things.

[Kevin Smith]

A lot of money being spent in the background.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

A lot being given to the foreground. By the way, I almost think that, like, that Kenneth Branagh's character is Jon Peters because he's obsessed with spider. He clearly has a thing for spiders. Like, they send a cake, a marzipan cake to the president. Oh, don't touch that. And all these spiders come out. And he's like, oh. And then, you know, and then he has like special discs made up with a giant spider on it.

[Paul Scheer]

You have the blades, but yeah, there's nothing like his flag as a spider on it.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes, he is jumpy.

[Kevin Smith]

You know what's weird about that, man? The plates that have the spider on it. Yeah, I understand the dude's rich. And I understand in movies to communicate impossible wealth, you see something like a

[Jason Mantzoukas]

giant spider, very richy rich style.

[Kevin Smith]

But could you imagine it's like, even down to something like, this disc is meant to be thrown away and destroyed. Like you're never gonna see it again. It launches. The whoever sees it is the person that loads the disc. And the next person that sees it, the person gets to take cover and that's that. Why would you bother to be like, imprint a spider on it?

[Paul Scheer]

Yep.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Could you carve it in? If it's gonna cost us, it's gonna hundreds of dollars to do this Good.

[Kevin Smith]

Cost you like. I know, but they mean so much to me. And you're not even involved in this transaction. You're not even like, I'm holding this disc of death with my spider emblem.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

As a matter of fact, when he goes to kill them, he leaves.

[Paul Scheer]

He doesn't even watch the disc get loaded and lost.

[Kevin Smith]

That's how fucking rich he is, dude. He's just like, put spiders on everything and kill people when I'm not here, man.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I do want to point out, you know, there's a Part in the movie where you know, Will Smith and Kenneth Braun or Will Smith and Kevin Kline are caught, they're gonna get their heads cut off by these spider discs. And I would say one of the most disturbing parts of the movie is when was when Kenneth Branagh talks about wanting to have sex with Salma Hayek with potentially his robot dick. In which I'll play for you right here.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, who knows, I might even become familiar with her myself. That'd be one more reason for me to kill you. Oh yes, Mr. West, I'm sure twere no doubt well endowed, black and all like yourself.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It must seem absolutely impossible that a

[Kevin Smith]

freak like me could fully enjoy the pleasure of a woman. But having witnessed my use of mercurinology thus far, wouldn't you think that I could have buy something for the low health of my body that was hard pumping and indefatigably steely. And speaking of hard pumping, Mr. Coleman, full steam ahead.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

What just talks about building a giant robot dildo to.

[June Diane Raphael]

Do you think that was consummated by the time she was left? Cuz she stays with him on that train.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, she is pregnant, visibly pregnant with a robot baby. At the end of the movie.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

This movie.

[Kevin Smith]

Does he use a robot wiener on her?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, they've got that jump.

[Paul Scheer]

I wish he did. And remember when she's trapped in the birdcage in his house, the bed has all of those sex contraptions and she's like I don't want to get on that. I don't want to do that. It is clearly just like robot cock sexathon in this movie that we never see. Although we do see. I think we see Will Smith's balls from behind at the very beginning.

[June Diane Raphael]

That's what I thought too. Scream.

[Paul Scheer]

We definitely saw his nuts from behind.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Will Smith is naked in the beginning of the movie after bathing in a water tower.

[Paul Scheer]

He appears to live in a water tower. At the beginning of this movie they're

[Jason Mantzoukas]

hanging out in this giant water tower in the middle of town.

[June Diane Raphael]

It's like a hot tub in the sky.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Which meanwhile is everyone else's drinking water, I would imagine.

[Paul Scheer]

No, no, it's for fires, isn't it?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, is it for fires?

[Paul Scheer]

I think so.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I thought it was drinking water. All right, that makes sense.

[Kevin Smith]

That would be dispense. Back off man. You're taking it into ridiculous realm.

[Paul Scheer]

We can put out our fires with cum drenched water, but not put it in our.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But yes, Will Smith's balls may or may not have made an appearance.

[Paul Scheer]

Definitely.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well There's a lot of ass in this movie, too. Salma Hayek's ass. Bai Ling's ass.

[Paul Scheer]

Bai Ling is. I mean, like a real favorite of this show.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes, Bai Ling. We are huge fans of Crank 2. We had the directors of Crank 2 in here, and we talked extensively about how amazing she is.

[Kevin Smith]

She's in that as well.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

She's in that and threw away all the dialogue. Oh, if you've not seen Crank two, do yourself a favor.

[Kevin Smith]

She threw away the dial.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Oh, yeah. She threw away the dial and just

[Paul Scheer]

started saying crazy shit. And they were like, we do. And they were like, let's just let her do it. And so it's.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

You'll go crazy if you find. She's unleashed.

[June Diane Raphael]

She's unleashed.

[Paul Scheer]

It's unreal.

[Kevin Smith]

She's subtitled Southland Tales. I was in Southland Tales as well, which I imagine one day you guys will get around, and she was.

[Paul Scheer]

I feel like we're going to have you on for a bunch of shows. This is how we sneak you on with somebody else's movie and then we get you hooked.

[Kevin Smith]

It's just like today's movies. Jersey Girl, you guys suck. I guess it's my time today. We're doing.

[Paul Scheer]

We're doing Jersey Girl again today because

[Kevin Smith]

Kevin's still not over.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But, yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of asses in this movie. Bai Ling, relatively restrained in this movie, but there's some crazy stuff in here. Again, the lynching scene. There's a scene where Will Smith is gonna get lynched, but before he gets lynched, they let him do, like, a couple minutes of stand up before he gets.

[Kevin Smith]

As you did in the Old West.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, let's give him a cup.

[Kevin Smith]

Let's speak his mind.

[Paul Scheer]

There is such a dichotomy in this movie between, like, absolutely no attention paid to race and maximum attention paid to race in the worst way.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, that's the strange. It's like every about 15 minutes or so, the movie drops into some real historical, social context that's very dark and upsetting. And then we're lifted right at it. A second later, it's the creepy with,

[Paul Scheer]

like, some goofball invention from Kevin Klein.

[Kevin Smith]

That must have been the Pulp Fiction influence, where they're like, no, we can go dark and then zip it right back to funny.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, I can feel like the movie doesn't know. It feels like it's one of those movies where it's like we're funny and we're serious and it's too much. It's trying to please too many people.

[Kevin Smith]

We don't know what we are, but we know one thing. We're not the Matrix.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, there's also in the end, in the end battle where they're in this giant spider. There's also a robot, just a man, a Frankenstein man who is a robot that Will Smith tries to fight. He punches him in the face and you hear clang. Punches him in the stomach. Clang. Punches him in the nuts. Clang. And he's like, oh, got a robot. And this robot's about ready to kick Will Smith's ass until for no reason he short circuits.

[Paul Scheer]

Yep.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

To nothing of no one did anything to him.

[Kevin Smith]

Just, oh, I know what happened somewhere. There's about three minutes of robot fight footage that like when they test screened it eight times, was so leaden they were like, just pretend it's straight away.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Like we're so close to the credits. You've got to break. Come on.

[Paul Scheer]

I felt like a lot of times there was huge pieces of exposition missing that I was like, how did he get here? The movie appears to take place in about 72 hours. They travel across the United States from

[Jason Mantzoukas]

D.C. to New Orleans to Utah. Yeah, Utah.

[Paul Scheer]

I mean the amount of space they travel and there is so much dramatic slow moving train action. Like the entire movie is. It's attentive to the action as if it's like the French Connection car chase. But it is slow moving, single track locomotives. There is nothing happening on these trains.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

There is a lot of time. Time has passed and now this character's on the train. Wait, how did she get on the train? What happened? They're like, they're like two days somehow

[June Diane Raphael]

drops in on that train. There's no explanation of how she got there.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Right?

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah, I know how she got there. She was on the Dogma set. She got the part while we were making Dogma and then she left early to go do fittings and do pre shoot footage and stuff while she was shooting on the flick. So she'd come back and we'd be like, what's it like, man? Cause again, these cats are coming off Men in Black and Black. It's a pretty amazing movie. But she thought it was going to be very, very impressive, as we all did. She was, she came from our movie, went to that movie. And I remember going to see that movie and being like, I wish she'd stayed on our movie.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Did you have to cut her out of stuff and Dogma because she couldn't?

[Kevin Smith]

No, but I got a lot of people going like, I Couldn't follow the accent. Now in the age of Bane, I don't feel so bad. I feel like he was speaking English.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Expendables, too. In the first 10 minutes. Like, I don't understand what these guys are saying.

[Paul Scheer]

Really?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, because it's like, everyone's like. It's like a lot of grumble. It's a lot of grumbling. In the first, I did like Expendables too, because I like movies like that, and it's dumb. And should we do it for the show? You know, it would be like, in the side of the good side, like the cranks and the punishment. Yeah, yeah. We love Fast5. Like, it was like, yes. This movie is insane.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

It be needs to.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

To be talked about. But we are loving it. And, yeah, I mean, it's great. Schwarzenegger, amazing. The only talks and references to every other person's movie, really. He says, I'll be back at least three times.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And references. Rambo references. Like, it's. The whole movie is just referencing everything

[Kevin Smith]

that they've all been like, yippee ki yay.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

He does.

[Kevin Smith]

No, really.

[Paul Scheer]

By the way, listeners, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not in the.

[Kevin Smith]

Tell me. In that scene, they cut to Bruce and you just see a little bit more of his soul dying.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, you could tell what I felt like was this. I felt like they shot Bruce Willis out in, like, two days, and I felt two. I also felt that they were like, hey, Bruce, would you say yippee ki yay? Cause everyone's saying they're kind of Their catchphrases, you know, Van Damme does it. Schwarzenegger. Everyone does their catchphrase. What does their catchphrase, like, come? Like, are, you know, from Bloodsport? You know, like, you know, like a very.

[Kevin Smith]

That's my catchphrase as well. With Mamaladi. I'm like, it never works, but I try.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But everyone's, like, kind of reliving a moment of their past, and they were like, brisk. Will you say yippee kiye in this moment? It kind of fit the moment. And he was like, no. And then they're like, okay, Schwarzenegger, will you say it instead?

[Kevin Smith]

And he's like, yeah, give me $1,000 and I'll say it.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

He's like, all right. Basically, Bruce Willis walks off the screen, and then Schwarzenegger goes, yippee ki yay.

[Paul Scheer]

That's amazing.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It's crazy. It was like they were like, oh, yeah, we'll just keep the same setup.

[Kevin Smith]

Do that movie.

[Paul Scheer]

And maybe our guest will Be Kenneth Branagh to discuss it.

[June Diane Raphael]

She noticed Kenneth Branagh was doing so much wheelchair spinning in this movie.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, my God.

[Kevin Smith]

Oh, yeah.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, Kenneth Branagh, every time he's on screen, he's just spinning in a circle at all times. Oh, man, there's.

[Kevin Smith]

I'm just trying record, baby. Yeah, round, round, round.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Also, June, you brought up a very good point here earlier when we were talking about this Will Smith constantly ripping on Kevin Clark Klein's inventions that work. So inventions work the entire time. He's like, oh, man, you and your crappy inventions. It's like you killed the guy with his invention. You got saved your life by his invention.

[Paul Scheer]

All the time.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

All the time.

[Paul Scheer]

It works.

[June Diane Raphael]

Let's try a new plan and maybe this time it'll work. It's worked every single time.

[Paul Scheer]

Every single time.

[June Diane Raphael]

Every single time.

[Paul Scheer]

The bulletproof vest, the flying machine, dressing in drag. How about the weird scene. How about the fucking scene where they are comparing fake tits?

[June Diane Raphael]

Oh, yes, I love that.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And then how the two heroes spawn

[June Diane Raphael]

every second of that and they're just

[Paul Scheer]

like, you feel my boo, Feel my boo, Boo, boot, breast, whatever. He's saying. Oh, yeah. Oh, it feels. Oh, it feels terrible. It feels. Now try feeling. And then at. Walsh is watching the whole thing and he's going, I knew it. You know, like so weird.

[June Diane Raphael]

It's crazy because what did he know? Did he thinks that they're not. They're not men dressed as women, they're men feeling each other's actual male.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah, yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

Okay. All right.

[Kevin Smith]

Now you see why it's funny Now I get it.

[June Diane Raphael]

Now I'm laughing.

[Kevin Smith]

I think when you make a movie like this that's meant to be as mainstream as that. Like, if you're spend. There should be a studio mandate in the rule book that says if you're gonna spend upwards of. I would say 100, but let's bring it down to 75. You have to have a representative from every generation that you're actually trying to court in the theaters on set when you're doing comedy. So you need a 10 year old, 20 year old, 30 year old, 40 year old, 50 year old, 60 year old. If you're going, that's your demographic. And then you play that fucking. All right, the boys are gonna feel each other's boobs. And then you go down the line. 10 year olds. Is this good?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Liked it.

[Kevin Smith]

Totally. 20 year olds is still funny.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Pretty good.

[Kevin Smith]

30 year olds.

[Paul Scheer]

How are you feeling about that?

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Not bad.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. I like working with an actor because Su, you're in a seat. 40 year olds, man.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

All right.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, you know, it's a little risque.

[Kevin Smith]

Suddenly it starts to fall apart.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

50 year olds, you know, go do without the. The boob stuff.

[Kevin Smith]

And 60 year olds, I like that.

[Paul Scheer]

Bring back that. Where's that spider?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I liked it.

[Kevin Smith]

But they should, man. Cuz that's like, that's like I saw. Did you see the watch?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Okay. The watch has a moment in it where Vince Vaughn picks up a rushing nesting doll and opens it and he's like, oh my God, there's another doll in here. And that Vince Vaughn in his van on way fine. One reveal and I'll buy that this has never heard of the concept of something within something. They carry this out, dude, all the way to the smallest, to the.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

The.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And you know, like there's a theory of comedy where the more you do it, like it go, it's funny and then it's dumb. Then it goes back to me.

[Paul Scheer]

This is the Mr. Show Thimble sketch.

[Kevin Smith]

This ain't that. No, this is like the exception that proves that wrong. Because you're like, please don't keep.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Oh yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

And you realize they left this in.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh yeah. They thought it was awesome.

[Kevin Smith]

But if that's awesome, what the fuck did they cut out? And if you think that's awesome, you need to have a representative of every age group going like, I think this is shit. Like if you, if you're sitting around doing the boob feeling joke and you got a 25 year old kid there, he'd be like, dude, this ain't fucking funny. Yeah, yeah, like have him stick his fist up his ass and you're like, ooh, that's good, let's do that instead.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, did you feel like, did you ever get notes? Like, I mean, like, I guess like the most studio, like the biggest studio thing, I guess, Mallrats. And then like cop out. Right. So like, did you get those kind of notes on cop out when you were doing it?

[Kevin Smith]

Not until we started testing. They were pretty good. Like in terms of working, I always thought, I was taught that the studio is a great Satan and fucking like all they do is make crap. We make art, they make crap. And the philosophy that we were taught was they set out to make crap. They just want your fucking money. And I haven't worked inside. Like nobody. There's no fucking. There's no Kenneth Branagh sitting in a spinning wheelchair fucking telling people we're gonna steal the audience's money with cr. They're all Trying to do something. Yeah. That they think is good or funny or irrelevant or at least, you know, fucking popular or something like that. So having gone through the system with them, they were lovely. Like, I kept waiting for the.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

Aha. These fucking bagels. You said there'd be everything, but there's just onion. I knew the studio a lot. They were lovely until.

[Paul Scheer]

But you check that bagel plate every day.

[Kevin Smith]

Every day. Flip all.

[Paul Scheer]

Wait, no, it's here. We're good. My bad, my bad.

[Kevin Smith]

So nobody touched it until I checked.

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[June Diane Raphael]

Will Smith's character was an escaped slave at the age of as a child

[Paul Scheer]

he was taken from his family live with Indiana.

[June Diane Raphael]

He ran away.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

No, because Wild wild west. He's a white guy.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yeah.

[June Diane Raphael]

Yeah.

[Kevin Smith]

So essentially they're doing the story of Django Unchained.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah, exactly.

[Paul Scheer]

It is Django.

[Kevin Smith]

And then ironically, Will Smith didn't want

[Paul Scheer]

to do and because he'd already done it, Wild Wild West. He's like, I've done this movie, it's called the Wild Wild west. And I was very proud of it.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Can't improve on it. I was watching this movie going, does

[Kevin Smith]

your movie have a giant spider? Quentin?

[Paul Scheer]

No.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That's why he, that's why qu took so long. He that's the end of Django. Now the giant spider comes back, they come across waltzes in it.

[Paul Scheer]

They come across the Giant spider that had died in this movie. Right. And they come across it, they revive it, and the rest of the movie takes place in that.

[Kevin Smith]

What they do is they find all those plates with the spider emblem and they build a new spider from the reference.

[Paul Scheer]

I would love like a. Like a weird film joke if people just started putting props from this movie in other movies and Old west as if it was like. Like archaeologists discovered these place with spiders on them.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, and. And all the ladies had spider dresses at the big scene.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, yeah.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, I. There.

[Kevin Smith]

Now you know why? It's because John Peters, the producer, and he wants. Kids love spiders.

[Paul Scheer]

Well, Peters also. Oh, not John Peters, but Will Smith also plays Muhammad Ali in a movie. There are a lot of John Peters. Really?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes, Same guy.

[Kevin Smith]

His name's on it.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Kevin Smith]

What did he have to do with it? That depends. As I said before, I know he's involved with Batman. I know he's involved in main event because he can tell you lots of

[Jason Mantzoukas]

stories, but his name could be on

[Kevin Smith]

a lot of things he took credit for. I'm Batman. This is. This blew my mind. This is what. I've instantly fell in love with John Peters in a way of like you fall in love with, you know, wacky dictators who aren't going to affect your life anymore because you're going to never be in contact with him again. I was a big Batman fan, huge Batman fan of Tim Burton's 19 and Batman. So whenever he about talks, talked about it, I was heading my hands, listening, and he would say things like, you know, I was going out with Vicki Vale, right? And I was like, really? Did you have to joke over for dinner? Like you could say her name? Dude, I'm well aware that Kim Basinger played Vicki Vale, but he said this. He goes, I said, one of the things I love in that movie dude so tight is when the dude pops over the wall and starts fighting and Batman blocking his sword with his gauntlets. And he goes, that was mine. And I go, really? He's going, I brought that guy in. That guy's a real sword fighter. You know why that movie made $300 million? And I go, why? He goes, that scene. And I go, why? He goes, because that was real jeopardy. And that guy came over the wall with the swordsman. You got to see Batman in action. And so that's why that movie works. When you watch Tim Burton's Batman, realize it's nothing. It's not the story. It's not Anton First City design the Batmobile the moody performance by Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson's sublime joker. It literally comes down to the guy who jumps over the wall and throws a few bad swords.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Not to rip on Bruce Willis, but when I heard Bruce Willis talk about Die Hard, he goes, the reason why people like the original Die Hard is because he likes people like, the humor of a New Jersey guy caught in this situation. It's like, I don't know if that's the catch. All of why that movie is successful. The Jersey humor of John, down to

[Kevin Smith]

this, he's like, you know why that made money? Cause of me. Yeah, that's it, essentially. That's what he said.

[Paul Scheer]

And what is it about me? It's probably because I'm from Jersey.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

My Jersey humor, people really like. I like that Jersey humor. The end of the movie, you know, the main character has his, like, final line, like, you know, diplomatic immunity, whatever.

[Paul Scheer]

In this one final line, diplomatic immunity.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That's Lethal Weapon 2.

[Kevin Smith]

Been revoked diplomatic immunity.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

This one, he just basically throws Kenneth Branagh out of the giant spider, and then he goes, now that's a whoopin'. Yeah, but it really isn't. It's more of like, that's a throwin'. Like, it was like, couldn't they have found a way to whip him with some chains or do, like. If you want. If you're gonna end on a line, you should have.

[June Diane Raphael]

Or make use somehow of him having a half body. I thought that that was gonna play into his death somehow in the end. Not at all.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And by the way, if only I'd had a leg, I could have lived.

[Paul Scheer]

Every bad guy. Every. Every bad guy in this movie. Ted Levine. That's his name, right?

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. And Kenneth Branagh. All the bad guys have such uneventful deaths and deaths that are so circumstantial to the good guys. The good guys barely do any. It's almost like they were like, well, our guys can't really kill people. So we'll have Kenneth Branagh's people shoot Ted Levine, and then Will Smith can have a comeuppance with him, but he's already dead. And then Kenneth Branagh and Will Smith both fall out of the spider, and Will Smith just doesn't save Kenneth Branagh, so he dies. So it's like they never. Meanwhile, they're shooting. Will smith shoots, like, 2,500 people in this movie.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

He's always killing people. There's no fight. There's no interest. The only person he meets his match with is the Frankenstein, which is not explained. And then Short Circuits.

[June Diane Raphael]

Well, and in terms of story, you would think that that Final Beat had something to do with Will Smith, like accepting industry and his life and accepting somehow that the gadgets were gonna help him. No, it just. It boils down to race at the last moment, which is not what this movie's about.

[Kevin Smith]

Nope.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Now, clearly we had an opinion about this movie, but there are people who have a different opinion. So it is now time for a second opinion. These are reviews culled from Amazon. I just would like to read you guys this one. EDB writes, Honestly, this is in my top 100 favorite movies of all time out of the thousands that I have seen.

[Kevin Smith]

Wow.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Five star review.

[Kevin Smith]

That's huge. I like that guy. I wanna show him my.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

This is another great one. Evan Orozco writes, Wild Wild west is the greatest and most funniest movie in the world. A true classic. The best of the best. Bai Ling is so sexy and has the sexiest ass. Buy this movie. Five stars.

[Kevin Smith]

And then Most Funniest negates that review. I'm a grammar Nazi. And most funniest. He lost me at that point.

[Paul Scheer]

But it is the most funniest.

[Kevin Smith]

It is, to be fair, perilous.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Moo writes, this movie was great. The interactions between Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh are a piece of comedic cinema history.

[Paul Scheer]

Oh my God.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

But it would have been nice to have a good female character. Put someone like Madeline Kahn or Bernadette Peters in a role. It would have been pants. Weddingly funny.

[Kevin Smith]

Did my grandmother write this letter back during while she was watching the Carol Burnett Show.

[Paul Scheer]

I was. I was just gonna say Vicki Lawrence should be in this movie.

[Kevin Smith]

What was missing was Mama.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

And he writes, Mel Brooks seems to be the only director who understands how to cast women in comedies. Five stars.

[Paul Scheer]

Still five stars.

[Kevin Smith]

Mel Brooks.

[Paul Scheer]

Still five stars. I have some problems, but still five stars.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Mel Brooks did it.

[Paul Scheer]

Madeline Khan.

[Kevin Smith]

Wow.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Well, this has been so great to have you. Kevin. I was talking to you before we started talking about the show. I am a of part obsessed with your new show on Hulu called Spoilers. This is not even a. This is a legitimate. I am a fan of this show. It's so fun to watch.

[Kevin Smith]

Thank you.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

You bring a bunch of people to a movie, you talk about it honestly and then you interview someone from.

[Kevin Smith]

It's fun.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

It's fun.

[Kevin Smith]

If you haven't seen it yet, you can pop over to Hulu. It's free. You can watch it. And it's. We tried to do like not a movie review show, but a show about Movies that. Where you could talk about movies, but not like, here's our scale, and it gets this and blah, blah, blah.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

I think it's the best way to watch a movie review show. Just have an audience. Cause it's like, different people. And you're.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

I like that guy.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Like, it's. It's a fun.

[Kevin Smith]

Like, Siskel and Ebert were two strangers who you grew to know over years as, oh, they review movies. But it's not like there were, you know, experts or worked in the business or something like that. People will say, roger Eber, Road beyond the Valley. I understand. I understand he's done some work as well. But in that way, there was like, you were listening to people pontificate. When you watch spoilers, it's more about, like, you're watching people, real people just talk about. Yeah, yeah. And it's all also kind of like the way you talk about movies with your friends where, like, even shit you hate, you don't go like, oh, it was a cinematic abortion. No stars, thumbs down. You just go like, this part was awesome. This part was fucking stupid.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

That's what we do here. So definitely check out spoilers. And a big reminder to watch NTSF sdsuv. It is the show that I do on Adult Swim with June. This week's episode is a Martin episode. Alison Brie is in this episode. It's one of my favorites. It's called Sabbath, A return of Kerry Kinney. So definitely check that out at 12:15. Jason's coming up in an episode in a little bit.

[Paul Scheer]

Yeah. Children's Hospital back on the air.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Children's Hospital.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Yes.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Great stuff. So check out Adult Swim Thursday night, who is so funny and so great. So thanks, everybody. Thanks to Brett, our engineer, Carolyn Julia, everybody here at Earwolf, buy our biling. Inspired. How did this get made T shirts. We'll see you next time. Bye.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Bye.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Hey, guys, it's David and I'm Jason. This is the Views podcast. Yeah. And this is our podcast. And we talk about.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

What do we talk about on here?

[Kevin Smith]

We talk about scientific things.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yes.

[Kevin Smith]

We talk about friendship.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

We talk about sex.

[Kevin Smith]

We talk about rock and roll.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Talk about living in la. Being an influencer.

[Kevin Smith]

Not being an influencer.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Jason.

[Kevin Smith]

Trying to be an actor.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Yeah.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Trying to figure out how to live life.

[Kevin Smith]

And everything we say is mostly wrong.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Pretty much.

[Kevin Smith]

Yeah. So don't take anything. Don't take anything seriously and just enjoy the ride.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

Sorry, there's noise in the.

[Kevin Smith]

Our friend is filming a video.

[Paul Scheer]

Listen to Views wherever you get your podcasts.

[Kevin Smith]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show. Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Paul Scheer]

Oh, no.

[Jason Mantzoukas]

We help people customize and save on

[Kevin Smith]

car insurance with Liberty Mutual Together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird. Yeah, the bird looks out of your league. Anyways, get a quote@liberty libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Sponsor/Ad Reader]

Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.