Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini #135: Producer of the Month: "Movie Cliches"

Episode Date: October 26, 2017

This week: Roscoe Lee Browne! Blake Edwards' "The Party"! Gilbert takes down "Midnight Express"! And the Principle of Evil Marksmanship! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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showing scary movies, but there's nothing more scary than Gilbert Gottfried's amazing Colossal Podcast, which you're listening to right now. You can plug your ears if you want. You're still going to hear it. I'm sorry. Here we go boys 1, 2, 3, 4 Gilbert and Frank's Colossal Obsessions Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried And this is Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions

With my co-host Frank Santopadre. We're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Ferdarosa. And boy, oh boy. Frank Rayburn. Yeah. Third Frank is here. I think I appreciate the fact that you struggle to figure out what to call me. Yes.

Oh, I'm hoping for the best. There's loads of things I'd like to call you. Well, Gil. Yes. Here's an idea. This is another one of those producer of the month ideas that comes to us through our friends at Patreon.com. Yes. Here's an idea. This is another one of those producer of the month ideas that comes to us through our friends at Patreon.com. Yes. Patreon.com

slash Gilbert Gottfried. Yes. P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com. And you guys can go there and you can suggest episodes for us like we have Gilbert Sings. Gilbert favored us last week with Phil Spector record and some Alan Thicke and some Alan Sherman.

And we also do producer of the month. For just a couple of shekels, you can suggest, you can throw your hat in the ring for us to do your episode, your idea, and you will be the producer of the month. And we will name check you or call you out and embarrass you on the show. This week, my voice went up just six octaves. This week? This week. Who? Frank Salerno.

Frank Salerno, listener. Another Frank. Oh, yes. Three Franks and Frank Rayburn suggested the idea, movie cliches. Oh, I love those. And that's something that's come up on this show before, but we never actually dedicated an entire episode to it. Oh, those are great.

So, we have a list. Paul Rayburn has a list, our trusty researcher. We dug into these. And what do you got, Paul? Any fun ones? Well, there's a lot of science here. There's a lot of science that's a little bit screwy. Well, throw me three off the top. Okay, so thunder and lightning always happen at the same time.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Einstein never predicted that kind of thing. Never happens in real life, especially old bad horror films. So along the same line, there's a crack of thunder and lightning, then a heavy drenching storm starts immediately. Yes. Yes.

No hesitation. Like the thunder cut a hole in the screen time is money you know and uh and even if it's not a horror film if they can't think of any other way to make the scene dramatic if they're failing with dialogue and acting uh have a thunderstorm going on the lights go on and off, everything. What else you got? So I got now, familiar scene in movies. Somebody runs onto an elevator.

The door closes just as the cops get to it. They start running up the stairs, and they always beat the elevator to the top of it. Yeah, of course. Always, always. 20 floors, they can run it faster. Oh, love that. the elevator to the top of the elevator. Yeah, of course. Always.

20 floors, they can run it faster. Oh, love that. I like when, if you're out running a mob, the person being chased is always the fastest runner. Right. There are like 500 people chasing you, but you're always a few feet ahead of them. That's right. you, but you're always a few feet ahead of them.

That's right. They can't catch, there's no one in that mob who can run fast enough to catch you. What else, Paul? So we have, back in the elevator theme, elevator shafts, everybody's continually climbing out the top, that door at the top of the elevator. Oh, yes. Take the door off, up to the door, you're standing on top of the elevator. Who hasn't done that? That's right. When the elevator stalls, just climb out the top of the elevator. Oh, yes. Take the door off. Up to the door. You're standing on top of the elevator. Who hasn't done that? That's right.

When the elevator stalls. That's right. Just climb out the top. My kids do that, and I can't find them in the elevator. And what gets me with scenes in elevator is when they'll have, like, dialogue between two of the characters, and I'll go go this is a really long elevator right you know it's like they must be going from the first floor to the 2000th floor well to get this much dialogue also some of the research frank has done here is that you notice in an elevator shaft

you would expect it to be pitch black it's never pitch black no it's lit up never it's lit up so you can see so you can see what's going on and and nobody ever comes out of it with dirty clothes or dirty hands never grabbing cables and wires and all kinds of oily machine parts and but of course if you're a comedy director there's nothing more wonderful that brings people nothing more wonderful and funny that brings people together than being in a stalled elevator well it's one of the more famous uh all in the family episodes oh yeah hector elizondo's wife has the baby oh with roscoe lee brown there's always a pregnant woman in the elevator. That's correct. Right, if the elevator is sold. Was that in an elevator where

Archie Bunker was and the woman gave birth? Yes, with Roscoe Lee Brown. Oh, yes! Was it You've Got Mail that also had Tom Hanks was in the elevator with his girlfriend

whose name I can't think of right at the moment. She was elevator with his girlfriend, whose name I can't think of right at the moment. She was no longer his girlfriend by the time they opened the elevator. Right, right. And no one has to pee. Parker Posey. Parker Posey. No one ever has to go to the bathroom when they're in a stalled elevator. Unlike the members of this show.

Yeah, yeah. We pee constantly. Yeah. In mid-sentence. Start doing the show in the urinal. Here's one for Gil that I love. This pee constantly. Yeah. In mid-sentence. Start doing the show in the urinal. Here's one for Gil that I love. This is fun. One size fits all.

If the hero needs to steal clothes from someone, the clothes and the shoes he takes will always fit him perfectly. Well, at the end of Midnight Express. The guy's there. He's a little guy, and he's in prison, so he weighs like three pounds. He's in this Middle Eastern prison. So he's tiny, weighs three pounds. The guy who's the prison guard played Pluto. Paul Smith. Yeah. Paul Smith, yeah.

He played, was it Bluto or Pluto? Bluto. And then. Yeah. Paul Smith, yeah. He played, was it Bluto or Pluto? Bluto. And then Robert Altman's Papa, yeah. So you know what that, Carrie? He looked like that character. He's like seven feet tall and he weighs about 800 pounds. This little kid knocks him out, puts on his clothes, and it fits impeccable. Fantastic.

Yeah, yes. So if you want to go back a little bit. Even in good movies like Shawshank Redemption, Tim Robbins has the same shoe size as the warden. Yeah, that's right. And Tim Robbins 6'4", and the warden's about 5'9", but he's stealing the shoes from the vault every night, at least half the time, nothing fits. That's right. But out in the street, you knock anybody out, their clothes will fit you. What were you going to say, Paul? Well, when I was in high school, I played Cyrano,

and I had a sword fight that scared the hell out of me. I can still remember. But if you think about sword fights for a minute, they always come, they start slashing and back and forth. Then they always come to the point where they're right nose to nose. The two swords are crossed above them. There's a little bit of dialogue. They can stand and talk.

They pull back. Then again, they hash away. They come together. Swords come together. Low down by the ground. All one has to do is disembowel the other, but no, they step back. That's right. They're constantly coming together and stepping back, and nobody ever gets hurt. Gilbert and I have different kinds of sword fights.

But that's another show. And I guess in every sword fight, people are very honorable. So if you knock a sword out of the other out of your opponent's hand it's considered proper behavior to use your sword to flip it up in the air so he'll get his sword back that's right and you could continue the rather than just killing him because he no longer has a sword. Great sword fight, by the way, in a comedy, in a Blake Edwards comedy called The Great Race

between Tony Curtis and Ross Martin. And it has all those clichés in it. They play with them. Here's another one Gilbert will love. Cars will always explode after falling off a cliff. Ah, yes. Sometimes even before they hit the ground. Yes.

after falling off a cliff. Oh, yes. Sometimes even before they hit the ground. Yes. It's Groundhog Day when Bill Murray drives a car off the cliff. And Chris Elliott says, he'll probably be okay. He could be okay. And then boom.

Probably not now. That's the greatest gag. Here's a good one, Gil. Whenever we see a character coming back from the supermarket with a bag of groceries. Oh, okay. There's always like a French bread. That's it. It's sticking up in the air. French bread sticking out of the top of the bag.

Yes. To indicate that he is coming back with groceries. I love that one. I'll just fly through these. Go ahead, Paul. Anything you do to somebody's head or even upper back will knock them out cold instantly. And there will be no lasting injury. I have that here.

No concussions allowed in movies. Well, you know, one of the classics of two men are fighting and a woman is standing there holding the wine bottle or the champagne bottle. She's hesitating. Smash it over his head. Broken glass everywhere. You know, the guy's knocked out and he doesn't have a scratch on him. And then you wake up after being asleep, shake your head and are back to normal.

Yep. No concussions allowed. I forget who said it, but someone said, as an experiment, smash the top of your TV set and see how easily it comes on afterwards. Also, that's accompanied by the visual of the black screen, then a little bit of light, the fuzzy image of the focus gradually comes into focus. And a little bit of light, the fuzzy image of the focus gradually comes into focus. Some of these are from a terrific website, by the way, called CineLinx. C-I-N-E-L-I-N-X. You can go there and look up their list of movie cliches, which is rather fun. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. At Bet365, we don't do ordinary. We believe

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If you see an Asian character in a film, you can be sure he or she is a martial arts expert. Ah, yes. Yes. It doesn't matter if they're a bookkeeper or a shopkeeper. If someone messes with them, feet will be flying. Oh, yeah. That's really funny. Even the kids, like Short Round in the Temple of Doom,

will start to kick butt if the need arises. What I find in movies with Asian characters, if they're not a main character, then they're just there because, hey, those Asians look and act funny. They sound funny. So if it's a smaller part, that's what they're there for. There's also the people trapped in caves. They go into caves. There's always a flat floor.

There's always a flat floor. And it's never really dark in a cave. And the other thing I like is there's so many movies that they want a nighttime scene, and they just stop down the camera so that you see bright shadows from the trees and everything. It's supposed to be nighttime. Or if you're lying in bed, either from the moon or a street light, there's this bright light shining through your window that you would never be able to fall asleep if your room was that bright. It just frames your head or something. Here's one I love.

In movie land, there's an abundance of corrupt helicopter pilots. This is from another website called movieclichés.com, which I love. Villains have no problem renting a helicopter that comes complete with a pilot. Who doesn't mind shooting total strangers? Oh, yes. Or being shot at. I like how if you're a hero in a movie, it's perfectly okay. I'd love to ask doctors about this.

Being shot in the shoulder is fine. Yeah. You can get a bullet in your shoulder. There's no permanent damage. There's nothing bad that will happen if a bullet goes through your shoulder right they've got a good one here about heroes the hero's best friend or partner will usually be killed by the bad guys right before his retirement oh yes yes yeah so on the same theme the hero gets married and five minutes later his wife is mowed down by two dozen machine guns. Yes.

Here's some other ones that I was playing with. Let's see. This is fun. These are characters. This is the Magical Negro. This is a black character who aids a cast of white characters. Well, I mean, the first really impressive magical Negro was Sidney Poitier. Oh, yes. He would be there.

Walt Disney would love. Yeah. And many, many films. Heat of the Night. Yeah. White people don't know what they're doing. They need a Negro to show up. Those are called traveling angel stories.

Oh, yes. In screenwriting terms, but these are traveling... And then those parts were adopted by Denzel Washington. Right, right. Song of the South, The Green Mile, Legend of Bagger Vance. There's a lot of them. There's one...

Let me see if I can find it here. This one is called... I like this too. This is... Roger ebert calls this the principle of evil marksmanship villains attack one at a time can't shoot straight or become incompetent in the face of opposition by the protagonists yes so they can actually never deliver a clean shot so yeah you could have a million bad guys shooting at you, and then you very calmly point your gun at them and hit them right in the head. Yep, yep, yep. Also, one that's such a cliche that still drives me nuts is the post-coitus scene.

Oh, I know what you're saying here. The girl could be a hooker, and she wakes up with a blanket covering her breast, and she's clutching it over her breast. Yes. Like, she just had sex with this guy. Who is she hiding her breast from? We had Mr. Skin in here that we were talking about. That really upsets you. Oh, yeah. Because you're waiting for that shot that doesn't come.

Or a girl is getting out of a bathtub and reaches for the towel and wraps herself in the towel while she's still in the bathtub. Love it. Or gets up from the bed where her clothes will be right there and slips them on without ever standing up or gets out of bed and wraps neatly the entire blanket around her like a toga he's put a lot of thought into this you're discussing cinematic art here you're you're it's it has nothing to do with the fact that you never saw any of these people naked yeah this bothers him here's another character a cliched character like the magical negro uh this was this was coined i think by our friend nathan rubin uh the magic the excuse me the manic pixie dream girl this is the free-spirited woman who teaches a repressed male protagonist to relax enjoy life and have fun although to be fair

she also learns that responsibility that's correct be important that's correct yeah that you can't go through life just being a free spirit oh and i should remember since i was talking about asians like you know they're in a small part that they'd be laughed at. Asians are now losing work to Indians who are there to be laughed at. If you have Indian actors, it's like, oh, they look funny. They talk funny. You know, it's funny. You look at a film like The Party, you know, and how dated that is, and yet it's still going on.

Yeah. We're still laughing at people with an accent. You can't really do what Rooney did, though, in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Even though you're the last comedian in America who's still doing yellow face on stage. Let's see. Here's one. This is a horror film trope. A character repositions a bathroom mirror, revealing a threat behind them in the reflection.

I love that. Oh, here's what drives me crazy. Every horror film and any suspense, mainly horror, if you open up a window, a cat will jump through and pass your face going, ah! And startle you. Right.

How about the car that fails to start in a time-sensitive situation? Yeah, of course. In a horror or an action film. That's Night of the Living Dead. Yeah, or Cujo. Or a character who attempts to use a cell phone, but there's no reception. No. The other thing in the horror films I love is like,

I don't know if you ever saw The Grudge, the- Oh, yeah. I saw that. It's scary. There's about three of them. Ethan Hawke? Scary, scary movies.

But they walk into this house where the, I think I got the right movie, The Grudge. It takes place in Japan. Yeah, there's a stairway, and they look at the stairway they look at each other they start walking up the stairway it's like what the fuck have you never seen a horror movie you do not walk up the stairway and that's another thing that's in so many movies if if the villain is being chased by the good guy, the villain finds a tower

and climbs to the top of the tower. Right. Because that's really smart. That'll help you escape. That's hilarious. And it's also, they can have that fight where the villain, you know,

falls to the bottom. That's right. And you never know for sure if the villain is dead so that you can come back with the next movie but if the hero falls from a height from a he's gonna land in a body of water and oh and then the next scene he'll have like a little butterfly band-aid on his forehead yeah do you know when i was a kid, I would watch movies with my family, and my father, whenever there was a fight in a tower on the roof of a building, my father would always go, oh, because that would be the next scene.

The guy falling and going, oh, yeah. Your dad sounds like he was a lot of fun to go be the next scene. Yeah, right. The guy falling. Right, right. Oh! Yeah. Your dad sounds like he was a lot of fun to go to the movies with. Yeah. Here's a fun one. All characters must keep detailed news clippings of important events in their lives. Yes, yes. Particularly those that are painful to recall, such as the loss of the character's immediate family due to their own negligence.

Such is the loss of the character's immediate family due to their own negligence. They have it in like a bed, you know, like a thing with like they'll tape it, a scrapbook. Hilarious. The other one of these things that drives any of us crazy who are trying to survive in New York City is you look at the apartments. Somebody's got some kind of half-assed job or something. Oh, my God. They have a lavish apartment. They've got like a five million dollar apartment are particularly guilty yeah of that sitcoms like friends yeah a guy could have a job as a bicycle messenger and he lives in an apartment that Donald Trump couldn't afford here's yours Gil it turned up when there's an intruder somewhere in the, the thing that first jumps at the heroine turns out to be her cat. Yes.

There you go. And have you ever opened up a window and had a cat jump past you and scream and go, I most cats are more docile. I like that. I like this one. It sounds like some of the very early Walt Disney cartoons. Oh, yes, yes. Speaking of apartments, Paul, any apartment in Paris will have a view of the Eiffel Tower.

Yes. It's an easy way to set the scene. And if you have an apartment in Egypt, the pyramids are right outside. It's like the baguette in the grocery bag. It just tells you immediately what's going on. Oh, and I heard one cliche. This was great. That like words like foreign characters who speak perfect English,

if they have to say yes or no or goodbye, they don't know how to say it. So, like, yes, they never learned how to say. They'll speak, they'll have a conversation with you, and then they'll go, oh, si, si. I have one right here like that. When foreigners appear in movies, Hispanics in particular, they never seem to be able to speak perfect English without making one single mistake, except it seems they never manage to learn how to say thank you or sir. Yes.

Gracias. Gracias, senor. There's another kind of cliche that isn't like to do with the characters, but the thing like the newspaper that spins up and comes up, right? I'm trying to think of other things like that. I love to, oh, God. We were just, oh, shit. We were just talking about the foreign characters.

Yeah. Women jumping, cats jumping out. When it has to do with foreign spies, they'll say like one word like, Jawohl. And then the guy in charge will say, No, we must only speak English from now on. We must get used to speaking in English. And it's just like how creatures from outer space intercept our radio waves and speak perfect English.

The other one that was demonstrated often in Mission Impossible was when they'd show up in a utility truck and on the side it would say gasoline, but it was always G-A-Z-O-L. So they would do Eastern European lettering. Here's some fun ones. Any person waking from a nightmare must sit or bolt upright in bed. Yes. Instead of just lying there going, oh. That's what most of us do. Any lock can be picked with a

credit card or a paper clip and any safe can be opened in a few minutes with a stethoscope. And gangster's briefcase will always contain weapons or banknotes. Oh, I also love, with gangsters, they'll go, you know, here's the $100 million you could count it. No one ever counts it. Yeah. Well, it says here, briefcases are designed to hold exactly three rows of banknotes. you could count it. No one ever counts it. Well, it says here,

briefcases are designed to hold exactly three rows of banknotes. Yes. As if it had the power by itself, money likes to be sorted in nice packs and rows, even if it had been thrown into the briefcase by a terrified cashier. And it's funny that they don't count it because I guess you figure, well, I'm dealing with a gangster. They wouldn't shoot me.

Yeah, right. Hilarious. Oh, and another thing, if you're dealing with the head of the mob and he knows you've double-crossed him, he won't just shoot you. He'll talk like a college professor doing a thesis. And like the head of the mob will go, in Thailand in 1306, it was considered that the dung beetle was a creature of God. And they would pray to it for better crops and childbirth. And they'd give this whole speech that would somehow lead to this guy double-crossing him. I love that.

And he'd have to shoot him. I love it. I love it. Okay, so there are about a million here. We could keep going. But you guys send in your own movie cliches, and we'll do a future show about them. Oh, and the one they won't let go of is if something is happening anywhere in the world, you click on the TV, and you go, oh, I wonder if that bank robbery is happening,

and you click it on, a bank robbery? And then when they say, police say that, and they click it off. They don't need to hear the whole thing. Here's a police one. Most police chiefs seem to be in constant contact with their city's mayor, who will often chew their ass about a single criminal investigation out of the thousands going on in the city. Oh, and whenever a phone rings at a police station,

it always has to do with the top crime that's happening. That's it. That's it. Yeah. Boy, there are lists and lists and pages and pages of these, and we could go on. But it was a funny idea for a mini episode. Oh, that, as we always say, that hasn't even scraped the circle.

But isn't that a cliche in itself? Yeah. We'll do more of these. You guys can send them in to us. There's just so many funny ones. Some of these are specific to New York, to holidays. The list goes on and on. Love this one.

This is the last one. A hero is meant to be, if a hero is meant to be living in a cheap seedy hotel, you can be sure there will be one. Oh, bar and grill? Oh, well, a large flashing neon sign. Yeah, bar and grill. Or the shitty name of the hotel. Oh, yes. And flashing neon.. Yeah. Bar and Grill. There you go. Or the shitty name of the hotel. Oh, yes.

In flashing neon. Really good stuff. All right. We will send your cliches to us. Thank you, Frank Salerno, for the idea. And we'll do more. And then we'll try to get you to remember cliches from movies you were in. Oh, yes.

Yeah. It's going to be a long show. Paul, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. How was my research, Gilbert? Oh, yes. Yeah. It's going to be a long show. Paul, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. How was my research, Gilbert? Oh, yes. Yeah, I found out that silent movies didn't have sound. I don't even remember him saying that.

We'll see you guys next time. You want to sign us out? And I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this has been Gilbert and Frank's amazing colossal obsessions with my co-host Frank Santopadre and the

waste of a human life Paul Rayburn. I was going to say, don't talk about Verterosa Paul, what can I say? I think you've said enough. Colossal Obsessions.