The Worst Idea Of All Time - REVIEW: DC Cab
Episode Date: April 2, 2020This was originally a pay-walled episode available only to Patreon supporters. Please consider if you can #PayTheBoiz at patreon.com/join/TWIOAT.DC Cab aka Street Fleet is a beautiful piece of 1983. M...r T? Check. Gary Busey? BELIEVE IT! Bill Maher? Sure, why not?! This is a movie of a different era and it is jolly good fun. Low stakes, crazy antics and about 100 different characters solely existing to bring laughter and light. Timbo and Guyguy are SO GRATEFUL for this OASIS in the desert of relentless Sex and The City watches. THANK YOU xoxoxox Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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DC cab they've got clients where to baby nowhere with you and they care
you charge mr and mrs tomatsu 195 dollars they had a lot of luggage
we're the worst company in town and we know it
you don't have to shut it down company is closed pending further investigation Hello, welcome along to a special Patreon edition of The Worst Idea of All Time
with your friends Tim and Guy.
Come on in, put your hat on the rack, take your coat off.
Welcome to the Patreon Palace, where you are our Patreon pal.
That's right.
that's right uh and this week this day this month this year we watched uh the 1983 comedy action film dc cab that was renamed street fleet and some of its releases um the tale of a hapless
group of cabbies in a rundown cab company owned by harold albert comes to town with a dream of
starting his own cab company but needs to motivate harold's employees to want to make something out
of themselves it's only when albert is kidnapped that the cabbies must decide whether or not they
are loyal to albert and his cause that's from imdb user josh pasnack um i don't know how this
movie made it to the top of the pile but i'll say this i'm very glad it did
yeah same you absolute fucking legends anytime you want to come to new zealand i'll buy you a beer
if you're in the patreon club solely for you picking dc cabs for us to watch i had a rollicking
good time watching this in bed this morning roll Rollicking good time. So nice to hear.
It's really like it's a movie of a different era.
And it's also a movie of a different genre from what you and I traditionally deal in together.
Like it was just so simple, low stakes, but competently done.
You know who made it?
No.
done like it's you know who made it no joel schumacher who you might remember from um a director's commentary where we were joined by him as the director of uh batman and robin he both
wrote and directed this film oh wow yeah the guy's a fucking lunatic but i love him yeah absolutely
um no i didn't i didn't put that together at all like it's
i don't know this is the sort of movie that i would have i wasn't alive at the time but happily
go and see at the cinema uh and like just know that you know to me it's the this is this is a
pure distillation of what going to the movies is where i don't have to worry about investing myself in the story too much.
I have to think about the world like it is pure escapism and it's yeah,
like it's obviously it's not flawless,
but you've got a lot of different characters.
You got a lot of people having fun.
You've got a pretty flimsy story that kind of has enough component parts to
keep moving.
And like that was honestly
in anticipation of talking to you after watching a movie one of the most painless experiences i can
recall yeah man it was like a soothing balm in the middle of this season of worst idea of all time
it was so lovely and very importantly and i'm sure you will back this up the soundtrack was shit hot from woe to go
it was so good yeah it was really um it was of the it was of the era like it it was sort of a
uh it was just like 80s pop really wasn't it yeah but it was like there was a lot of synth there was sort of um there was kind
of hints of hip-hop in there there was a bit of funk a bit of soul it was choice i dug it a lot
um so this movie i i had no idea what to expect uh when i turned it on i didn't know what the
patreon pals you were our good dear beautiful lovely supporters have provided to us sometimes
you provide us with nourishment and sometimes poison so when this started kicking off the
first thing that i was thrilled to see one hour 40 minute duration all we thank you thank you so
much and then i start seeing all of these cast members pop up and i'm like holy hell first of all we've got gary
bucey in the role of a lifetime just screaming every 20 minutes or so into a camera that's near
him gary bucey yeah i don't think i've ever seen him in a movie before i think i only know about
him from his like latent life um apprentice he was his own he was in um lethal weapon and also from memory uh
point break like but i because i i feel like he sort of disappeared for a while
and i i again like i only know a little bit of his mythos but it felt like he sort of went off
the rails am i correct in thinking that i think that that might be true and how could it not be
this was made in 1983 and he looked like an old crazy man in this but then he was like on the apprentice quite
recently only a couple years ago i think yeah he uh i felt like he was almost playing himself in
this film like it felt like i think he did a lot of cocaine at one point and to me it felt like he
was sort of doing his takes in between having a
pretty good time in his trailer which is i gotta be honest kind of it's it's not cool to ruin
yourself on cocaine but it is kind of cool to watch someone in a film doing that it's uh it's
interesting it brings a lot of energy and uh at the risk of endangering some actors you know i'm kind of for it would you describe this as an
ensemble cast i mean that's a good question because when you say ensemble cast i think of
something like arrested development where there's a lot of craftsmen at the table who are each
bringing their unique bit of artistry to weave into a tapestry this was like here's kind of a clusterfuck of people who you know um but you'll
be surprised at what they're doing and why they're here bill ma is in this film and yeah i know i i
clicked on that about halfway through i was like i know that voice i think i know that face
it doesn't look like him eh but the voice is the thing that gives him away well the role wasn't a huge stretch
he was sort of just playing
you know Bill Ma as though he was
a cab driver
Mr T
lest we forget
I don't know what the
billing was
or who the stars were at the time
but he surely I think must have been a pretty
top shelf get for the movie Mr T sold this movie i've got no doubt in my mind i'm not basing that on anything
more than just like my gut instinct but um he's not in the film that much to be honest if you
look at if you look at the promotional poster it's mr t like writ large standing above the the capitol building in
washington dc holding a cab door that says dc cab so he was obviously a big marketing vehicle
uh and he like he kind of is just doing his mr t shtick at one point towards the end of the movie
when they're dealing with these kidnappers they kind kind of misuse him in a very large and comical fashion.
So it's like towards the very end of the movie
when the cab drivers are rallying together
to recover Albert from these kidnappers
who kind of arrive out of nowhere, I thought.
And he's on top of a building behind the two kidnappers
and you see him put his arms up to make his body large
and jump down as though he's going to clothesline
or eliminate two of the kidnappers immediately.
But instead, he kind of just lands behind them and then doesn't physically touch either of them at all and just gets into one of those sort of, you know, those standoffs.
It looks like Capoeira, like Eddie Gordo from Tekken.
Except that one of them has a gun pointed at him.
Yeah, but I'm like, he's so high up.
And they made such a big song.
You've got this action hero.
You've got this physically intimidating person.
And then the whole application of the climax of the movie was just sort of...
His physicality and presence was vaguely threatening.
They didn't actually use it.
This is what I love about this film and this era film film because everything has to be kind of done in real life there wasn't a lot of effects there
i don't know it didn't seem to me there were a ton of stunt people performing these things we
see mr t and these big burly brothers um crash through some fake windows to great comic effect
when they um enter the wrong house and just bust into this innocent farm couple's farm
while they're having dinner.
This is what I...
There's a grittiness to this film,
and it's common.
It's not just unique to this film,
but it's like films of this era.
Everything just feels really real.
It's, like, way less shiny than the films we get now.
Everyone's jumping on cars and shit.
The cars all i mean they
were dressed to look completely beat up but they're genuinely fucked like the cabs that they're rolling
around in you know they look like they might have been dragged by something because they don't work
anymore and it was just kind of cool it's cool to see so much imperfection in films because you
don't really get that as much anymore
with the movies i'm seeing at the cinema there's too much money involved yeah it kind of felt like
a student movie with a decent budget like also in terms of the way they distributed the story like
everyone everyone's characters kind of got a bite of the apple i was never and i was never invested
all the way in the story but i was also never totally disengaged like they're throwing enough stuff at you that you're sort of
like yeah okay let's get into some of the journeys actually shall we we're sort of talking around
them so can i just kick off with mr t what he's there to do yes so 1983 this would have been
well i i i imagine this must have been around the peak of the a team um for
him to be the the prominent sort of promotional vehicle for this getting out in the cinemas
and he's just there to do his whole i keep kids off drugs thing which is what like 80 of his
career was i think and so there's this guy who seems to be maybe a pimp, but definitely a drug dealer,
and he's got a real flash car.
And there's a couple scenes where there's high school age kids
who just flock to this guy to hang around his cool shiny car.
And Mr. T is a cab driver for this company called DC Cabs,
which the whole movie's about.
And while he's doing his runs,
he periodically goes and visits his niece who is sort
of caught up in in all of this and he's just desperately trying to get all these kids to stop
paying attention to this drug dealer with a cool car and that's kind of his whole thing for the
film would i be right in saying that that's about it yeah he's it's he's all kind of its moral core
like the the the cabbies with whom he hangs out,
they've all got solid gold hearts,
but they're pretty derelict and debaucherous.
But he also is some sort of leader figure.
I think probably because, I mean,
it feels like even in the movie,
part of it's because of his celebrity stature
and also his physical stature.
But like, you know, when Albert,
who is, I guess, the protagonist of the movie tries to rally everyone together around this failing cab company he it's his voice he's the first one to come over and say i stand
with albert like i'm i'm i'm in on this and that kind of motivates a lot of the other characters
to go with him but he like it it kind of feels like yeah he was like well if i'm going to do this movie i'm
going to impress my messages inside of it as well it's kind of it's interesting that i it was pretty
awesome of mr t to just dedicate his entire life to that like all the celebrity and shit was
basically him popping up in different pop culture franchises and going hey remember
stop telling drugs i know you just saw me pop up in the teenage mutant ninja turtles but here i am
in real life in a different movie probably not for the target demo that i'm trying to reach right now
i hope you haven't picked up that crack pipe you kids you put it down uh would you like to guess how old do you think mr t is now i'm gonna say he is 68
far out that's a pretty sound guess he's actually 66 fuck i was pretty close he's got a cool story
about why he calls himself mr t and i can't remember are you looking on his wiki at the
moment yeah i am i don't know if it'll even be there it's
more like a fun fact than something you put on a wikipedia page for someone um by the way this film
was made on the princely budget of seven million dollars and uh from memory i looked up on imdb
before i think it made like 17 something like that so it made money but not like a staggering amount yeah it was it just to me it
feels it feels perfectly of its era so i i guess the the lead the guy with whom you know we're we're
sort of meant to be uh walking with through the film yeah we're introduced through him
is albert hockenberry who is uh i i don't quite know i i sort of was uh just checking in at the start of the movie like
where does he appear from because he moves to dc was he in the army he's no no so he's from the
south i can't remember exactly they i think they do so maybe tennessee or something and so his
father has just died so i think the guy who owns the dc cab company harold was in the army with his father
yeah uh yeah yeah that sounds right yeah because harold harold's a fucking legend he's the guy who
has this motley crew he's the guy who owns the dc owner of dc cabs he's also an albert on arrival
in dc he does and he's very sweet he's the new father figure for albert albert's
like probably 20 years old but the other thing that harold owns is a flamethrower which comes
up a few times in the film which is very cool um yeah so albert enters his dad's died um but he's
like an adult he's a young adult so it's it's you know it's sad but it's not too sad he has with him
some money which is later revealed to be six
grand to um from inheritance to get himself started and a pair of boots that are slightly
too big from his pops and he just like for some reason has an absolute dream to drive cabs like
the guy is so fucking driven to be a cab driver and the like a big part of the movie is just him constantly bothering the guys who work at DC Cabs who do not enjoy their jobs to do ride-alongs with them so he can learn the job really well.
These sort of disgruntled, disheveled cab drivers for DC Cabs.
I mean, admittedly, they're working for a pretty ragtag company.
But we are to believe that they have dreams beyond cab driving,
but the particulars of those dreams
are never really spelled out.
We just know that they're not entirely happy with their jobs,
which is mind-boggling to Albert,
who's like, no, what if I told you that this is the dream,
that you are fulfilling your potential,
that this is a realisation of what you want to do?
And everyone's sort of unsure,
but then I guess because it's halfway through the movie and they've got nothing else on their plates they all kind of
like well yeah we better actually put our elbows into this because otherwise what are we going to
do yeah so he yeah he he's sort of this uh i found him immensely likable by the way there's
something about his face which is and he's a baldwin but then i looked him up he's not a baldwin brother just he's not he's an off-brand baldwin yeah he's uh confusingly so
that he's played by adam baldwin of the same era as the famous baldwins and a similar sounding name
but an entirely different clan he is um in serenity which i'm sure some people have seen
um very good series that was cut in its prime.
And yeah, he's in a whole bunch of stuff.
But he's a young man in this.
It's freaky seeing photos of him now because he's obviously middle-aged.
But he's a handsome, charismatic young dude who just wants to drive a goddamn cab.
Why won't someone let him drive a cab?
That is genuinely all he wants.
In the early 80ss there's this highly regulated
market so he's got to um get his licenses a lot about the it's called the hack department right
the like governing body that looks after them yeah because the baddie the like equivalent of
the dean of these naughty students is the guy who's in charge of the hack department from the
government and uh he he takes away their
license and stuff there's a few big um incidents that happen so one um old mate albert comes and
arrives and he wants to learn how to he's so driven to drive he just wants to drive and um
so we we play around with that for a little bit. We meet some cool people.
There's Tyrone, who's this...
How would you describe Tyrone?
He's an intelligent young man
who sort of deliberately plays up his craziness
to the people around him,
I think to try and protect himself, I guess.
He is honestly...
He's almost the conscience of the film
like for the the film is uh not all parts of it have aged brilliantly but he is a character who
kind of almost speaks truth to power as a as a black man in washington dc in the 80s who's like
he represents uh a viewpoint which kind of still seems relevant today i totally like yeah very
very prescient bit of characterization and also the it's just kind of sad how little things have
changed i guess as well it's a reminder of that but he's kind of he's he's perturbed but
sort of accepts the fact that he's you know um working for a white dude and kind of a white
man society in new york and uh sorry in washington dc
gary bucey goes on like this um this really uh um unhinged racist rant about how there's
so many black people black americans in the u.s army now that they're going to take over the
country and you kind of like he spins off into it and you kind of get to the end you're like yeah
fucking yeah i get it.
Fair enough.
There's all of these whole class of people in America
who have been underserved by the society for ages
and now they've got access to weapons.
That seems like maybe that's what should happen.
I honestly think that what he outlined as a movie
would have been a pretty interesting,
I mean, obviously they just didn't have the time.
They sort of went with the guy who loves driving cabs angle
and said in all power to them.
But, yeah, it's...
Joel Schumacher would have been the guy to make that movie too.
Like a kind of blaxploitation movie,
that sort of style of just a whole thousands,
tens of thousands, the whole section
of the African-American part of the armed services
uniting and overthrowing America in some sort sort of egalitarian overthrow would have been main but so
gary bucey this is why i kind of felt like gary bucey was uh channeling some of his own self
because you sort of go on these crazy unhinged rants that had threads of truth and you'd be like
all right gary bucey uh but so yeah and there's there's other
there's these two muscular muscle men cab drivers who i thought was a really funny gag their their
cab is broken and it can only drive in reverse it's a great so when you first drive around with
them like you just hear all these sort of adr off camera voices going out you're going backwards
you idiot like everyone yelling at these guys and they're're sort of going, hey, we're driving into the shop.
Our car's broken.
And it's just good, silly fun.
Really, there's so many quick gags in this.
There's like hundreds of lots of little jokes.
And a lot of them are done in ADR.
People just yelling off camera.
It's really nice.
It just carries you through.
I actually, I wrote down my top three.
Like there were some funny little like evergreen turns of phrase.
Before you move on from the brothers, sorry.
Did you get the sense they might have been wrestlers?
Yes.
Awesome.
And do you know, I don't know that they were because I looked them up and there was nothing about them wrestling.
They were bodybuilders and they had a movie together called The Barbarians.
I think they're the Barbarian Brothers. Correct brothers correct yeah i saw that in the credits when the credits
rolled they're the barbara and so the movie the barbarians which i mean it could be even just as
an extracurricular watch uh is a 1987 sword and sorcery film um i i don't know the particulars
like because their surname is barbarian and the movie's called The Barbarian Brothers,
so it's one of those movies, I think, that sort of treads a very confusing
and fine line between fiction and non-fiction.
And they're not particularly strong performers,
but they're fun guys to be around.
Yeah, they're big meatheads.
Every film needs some big meatheads.
Although pretty much everyone's a big meathead in this.
You've got a few
other drivers you've got this very exhausted and uh put upon the sole woman who works at the at dc
cabs and she's uh she's tired of working for them she's tired of being mugged but like all these
kind of threads i don't know like it felt like they were quite there was quite it was like a
rube Goldberg machine
in terms of telling a very simple story,
which is part of what made it feel like, you know,
the movie kept going, like, the pace was all right,
because once they'd created and resolved one bit of conflict,
they'd immediately move into another.
Exactly.
And establishing that DC Cabs is a shitty kick- kick around cab company you then meet emerald cabs
who like the you know they're the classic uh they're the flash version of it and they're the
yeah they are so it's in this film it's it's like i don't know maybe our bar is so phenomenally low
because we're in the middle of watching sex in the city um 52 times but it did it seemed like for as many characters as we got thrown at
uh who were on screen you could tell everyone had somewhere to go like everyone had some sort
of motivation and everyone was kind of fun to hang out with like everyone was bringing a little
something yeah they're all very charismatic characters i i do yeah i think we
definitely uh probably not quite seeing the movie as it was made uh but that is you know just a
byproduct of what what we do to ourselves there's also just before you do your quotes um a couple
of ancillary or not so as the plot progressed characters that were really cool as well there's
a guy called bongo
who basically has like four lines in the whole movie but he is sort of made out to be like um
quite a like rusted dude isn't he isn't that his vibe yeah yeah what does he get asked he gets
asked about he goes he wants to do a drive around he goes can you i drive around so you can tell me
about jamaica and kingston and he's like, I'm from Cleveland.
Good gag.
Fucking good gag.
And then there's Mr. Rhythm.
Mr. Rhythm is a borderline homeless dude, I think.
Does he work for them?
Yeah, it's hard to know exactly how he fits in.
But he had one of my favorite lines.
So these are all delivered by different people at different times in the movie but there were three like evergreen lines that i thought were funny the third one was
um when they get into an argument with emerald cabs at the diner yeah and uh in response to a
put down one of the people for dc cabs says come here fuck face come here and fuckface. Come here. And fuckface is just funny.
It always is.
It's timeless.
It's a timeless insult.
It's really good.
The second one was towards the end of the movie
when the kidnappers,
so I don't quite know where these characters come from,
but these kidnappers kidnap this diplomat's children.
It's in DC,
so there are diplomats crawling all over the background of this film.
No, they're all Children. It's in DC, so there are diplomats crawling all over the background of this film. No, they're all walking.
It's crazy.
Hold on, I've just got to reject a phone call.
Sorry, Tim.
I thought you were literally pausing for laughter from that lukewarm gag.
No, no, no.
My phone started ringing.
no no no i my phone started ringing um but so uh oh yeah so the the kidnappers take them and there's this one of the kidnappers is a woman and uh she is sort of saying a threat she's saying we
should kill the kids who are doing really bad acting because they don't look scared at all but
you would be if a woman with a gun under your chin was saying we should kill these kids but one of the kids is so non-plussed by this she actually says uh you are
a pitiful bitch it's so good because the girl's like six yeah it delivers the line with such a
plum to know that to know the swear word is one thing but to also use pitiful like pitiful is a
50 cent word that's class uh but my favorite line was delivered
by mr rhythm himself after albert's had a rough night uh he goes to some sort of ladies night at
a male strip club and then as the strip club's closing all the cab drivers they pull up their
beaten up cabs and they get on the the bonnets and the roofs and they start dancing in this flock
a very excited young woman coming
out of the club and they pile into the cabs and all of the drivers drive away to some unknown
place where i presume they have some sort of crazy sex orgy like the it's sort of that celebration
of these cab drivers like the idea of how valuable they are or how desirable they are at that moment
in the movie sort of syncs up perfectly with albert's understanding or estimation of them as like cab driving is this holy grail of professionalism or you know it's
sort of it's not really tethered to reality but as everyone leaves no one's got room in their car
for him because he doesn't have his own car and he's this new fish uh he sort of he finds mr rhythm
later that night and he says uh you got any advice for me? And the character who plays Mr. Rhythm says,
Mr. Rhythm say, if you can go through the night till dawn
without committing suicide, then you're okay.
And it was just so like, I don't know, it really floored me.
It came out of nowhere like a freight train,
but I thought it really got a big rise out of me at the time.
But it's that
awesome that's what this movie does so well is that there's all these little for as goofy and
funny and comedic as this film is either intentionally or not there's all these beautiful
bits of social commentary which permeate through and are like fuck that is dead on that is right on
joel schumacher well done you and that's definitely one of them
of just serving this this homeless dude as being this fountain of wisdom while he's this incredibly
downtrodden man um so there's like a couple of big events that happen that drive the plot of this
film so yeah we open with albert being introduced to cabs. We fuck around with them for a bit. Then there is a violin.
This is not a compelling storyline,
but basically they'd never say this,
but they make it out to be a Stradivarius really.
Incredibly valuable violin gets left in a cab
and it's worth half a million dollars
and they assume whoever will find it
will get a big cash reward and so
everyone goes nuts um trying to track it down and it turns out that the homeless guy mr rhythm
has had it and been playing it like a ukulele for a bit which i can't imagine is doing um good
things for the instrument itself but they figure it out they manage to get it back to its owner and
um a ten thousand dollar000 reward is offered up.
And this kicks off a whole bunch of events where, so the guy who's running the hack department,
which regulates and governs all the cabs in the city, he goes, Albert will, no, what's
his name?
The guy who owns the cab company, Harold, will get all of the money because he owns
all the cabs. And they're kind of the money because he owns all the cabs
and they're kind of okay with this because harold's their boss they respect him and they expect he'll
he'll probably do something fair with it and then harold's like okay here's what we're gonna do
everyone's gonna get a slice of the pie but just so you know this business is about to like cease
operation because we have a real lack of money so just putting it out there if you would
like to give it back to me your share you will be an investor in this company and everyone sort of
dwells on this and trying to figure out what to do and in the ensuing um days his wife takes all
of the money and their house and leaves him and uh it's then revealed that she's been sleeping with
his foil for the film the antagonist who is the head of the hack department the sort of dean of
this animal house and um that's one of the couple of times we get to see him pull out his flamethrower
which is awesome um and then the other separate like big plot event is the young Buck Albert,
who this movie's kind of about,
gets kidnapped alongside these two school kids.
Who's driving them to the embassy every day?
Sorry, to the school where all the diplomats' kids go?
I can't remember.
Is it Tyrone?
It doesn't matter, but it's of those it's it was slightly confusing
like the kidnapping did kind of i mean i understand what they were doing but it like
when you when i hear all this information presented back i'm like yeah that wasn't
the movie there's just just enough going on that you could like you never challenged you
can follow it all but it doesn't all quite add up um yeah but it's fine it's all fine and nothing's reinventing the plot wheel is it it's like the violin thing's pretty pretty
played out but it's all good i mean there's enough people having fun the biggest compliment i can
give this movie is it has done nothing to diminish the value of my day oh high praise i i like i
honestly you know i feel like i might have watched that movie anyway
because you know obviously i'm in the i'm in the throes of the fest right now it's the sort of
thing you just put on and watch during the day anyway just a while away an hour and 40 minutes
absolutely and i'm so happy for that to have been my movie watching experience instead of what i
know it will be time and time again while i'm here which is uh sex in the city i do have to pick a bone with something you said
earlier though guy that the the kids who get kidnapped um from the school are bad actors
wrong you couldn't be more wrong i reckon they were fantastically cast and their performances
were a plus because their whole deal and i think they served they served as an ocean of comedic performances.
I think they were some of the strongest performers.
Because Albert's really scared.
He's this wet-behind-the-ears southerner who's come into Washington, D.C. and doesn't know what for.
And these kids are like, oh, is this your first kidnapping?
He's like, yeah.
Oh, no, they say, have you never been kidnapped before?
He's like, yeah.
And they're like, oh, don't worry. This is our third time you're gonna be fine and there's six
they're both like six years old and they're these jaded um you know kids of these rich diplomats
who have gone through the rigor so much and they're just like throwing out these sensational insults at the kidnappers. And they don't give a fuck.
Yeah.
When Albert gets out of his ropes and blindfold to reveal that the kids have already done it because they're so experienced.
They applaud him.
They're like, yay, you did it.
Fuck, that cracked me up.
That was a laugh out loud moment
for me it was a good bit of fun uh yeah look i think it's it's just it was just a pleasant
morning like it was a nice thing to do i feel like i feel relaxed i feel like it's part of a day off
and uh i gotta ask you some questions though please it feels like you're just
you're floating at this point um so this film was obviously it came out in 1983 there's there's a lot
of pretty fucking outdated uh lingo dialogue references um attitudes what how do you sort of
reconcile all of that sort of stuff monty seeing a film like that there's you know casual mentions of the n-word um particularly by gary bucey that seemed to really smack you across the
face when you're watching it in 2019 but what do you make of all that uh there's nothing to be done
about it it's just the movie we watched you know like gary bucey's character certainly, I guess we can just call him Gary Busey,
I'd get pretty uneasy or nervous
whenever he'd start talking for longer than a couple of sentences.
But I was like, well, what are you going to do?
Gary Busey's going to Gary Buse.
It's 1983 as well.
These things are products of the time, aren't they?
Yeah, measuring old movies from different eras against modern standards is always
a channel like it definitely jarred you know like it definitely uh you notice it like obviously
enough to to talk about it but uh i was sort of just like the whole movie felt so low stakes to me.
I was sort of just like, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Just keep presenting this information to me
and I'll keep plodding through the film.
Like it was, yeah.
What did you think?
Did it do anything to you?
Look, I don't want to introduce sort of personal politics
to what is a fun and very stupid movie review
podcast but like i do i i do find it interesting that there's some attempts to um kind of remove
and ban um references to stuff from old works like this like old old bits of art and literature
and film and music where it's just like i don't know it's they're just they were products of their
time that's that's how people used to thought and i think we we should be able to be exposed to those ideas now and go that's dumb and we don't
do it but surely people are not coming for dc cabs no i don't think 1983 comedy action hit
no i don't i don't think so but their overarching umbrella just feeds into what I think about this, which is like, yeah, this movie came out in 1983.
Like, that's pretty much my attitude, start and stop.
Yeah, it definitely came out in 1983,
and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
Had you heard of Irene Cara before?
No, but she is a genuine pop star, so that was probably quite a big gift for the movie
i imagine so they do they wear it like that's the case like it was a very big deal that she was there
she she pops up in the film and this is at a point where tyrone has fucking bailed on the cab company
everyone else decided to stick it out but tyrone left what i can't remember
exactly what happened when he left i like just watch this because he didn't get the money out
did he from the violin shareholder payout or did he what do you mean well like he left the cab
company but yeah and then he started hawking Americana merchandise on the street. Yeah, dressed as Uncle Sam.
But I don't think he got the money from the violin earnings, did he?
He didn't get his share out and then leave.
No.
Well, no one got their share.
Yeah.
Fuck, I don't know.
That's why Albert had to front his savings because all
of the money that they'd anticipated was gone and then somehow they stretched his 6060 dollars of
savings into like a fully brand new fleet of cars jackets licenses like they had the 10 grand as
well from the violin money so they had like 16 grand to revamp everything. And in 1983, that was about a billion dollars.
How much of the money did his wife Myrna take?
Oh, fuck yeah, I don't know.
They don't even say.
I thought what happened is that they all thought it was going to be okay,
and then Myrna takes all the money, and Albert comes and saves the day,
and he's like, we're all going to bail out, but here's the situation.
I got these savings.
It's not quite 10 grand but we work together myrna is a character in this film who is the um the wife of the guy who owns the cab
company and she works there just like 24 7 uh on sort of a reception type thing because they've
got someone else doing dispatch and um the only time we really learn anything about her is Albert's studying for his exam with, um, with Harold, who owns the cab company.
And she comes home and she's like, there's no beers for me.
You guys drank all the beers.
You know, I need to drink a beer while I watch Johnny Carson so I can get to sleep.
And there's a big to-do about that.
And that's kind of it.
Um, and I, I, I know she was there to be presented as like a queen bitch you're supposed to hate but
i was like i i get where you're coming from you're probably not drawing any money whatsoever out of
your husband's shitly run cab company and you're there you know 60 hours away i'm sure absolutely
i uh you know eventually they fill out her character to give other reasons to not like her but initially I was like everything that Myrna is saying is well within her rights as a partner
in a relationship like yeah it's just basic basic courtesies but again Tim I bring you back to the
point you made not five minutes ago this movie was made in 1983 and if anyone comes into this
apartment and tells me otherwise I will push them down an empty elevator shaft speaking of that do you know what quite really stuck with me and i think this is a
gary beauty one as well um oh fuck i can't remember how he gets into it but he says
oh woman they've got 50 of the money and percent of the pussy there's a few little things like that where it's just like
fucking hell man that's that's funny that's a funny line you know there's a there's a funny
line i think in uh in even in 2019 i think that's a funny line because it's factually accurate yeah there's one guy who doesn't get fleshed out at all
his whole thing is he keeps saying
it's hard to be a man
he'd be like an alt-right dude
I think these days if he was still around
yeah
he's not given a lot to do
he's Hispanic and he dresses well do he's from he's Hispanic
and he dresses well
and his whole shtick is
it's tough
did you watch to the end
to the very very end
of the credits
when the Grim Reaper
or the Merchant of Death
gets into the cab
I'm so glad to hear
you say that
because I'm just on the
the cast page now
to check up on who
who people are
and it's got Timothy Carey as Death and I was just on the cast page now to check up on who people are,
and it's got Timothy Carey as Death.
And I was like, what the fuck?
This isn't Bill and Ted.
Death isn't in this.
And it was like, oh, it's that guy at the end.
He is Death.
I just assumed that was Schumacher himself putting himself in the film,
because there's no need for that scene to be there.
No.
It felt like a gag that they came up with in the writer's room, and they were like we'll just stick it at the end yeah he jumps into tyrone's cab tyrone's reading
the credits do a fantastic job of keeping you engaged the whole way through though because
it's like you almost feel like there's a little bit more story being bled out uh you never get
just the black screen with rolling text it's always like like moving images. And they're not bloopers.
They're canon within the story of the film.
It's a technique that you don't see a lot of anymore.
But I was like, okay, you've got me here.
By the way, the thing we missed out.
So everything wraps up pretty neatly.
So old mate gets the money from Albert.
Maybe he loses all the violin money to his wife.
But he gets all the money that Albert's arrived with
from his inheritance, six grand.
Revamps the company.
The company's got a brand new lease on life
and is doing fabulously well.
Then Albert gets kidnapped with the kids.
They eventually save him.
And then the end is the city of Washington, D.C.
throws a parade for this cab company,
which is fucking dope and reminded me a lot of Washington, D.C. throws a parade for this cab company, which is fucking dope
and reminded me a lot of Ghostbusters.
And I was like,
what a cool 80s thing in film they used to do,
which they should bring back,
which maybe will be in the next Avengers,
where you just get a nice parade at the end.
Yeah, the parade.
I don't know.
I was like, okay.
They kind of got themselves out of a jam they created
but sure we'll we'll have a parade um look i think it was because they rescued those kids
especially when the kids the kids were fine the kids were like you said the kids weren't worried
anyway i'm happy to watch the movie i've got nothing left to say about it it was honestly
a fucking perfectly fine way to spend my morning and for that to my patreon movie i've got nothing left to say about it it was honestly a fucking perfectly fine
way to spend my morning and for that to my patreon pals i am grateful yeah i feel like we owe you some
money so i'm we're incredibly grateful that you throw us these bones every now and then in amongst
doing like you know the brain verse and all the other shit the the like half-baked animated films
that never quite got finished that you throw at us i really do
appreciate you mixing it up with just some gary bucey nonsense and mr t star vehicles um that are
perfectly fine and enjoyable to watch so i would recommend dc cabs um you know put your earmuffs on
for the huffing and the cussing there's a bit There's a bit of 1983 bled into the film,
but it's fun, and it's not very long,
and I'm so grateful for it.
Guy, how cool is it that we got to watch that today?
I wish you a great rest of the day.
Hey, same to you, my friend.
And thanks to all of you for listening
and being a part of the Patreon.
I hope you're having a good life.
Love you guys.
Bye bye Patreon pals.
Bye.
Bye.
See ya.
Around the clock
We're gonna rock
To the rhythm of the street
Down the block
Around the clock
Yeah, we're gonna rock
Around the clock Yeah, we're gonna rock To the rhythm of the street We're going to rock.
Around the clock, yeah, we're going to rock.
To the rhythm of the speed of the down the block.
Around the clock, yeah, we're going to rock.