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Longtime friends Dan and Michelle Hess join us to talk about the hilarious 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda. We talk about the pitch perfect script and performances, the unexpected cultural sensitivity, and how you can never have too many Monty Pythonites. Oh, and Dan tells a story about the movie that may have started Charlie’s passion for film criticism: the 1993 Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle Last Action Hero!
Clarifications:
Let there be no mistake: it is pronounced “Cleeze”. You can find the evidence here, here and here (and be entertained in the process!).
The Nietzsche quote from Kevin Kline’s Otto about animals being “God’s second blunder” is indeed incorrect. He’s probably referring to the philosopher calling women “God’s second mistake”, or possibly “God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining – he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an animal himself.” Or probably both. I had to look all this up, so I’m feeling a bit like Wanda right now 🙁
Apparently, Kevin Kline beat out Alec Guinness, Martin Landau, River Pheonix and Dean Stockwell at the Oscars in 1989. And here’s his acceptance speech. Not quite what I was hoping, too sincere!
And wait, the guy who died of a heart attack while in hilarious laughing fits while watching this movie is only #9 on this list of movie-related deaths??!! Bizarre!
The Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children is still going strong, read up on it a bit!
And I want to point out that the High Fidelity line about “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was a disqualification because of obviousness, not because they hated that movie. I guess we’ll never know what Nick Hornby thought of that flick!
And Also:
Next episode: The Godfather (1972)