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Talking Pondo: The Manhattan Project and Get Crazy
Description
In this episode, Marty gives Clif the film Get Crazy to watch and Clif gives Marty The Manhattan Project to watch.
First up is Alan Arkush's Get Crazy (1983), a madcap New Year's Eve comedy set inside a rock-and-roll theater preparing for it's big annual blowout. Daniel Stern anchors the story, while Malcolm McDowell steals plenty of attention as a flamboyant rock star who gets more than he bargained for. Clif and Marty discuss the movie's rapid-fire gags, it's anything-goes attitude toward comedy, it's parade of familiar faces and the strange time-capsule quality of a film that seems to be spoofing the 1980s while the decade is still happening. There are laughs to be found and Clif has some very specific thoughts about Lou Reed.
Then it's time to trade rock clubs for radioactive green goo with The Manhattan Project (1986), a Cold War thriller about a teenage science whiz who discovers a secret government nuclear facility and decides that the best way to expose it is to build an atomic bomb of his own. Christopher Collet plays the brilliant young troublemaker, whose plans escalate from a science-fair ambition into a genuinely dangerous confrontation with the government. Clif and Marty revisit the movie's clever gadgets, memorable supporting cast, surprisingly cheerful bomb-building montage and nerve-racking finale. For Clif, it's a highly rewatchable discovery; for Marty, it's a long-lost piece of his childhood moviegoing experience finally clicking back into place.
Along the way: a first-ever Talking Pondo sighting from the movie The Party Animal, a very recognizable early version of Sheldon Cooper, the lost art of renting a VHS tape and Malcolm McDowell having a conversation with a rather unexpected scene partner.
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Season One
Theme Song "The Rain" by Russ Pace
Photos by Geoffrey Notkin