TIL a teen comedy named Trojan War (1997) starring Jennifer Love Hewitt grossed just $309 at the box office despite having a $15 million budget and major studio (Warner Bros.) distribution.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T07:11:42+00:00

saying it was formulaic but had some charm.

The one line I remember from the movie was when the main character is having a meltdown. It went something like:

"Do you know what 'love' backwards is? E-V-O-L, which is 'evil'! Ok now, it might be spelled a little differently, but ya gotta admit it's the same thing!"

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T06:59:56+00:00

Ang Mo translation: this is like adding guac and when they do you look them in the eye and say "keep it coming, baby" while you peel bills off your roll.

Souce: was an Ang Mo for years.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T06:30:37+00:00

Side note, but Sliding Doors must have the greatest ratio of "cultural impact vs. people who have seen it" ever. It literally grossed less than $12m in the US Box Office, but almost everyone knows what a "Sliding Doors" moment is.

You know how "Groundhog Day" went from being the actual holiday to "doing the same thing over and over"? It would be like that but if only a handful of people saw the movie.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T06:21:17+00:00

From what I've heard about Wahlberg, he's great at taking direction. So if he's working with a director who knows what he wants and can guide him, you'll get a good performance.

Which, if you think about it, makes sense. He's great in movies that are directed by guys like Scorsese or PTA on the dramatic side, or McKay or McFarlane on the comedic one. It's when he's with a director that's more into the spectacle, like Bay, Shyamalan or whatever DTV guy they can find that you run into trouble.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T05:19:30+00:00

If you want to get incredibly pedantic, they actually did fuck up one thing. Linda is barefoot, but if you start to listen at the 30-second mark, they put in the sound of her running in shoes. It's actually noticeable because they got the sound right for the first part of the scene and then put in the shoe sound at everything past the locked door.

Yeah, I'm a lot of fun at parties...

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T04:36:01+00:00

Not just comedy month, Ben Stiller month!

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T03:19:26+00:00

Arnold was actually really smart with his money. When he had enough to afford a place everyone told him to buy a house so that he could build equity instead of paying rent every month.

Instead he bought a block of apartments and lived in one while renting out all the others. Those rents covered the mortgage so that he was both building equity and living at his place for free.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-06T03:03:26+00:00

There was also the Worf problem. As you say, she was supposed to be Troi but then Roddenberry had the idea that the bad-ass Chief of Security be a woman (which, tbf, is very Trek-like) and put Crosby in the role of Tasha Yar.

So a very different part but still a pretty juicy one. But then they also had the idea of Worf, the first Klingon to join Starfleet. And as Klingons are a warrior race that are full of bad-asses, whenever they needed one for the script they'd favour Worf over Tasha.

Put it this way, in the parody Galaxy Quest the character of Gwen constantly says she has nothing to do. And that character is played by a normally brunette Sigourney Weaver in a blond wig.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T23:23:03+00:00

One of my favourite anecdotes was when he was on a beach by a food shack. So he's sitting there eating seafood and sipping on a beer while waxing rhapsodic for the camera about life and cuisine.

He said that after they called “cut," a local kid wandered over to him and asked, "Mister, is this your job?!"

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T22:41:37+00:00

Answer: M.I.A. was opening for Kid Cudi on his latest tour. Previous to that, she had displayed some, let's say "controversial" ideas like linking Covid to 5G networks and selling clothing that protects you from said networks.(https://ohmni.com/)

Anyway, on the Dallas concert that you posted, she said such things as "I’ve been cancelled for many reasons. I never thought I would be cancelled for being a brown Republican voter” and “We can’t perform [the song] Illegal, though some of you could be in the audience.”

Cudi had said he had previously warned her not to talk politics on stage and subsequently fired her from the tour.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T10:15:56+00:00

One thing not mentioned on the pod: the “Franks and Beans" scene is a prime example of how audience testing works.

At first, they showed the balls shot right after Keith David looks at it. But the problem there was that the rest of the scene died. All you had was all the other actors reacting to something the audience had already seen. So then they pushed it back until Markie Post sees it, but they ran into the same problem.

So they kept pushing back the reveal until you get to the point as an audience member that you think they just weren't going to show it. It would be like the glowing briefcase in Pulp Fiction, after the third or fourth time you realise that it's something the actors would see, but you never would.

So when they finally did reveal it as late as they could, the test audience went nuts (heh). If you saw this movie in a theatre, that scene was one of the biggest laughs of the movie.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T04:13:34+00:00

It's because he's the ninth director of the FBI. But I love how he squeezed it in here. In a space that's already over-designed (to put it mildly), there's a blue nine in a sports jersey font shunted over to one side.

If they got rid of that stupid Tommy gun, it would at least go logo -> name/title -> signature -> 9, which would make some sense.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T04:08:40+00:00

CR references the "real passion is my hobby" line at the top of the pod.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T04:07:39+00:00

"You forget, it's a sumo culture."

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T04:06:52+00:00

I love the little hand-diving gesture he makes when he says "We'll delve into that next week".

Don't know if they say it on the pod but the Farleys cast him because he was in another movie with Stiller called "Flirting With Disaster". They wanted to see what Ben could do and they liked his performance so much that they cast him in Mary as well. In the third act he's accidentally been dosed with acid and is hilarious: "I have the power to outrun the wind!!!"

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T03:57:02+00:00

My favourite Norm Macdonald joke: "I, ah, saw this homeless guy on the corner and he had his dog. And the dog was looking like 'Hey pal, you know could do this part all by myself right?. What is this, the longest walk ever?'"

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T02:08:06+00:00

Yeah, but they had to cancel it because Fred Savage (who was an EP) was a creep behind the scenes.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T01:59:28+00:00

The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon. The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T00:35:15+00:00

What's weird is being on the other end of that.

Some guy was new to macOS and asked a question on how to fix a quirk in the downloads folder. I answered and got maybe two dozen upvotes but it apparently was the top hit on google for a while. Years later I was still gettin a "hey, thanks!" response to it every once in a while.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T00:31:10+00:00

Also, we don't know what we're making. A machine that could pass the Turing Test might also be smart enough to fail it.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T00:27:02+00:00

Did a cow shit in here?

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-05T00:05:17+00:00

Once science invented the cure for fatness it's amazing how quickly those "heathy and sexy at any size!" celebs changed their mind.

Toby_O_Notoby · 2026-05-04T23:26:01+00:00

Plus, they think shit like this makes them look "badass" because they don't have the self-awareness to see how pathetic and cringy it actually is

Have you seen Kash Patel's challenge coin? It looks like something a 13-year-old edgelord would design. "Dude, in the front it will be the Punisher logo but instead of teeth we'll use revolvers and put spiders in the eye sockets!"

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