Midweek Mention... Twins

Twins

Reegs:  So taking a leaf from the Nazi's guide to screenwriting comes this week. So eugenics experiments, twins, and some of us had never seen this movie before.

Sidey: Yeah, I hadn't seen him before, so I hadn't seen junior and I hadn't seen twins. So we've resolved that issue if nothing else.

Howie: Your education is complete. Move on to level two.

Reegs: this is a high concept movie. Isn't

Howie: which you personally identified.

Sidey: It basically is. Exactly. As you describe it, rigs, it is some sort of twisted experiment into creating the perfect. Human specimen.

Reegs: and they don't go into much more detail than that. It's more that they got six fathers to produce some DNA. So six guys

Sidey: Was it a gangbang,

Reegs: they shook it all up and then they put it in a lady,

Sidey: Heather Graham? It was,

Howie: Yeah, and they do.

Reegs: And So, you know, the movie opens with them talking about this experiment, that doctor's voice the Austrian, the Austrians do have a history that makes this part of the movie, the opening a little bit uncomfortable.

Sidey: It was going to be called the experiment. Wasn't it?

Reegs: Now that was June. Yeah, it wasn't, it, it was going to be called the experiment. Was this one, was it? Anyway, Julius Benedict. Arnold Schwartzenegger is the result of a secret experiment to produce a sort of perfect specimen. He finds out on his birthday that there wasn't just Judaist Benedict, but there was also a twin Vincent Benedict were introduced to Vincent Benedict, who is naked chick magnet, Danny DeVito. and do you remember how in the eighties being a womanizer was really cool,

Howie: yeah. And a ponytail.

Reegs: people and then throwing them away was like a totally socially acceptable trait. And in this,

Howie: in the right circles.

Reegs: yeah. So how we're introduced to him, he's in bed with another woman, another man's wife, he sort of jumped naked out the window and then kind of get stressed and shaves all in

Dan: Jack, the lad.

Howie: Oh, I hate those electric razors. They just, Oh, they're fucking

Sidey: are there any sort of elections over some woman walking down the street? What, while he's doing all this? Yeah.

Reegs: And then he goes back to his girlfriend to get money which she doesn't like. So he growls at her until she sort of goes into submission. Mm.

Howie: it's Stockholm syndrome. She's in love with her kidnapper.

Reegs: I heard that DaVita was almost recast for twins because he and Arnold was so difficult to distinguish in the initial screen tests, but the chemistry convinced the producers to push forward. Anyway.

Howie: all I heard was that DaVita and Schwarzenegger for go for, go for gay or whatever they got. They didn't have their salary for this film.

Reegs: No.

Howie: they took 20% of the takings and thus got their biggest ever amount of money for a film in their career.

Reegs: is Schwartzenegger made more out of this than he did out of Terminator and Terminator too.

Sidey: mail for this.

Dan: was a huge hit. I remember watching it when it came out, you know, we watched it with a family or soon after it, it came out probably when it got into video or whatever,

Howie: blockbuster video rental that is written all over it. This

Dan: And it was just it was just an awesome hit, you know, it was just absolutely. Everybody talks about it. Everybody, you know, senior, we would laugh and AIDS off because it was a littler knowledge.

It was such an odd couple that there would be twins. I'm a twin myself. So it was. You know, an extra little added bit in, in the family for us as well, that two twins could be that different. Rather than everybody thinks, obviously twins, identical. Well, this proved that it was, and I think at one, one stage Danny  sort of says, well, I was the afterbirth or something, doesn't

Reegs: Well, that's why he gets told later.

Dan: he gets told.

Yeah,

Sidey: over that's you is what he's told. It's

Dan: yeah. It was, it was really harsh. Yeah.

Reegs: I said, Vincent is a piece of shit with a board long. But he was

Howie: I haven't heard that phrase. Fuck it. Now. That's brilliant. That's what I needed the board long. Cause it is gross.

Reegs: awful. Yeah, he was, he had a difficult upbringing though. He was placed in an orphanage. He believed his mother. He did Shaq a shack. The nun stole the money for the library fund and ran away. It's just amazing wears shorts nigga was raised on the South Pacific Island. And he was given sort of training and

Dan: Had it, Oh, you know, could speak all the languages has as obviously the Mr. Olympia physique and and also has this absolute innocence and kind of belief in people's.

Reegs: Naive.

Dan: yeah, he's naive it believing in the goodness in

Howie: Yeah, no, but no street smarts, but he's also got, you also knows the first rule in a crisis situation through every fucking given moment, which is to basically use your fucking size 12 Cuban heels and smashed people's faces in and then walk off and shack the bird that you've just saved technical point there.

Reegs: the Arnie goes off in search of his brother, which involves him comically rowing away, and then getting on an airplane and singing yakety yak really badly. and Arnie really leans into that part of it. And what's

Dan: bad.

Reegs: Porn star airlines as well, because the stewardess comes over to tell him to be a bit quiet and sort of shoved her breasts in his

Sidey: and he, he has a good look. A couple of times I clocked days like staring at it. There was a, there was a little montage of three females at this point in the film where they'd all had this sort of low car. They go, you'd like, this is definitely, they're sort of this eighties aesthetic of

Reegs: Yeah. Pretty ladies next he's in Los Angeles. And he's targeted by a

Sidey: can we talk about his outfit

Reegs: The pavement was his enemy, which you signed. He texted me that

and I had already written it down cause I was laughing.

Sidey: he's wearing a pair of like casual shorts, like,

Reegs: Yeah. Suit jacket.

Sidey: yeah, like a polo shirt and a suit jacket. It's the fucking weirdest outfit I've

Howie: That's Bermuda. That's the Bermuda national outfit.

Sidey: I guess. So

Reegs: Oh, I carry him to the hospital. He, there's also a really funny bit where he flexes, he sees a picture of Sylvester Stallone and he starts laughing when he's looking at his muscles, which was probably fairly controversial at the time. He finds the Vincent who's been banged up in jail at this point.

He goes to visit him, obviously, you know, comically misunderstanding, who Vincent is. They have an exchange, something like the moment we sat down, I thought I was looking in a mirror and, and he says to him, they are not identical. Yeah.

Dan: Let's say, I mean, obviously Vincent can't believe that George is his is his brother. But he will take every advantage you can get. So if some guy wants to play it by ear, we to get him out of trouble and then be up with the bad guys that are looking for him. He's quite happy to accept him as his brother.

He's got the S the street smarts. Doesn't it?

Reegs: well, he is while he's paying his bail money and also being terrifically strong and helping him break into cars. Do you remember he

Dan: lifts up to stop the alarm

Reegs: Yeah, this reminds me when we were at school, there was a guy called Phil Hulin and I remember, I think it was Mike rains. Minnie was blocked in, so he just picked up and moved it

Dan: at school.

Reegs: yeah, cause he was just an absolute beast 

Sidey: A series of scenarios effectively where Arnie doesn't have the smarts to, you know, he's a fish out of water. My favorite being when he picks up the Playboy magazine

Reegs: Yeah,

Sidey: the supermarket and he's amazed that there's a magazine with naked checks in it, but he gets rumbled.

Reegs: By Kelly Preston, who I don't believe has ever looked more attractive in any movie ever.

Sidey: John Travolta's bed

sadly, no longer with us.

Reegs: she said that she,

Howie: yeah.

Reegs: what does she do? What'd she die from?

Sidey: breast cancer.

Reegs: Oh, that's very sad. But she is essentially just lusting over Arnie. Like he's a piece of meat,

um, over Arnie. Yeah. I suppose. He is very well put together in this movie.

There's quite a few scenes of

Dan: he's in peak physical condition. Isn't he really? Oh, maybe not peak, but he's certainly Hollywood. You know, is, it was right at the top of his game at

Sidey: he's insane in this film, but there's a couple of shots where he's like just topless, flexing, and it's amazing.

Reegs: Yeah. There's a kind of subplot about a stolen engine that Vince wants to sell, which doesn't contribute much to the overall movie.

Howie: it does for my trivia point.

Reegs: Hmm.

Howie: the guy that the guy whose car it was, they stole who features in this film it's called the, he plays Webster. What previous film to this? Was he in with Arnie. And what character did he play?

Reegs: hang on.

Dan: Red heat.

Sidey: hi, Kelly's he's in New York.

Howie: Nope, regional go.

Plays a major character in what was this? There was a, there was a run of films that led up to this. The Arnie was in

Reegs: Go on. Tell us.

Howie: like total Rico and he plays Quaid open your mind and he opens

Reegs: it was. Yeah, of course it was cool. It

Howie: well, I was trying to picture him. I was going, who is it? And then it clicked. So yeah. So he's the guy with the alien that comes out has guts.

Who's a psychic. So you often you did get that in the night. Didn't hear you got, Oh yeah, he's worked with Arnie before I'll get him into this film or,

Dan: Oh, you still get it now,

Howie: yeah. But it was, it was quite well. Yeah. Yeah. It was quite, it was really evident in those days, but yeah. So that dude there.

Reegs: I quite liked the villain in this Eden, even though, like I said, I thought that subplot was mainly quite forgettable.

Howie: It's mainly about Arnie losing his virginity, the whole film,

Reegs: Yeah,

Dan: Yeah, it was all gearing up to that.

Reegs: yeah. And he does on the floor.

Howie: After she flirts with

Dan: sleep on the floor. See, I need to sleep on the floor and she would get, she was on the beds too lumpy for me as well in it. And she would

climb

Reegs: when the, when the camera pans of her ass. Yeah. When she's on the bed.

Howie: but I liked, I liked the bit before that we've done it DeVito to note is, you know, it's it's,

Dan: is your night, bro, too. Daddy's your name? I remember singing that

Howie: it's so good.

Reegs: And when the camera pans across, after the act has been committed, Arnold's face is hilarious. She's having a cigarette and he's just got this huge grin on his face.

Howie: He's got, he's got like a big glob of GS hanging off his eyes, whereas is that 35 years of pent up aggression?

Dan: Okay.

Reegs: You know, I, this plays out, I think pretty much as your going to expect a movie like this to play out, they do go in. Find they tracked down one of the guys who contributed a part to the sperm cocktail that made them up. And then they track down the mother, although they don't realize it because she pretends not to be the mother.

Then they do track down the scientist who says, yeah, you were all the shit that was left over to DeVito.

Dan: And then, and the vetoes kind of subplot of this engine going missing or, or money and ransom and things is, is also bubbling over as well. Isn't it? The bad guys? Yeah, always it got the end. There was. It goes on. It was a different amount wasn't there like that, that shows that the veto

Reegs: million. They kept a million.

Dan: yeah. V DeVito's like, yeah, 3 million or whatever it was, you know?

Wow. You know, we just gave it back didn't we?

Sidey: you know, when they off the fill-in with the chain.

Reegs: Yeah. The third

Sidey: fuck was that chain actually for

Reegs: killing villains.

Sidey: Cause it

Dan: Yeah, I have. It's a villain killer.

Sidey: comically enormous.

Reegs: was yeah.

Howie: What do you have died?

Dan: Big roller door.

Sidey: yeah. Well the, the initial thing landing on his head would have killed him.

Reegs: Yeah, they. Have some moments where we're shown that, you know, they're sort of telepathically linked as, as twin sometimes can be when DeVito scratches his ass for some point at some point, and Vincent's cat is called Julius. But amazingly, and for the eighties, this is really quite an achievement.

They don't overplay this angle in the movie. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah,

Howie: Tommy here it comes.

Reegs: They are really good. They have a real natural chemistry. They don't try to steal scenes from each other. They're they're playing. You wouldn't have thought they had a chemistry after watching junior, but watching this, you can, you can see it. It works, you know, they're funny. It works together.

Dan: It's just the contrast, isn't it? You know, so a little, a large thing going on there. And then to call them twins is just comic in itself. The rest of it. You've just got to put some words together. Really, you know, the re the rest of it. They're their star quality. Did it.

Reegs: Yeah. Couple of things. There's the first half an hour, 40 minutes of this film is absolute gold. Every joke, lands, no side. Society's cringing already. I think every joke lands. It's funny. It's well written. It sort of gets a bit, you know, outstayed its welcome a little bit, but

Sidey: had you seen this first time round?

Howie: Yup.

Reegs: Yeah. So nostalgia factor is, is high, I

Dan: I watched it probably in the last six months. W with my boy. Who's, you know, a teenager now just nor would have been then for sort of 13, 14 a tough kind of age to introduce in, in these things when they're a bit older than it is not you. And we really enjoyed it. You know, we really just sat there laughing as well.

I, you know, I think it's one of Arnie's. Stronger films. Certainly comedy is his best comedy for me.

Sidey: Okay.

Reegs: I'm curious to see what side he thinks really.

Sidey: Well, few other factoids about it. Oh. And all sorts of nega danger and Hulk Hogan or revealed in interviews that swatch Negron Devita had been given the option of doing this or suburban commando.

Howie: Oh, fuck.

Sidey: if they'd chosen suburban commander, we would have had twins featuring Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd.

I

Reegs: That would have been different.

Sidey: don't think it would have been

Reegs: And what DaVita was gonna play the baby or wherever in suburban commander.

Sidey: Jason Mamoa said in July, 2019, that he'd like to do a remake of this with him and Peter Dinklage.

Howie: somebody make this happen. Somebody make this happen.

Sidey: So that'd be good. I thought this was bollix. I just didn't like

Howie: Oh, you sourpuss.

Sidey: it was better than Jr.

Dan: yeah.

Sidey: But I didn't, I didn't have the nostalgic, so of way of looking at it, I just thought it was fucking cheesy fucking eighties shit. I didn't think that jokes landed. Arnie was occasionally funny when he was singing on the plane.

I thought that was funny.

Reegs: The pavement was his

Sidey: to look at, but overall it was fucking

Reegs: I thought her hair looked like it hurt her. Did he see in the bar scene just before Schwartzenegger pops, his cherry Jeff Beck was a member of the band that was

Dan: Oh, no.

Sidey: was, I didn't notice that at the

Reegs: Hmm.  So you didn't like it? I did like it as it did last week's idea found a few Google reviewers.

So I've got One from either end here, I suppose, much like I, you know, much like yourself and, and, and myself. So Aiden  gave this five stars. He said, Danny DeVito made my PP hard. So it's a good movie. Matthew Caymus didn't quite agree. Gave it one star. His comment was they don't look like twins, which is kind of weird. so it's the full gamut of, of

Dan: Yeah. Yeah.

Sidey: this.

Reegs: Yeah.

Howie: Can't fault

Dan: I look nothing like my twin brother though. It happens

Sidey: is he like six foot muscle

Dan: he's yeah.

Sidey: You got the board long.

Dan: Yeah.

Howie: This sounds amazing side. He's just, just horrible. Horrible man.