Tag: Romance

Transcript – Part 1

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

Hey, Carol, what’s going on? Is everything okay?

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

Your brother dropped by this morning.

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

You drive all this way to tell me that.

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

I think you’re going to let me know that everyone in your family’s a midget.

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

Well, they’re not midgets. Carol, the D,

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

Whatever. It suddenly occurred to me that it’s a genetic thing, right?

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

Yeah, it’s a genetic thing.

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

Okay, so just tell me, if you and I have a kid together, is it going to be a midget?

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

Okay. I don’t see a midget say. Do look,

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

Just answer the goddamn question, Steven.

Steven Bedalia (McConaughey):

It is possible. It’s definitely possible.

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):
Oh, Jesus Christ…

[Opening punk song, “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes]

I’m arguing with strangers on the internet not going out today because I’m feeling too upset arguing with strangers on the internet and I’m winning. And I’m winning!!

Jeff:

Welcome back to another episode of Invalid Culture. It’s good to have you back. As always, I am your host, Jeff Preston, and I’m joined once again, the reemergence of our host Erica Katzman. Erica, how are you doing?

Erika:

I was better before I watched this movie. I won’t lie.

Jeff:

Is that pretty much your feeling every episode that you’re on this podcast?

Erika:

It is, absolutely. But this was a special one. I really felt like it was a testament of my commitment to you as a friend that I watched this film at all, and in fact, a second time just to brush up on details in preparation for the podcast, so know that I care about you.

Jeff:

Yes, our friendship can never be questioned after this three hours of labor that you’ve put into this. Much appreciated. So Erica is back and that is good because we are going to need her to survive this next two episodes of Invalid Culture, but we’re also joined by a very special guest, a very special guest because this podcast wouldn’t be happy. This episode of the podcast would not be happening if it wasn’t for him. We are joined by PSW Ian Carroll. Ian is the one who introduced me to this film, who forced me into buying this film and I thought it was only fair that Ian should come on the pod and be forced to talk about it with me. So welcome to the Pod, Ian.

Ian:

Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me. I just want to say I think it was more like you were racing to buy this movie from the moment that you heard about it as opposed to me forcing you to do it. I think that’s a more accurate description of how,

Jeff:

Yeah, that is actually more fair.

Ian:

This is like 10 years in the making or something. It was a very long time ago that we first watched the trailer for it, and it was just this past year, a few months ago, six months that we actually watched it for the first time. It would’ve been nice to have just gone into it blind, maybe not knowing anything about it beforehand, just like a lot of these types of movies, but that’s not the way it worked out. But yeah, I am sort of fascinated by this movie as opposed to anything else. It’s fascinating. It’s not a good movie. It’s not the worst made movie ever. It’s, it’s just very, very odd

Jeff:

Everything about it. And before we actually do the big reveal, although obviously if you’re listening to this, you probably saw the title of the film in the title of the episode, but I will state that this episode is going to have a lot of stories. There’s going to be stories about how this thing was made, stories about the actual film, and the first story is actually the story of how I access this film because it was a nightmare trying to find this film. I’ve been trying to buy this film for quite a while, and it is wildly priced on the internet. You cannot find North America versions of this disc for anything below 30, $40. I finally found a version on eBay that I could buy that was in our region code. I went through a massive bidding war in order to receive this. The price escalated.

I did win. I had to pay a fortune in shipping, and it took a month and a half for it to ship here. There was about a three week period where this DVD bounced around Chicago for literally a week and a half. It was being moved from one distribution center to the other. I thought, I may never get to watch this movie, and the day that it arrived, I remember showing it to Ian, and then when we opened it and we saw the art on the DVDI gasped, I literally gasped at the DVD art on this thing. Everything about this film is incredible and needs to be spoken about and will haunt you for the rest of your life.

Erika:

Wait, what’s on the DVD art?

Jeff:

It is so hard to explain. It is Gary Oldman on his motorcycle, but the lights on the motorcycle are lined up in a way that it appears as though they’re his breasts

Ian:

And anyway, yeah, we haven’t even said the title of the movie yet.

Jeff:

Yeah. Okay, so let’s dive into it. The movie that we are going to be talking about for the rest of our lives is the one, the only role of a Lifetime tiptoes. Now, for those of you who do not know a brief summary, this is from Amazon Prime, Amazon explains this movie is when his girlfriend gets pregnant, the father to be Steve is forced to reveal his little family secret. All of his relatives are dwarves, an offbeat romantic comedy with an all star cast.

Ian:

Oh boy. It’s a little family secret, right?

Jeff:

Yes. It’s the little things that count. So what the heck is Tiptoes? Erica, if you were to describe this film or if you were to explain the plot of this film, would it be pretty similar to that or would you describe it differently?

Erika:

I mean, I would use some different language perhaps. It’s offbeat, that’s for sure. Yeah, I mean, he does seem to be forced to reveal. It’s not a family secret. He’s the only one who’s keeping a secret.

Ian:

It’s not like his family has murdered somebody and in the backyard or something.

Erika:

No, they’re all out there living their lives. He’s the only one with the problem.

Ian:

He’s the only one with the problem in the whole movie, pretty much. Well, any big problems anyway.

Jeff:

Yeah, I was going to say there are some others.

Ian:

I mean, that’s the main story, but then there’s Rolfe,

Jeff:

Right, which is the biggest part

Ian:

Of the fact, right? He’s not even technically part of that slot synopsis. Right.

Jeff:

So what probably makes this movie the most significant is the amount of star power in this film. There are so many names. This is probably the biggest cast we’ve ever covered in this podcast. Right off the rip, in the lead role of Rolfe, we have Gary Oldman,

Ian:

Rolfe…Bedalia…

Jeff:

And Rolfe is a little person. Gary Oldman is not, and so he plays much of the film on his knees mostly and a lot of shots from the waist up. Gary Oldman is twins with Matthew McConaughey. This is Steven Medallia who is not a little person and not the same age as Gary Oldman.

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

So are you and Steven Blood Brothers?

Rolfe (Oldman):

Yeah, you could say that we’re twins.

Carol Bedalia (Beckinsale):

Wow. God, I can’t believe that.

Jeff:

I know that might be confusing to everyone, but it is a thing. We then have Kate Beck as Steven’s wife Carol now Kate Beck sale. This is like Prime Kate Beck. This is arguably right when her career is about to peak. We’re talking like Underworld, Kate Beckinsale. She is in this film. She agreed to do this film for the SAG minimum payment on one condition, which is that she was allowed to wear her lucky hat during the filming, and that’s going to play a role in this film. I know you are wondering what that means and it’s not what you think. And last, but certainly not least, we have Peter Dinklage. Yes. That Peter Dinklage. In a movie that stars a person that is not a little person. They also cast an amazing actor who is a little person in a side character role, and I imagine if you were to tell me that Matthew McConaughey and Peter Danko are twins, I would actually probably buy that.

Ian:

That’s plausible, right? Yeah.

Erika:

They have got to be closer in age.

Ian:

They’re born in the exact same year. They’re both born in 1969. They’re, in real life, they are months apart, and they’re like, let’s get Gary Oman. Let’s just make him do it.

Jeff:

It was right there, and they chose against it. Do you guys have any thoughts on the casting of this film other than the obvious?

Ian:

Well, there’s also, I don’t think you mentioned Patricia Arquette.

Jeff:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Ian:

Other very famous acts who he plays dink’s love interest. I don’t know. What’s more offensive is Gary Oldman on his knees as Dorf or Peter Dinklage’s French accent. I’m not sure which one. It would be more upsetting to more people

Jeff:

And Patricia Arquette with Cornrows. Dreadlocks?

Ian:

Yep.

Erika:

And eventually Peter Dinklage

Ian:

With cornrows. Yes, later on decide to get them as well. Yeah.

Jeff:

Yeah. I will say they did absolutely foreshadow the coming crystal obsession, Crystal healing and things, in the Arquette character. I’ll give them that.

Ian:

Peter Dinklage is not only French, he is a French Marxist. He is in pain, he has constant pain, and that’s the whole, I think a more interesting movie would’ve just been Dinklage and Arquette on the road, their story, just them. That would be a more interesting story, I think, than

Jeff:

A hundred percent agree.

Ian:

…the tiptoe situation.

Jeff:

Well, okay, so let’s head into our second story about this film, which I think is really important for us to get a sense of what this is, which is the story of how this film got made and the story of how this film subsequently got buried. So the film was written and directed by a man by the name of Matthew Bright. You will notice that the writer of the film is not Matthew Bright. That is because Matthew Bright had his name changed eventually to the name Bill Wiener as the writer of the film. However, because of Guild Rules, he was not able to remove his name from the director slot. Now, Matt Bright was predominantly a writer of indie films before this and was a bit of an up and comer having movies like The Forbidden Zone, Shrunken Heads, and most famously Freeway 1 and 2,

Ian:

Right? Yes. So Freeway was 1996. It was Keifer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon, and it’s sort of a modern retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story. It became sort of a cult favorite on VHS, and I remember watching it back in the nineties. It was sort of very fast paced, very sort of think hacker style editing type of movie. I saw Freeway one. I never saw Freeway two though. Okay, so it was Freeway two subtitle, confessions of a Trick Baby. And so instead of a modern retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood story, freeway two is a modern retelling of the Hansel and Gretel story

Right on the freeway. We’ll just keep going on the freeway. If you’ll just indulge me, it’ll take me 20 seconds. I’m just going to read you a description of the story of the plot line of freeway, two Confessions of a Trick Baby in this modern update of the Hansel and Gretel fairytale, actually more like Gretel and Gretel. 15-year-old Crystal is a bulimic delinquent. That’s the Natasha Leone who makes her living by beating and robbing potential tricks while awaiting a 25 year prison term. Crystal hooks up with a psychotic young lesbian named Cyclona doing time for slaughtering her entire family after escaping, they head for Mexico, where Cyclona Savior Sister Gomez lives in a confectionery, a confectionary full of children. Along the way, they leave a trail of crack rocks, binging and purging and dead people.

Erika:

What are the chances that Patricia Arquette’s character came from that film?

Ian:

She somehow lived in that world.

Erika:

She just walked off that bus onto the freeway, onto the bike, straight out of that world.

Ian:

I like that. It’s the Matt Brightverse.

Jeff:

Oh God,

Ian:

It’s all the same world.

Jeff:

This is actually really good preliminary information because I think it gives us a bit of a puzzle piece in trying to understand how the heck this movie happened, and one of those puzzle pieces is that at the time, so late nineties, Matthew Bright was seen as both an up and comer, but also someone that was willing to push boundaries. His films were seen as being movies that would say things that others weren’t necessarily brave enough to say or to engage with. That was an important part, I think, of how this script eventually was accepted. Now, it should be noted that in interviews, Matt Bright has stated that he originally wrote the script for tiptoes when he was 18 years old. In that original script, he had designed it to be a sex comedy with little people. The idea was it would be a movie about little people and they would all be having sex with each other. That was kind of the original conceit of tiptoes in the mind of 18-year-old Matthew Bright.

Ian:

Now, I wonder, was it still called Tiptoe or Tiny Tiptoes

Jeff:

That I have no idea.

Nor is there any clarity as to why the movie changed from a century like American Pie with little people and turned into this semi political, semi educational, extremely confusing romcom that we eventually got. Now the movie got picked up and got pushed forward, and people started to sign on relatively quickly. Producer Chris Hanley had told Yahoo Movies famously quote, it was really one of the first movies that approached the subject of little people in the story and one of the biggest movies that involved small actors that’s ever been made. Now that is an interesting comment. I mean, I didn’t realize that Tiptoes had come out before The Wizard of Oz, for example.

Erica, would you say any of that statement is accurate?

Erika:

I don’t know because I don’t know. So I was actually just observed in the film that there were so many little people, actors, and so the statement that it’s one of the first movies that involved small actors seems where are all these actors working, if not in other movies,

Jeff:

Right? Yeah, a lot of them were recognizable. There were little people, actors that I’ve seen in other movies

Ian:

Famously, the little woman who is in Total Recall in the Mutant Bar on Mars, she is a character in tiptoes. That’s someone a lot of people might recognize. So to talk about Wizard of Oz now, there was a movie made in 1981 called Under the Rainbow. It stars Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher, and it’s about the production of Wizard of Oz. There were all these horrible Hollywood myths about how the little people who played the munchkins in Wizard of Oz in real life, they all stayed at a hotel together, and there’s all these horror stories about they would have giant parties and orgies and all this stuff, and they were just out of control, which all these bad stereotypes of just little people gone crazy. But I looked up, I was curious how many little people were cast in Wizard of Oz and I was dead. 124 with people were cast in Wizard of Oz and Under the Rainbow claims to have cast 150 little people. So it could be this little known Chevy taste Goofy from the early eighties, I think has the most, or the record for the most little people actually cast in a Hollywood movie. No one’s ever seen it. No one’s heard about it. So that doesn’t really help the case, but I think technically it has the title.

Jeff:

Yeah, I don’t think there were more than 150 little people in this film. I feel like probably under a hundred…

Ian:

The party scene is the only one where there’s a large number of little people altogether.

Jeff:

Another important part of this film is that it had a significant funder and that significant funder, hilariously was a man by the name of John Langley, who maybe you have not heard of, but you’ve probably heard of his show, which is Cops. Yes, the TV show Cops. Do we want to move forward on this?

Ian:

Well, I just wanted to mention that the reason that Matthew Bright knew John Langley is that he was his mother’s boyfriend’s neighbor.

Jeff:

Now, Erica, if your neighbor knocked on your door and said, I got this great idea, it’s going to be a sex comedy. It’s little people. Will you fund it? What would your answer be?

Erika:

My answer would be, let’s get the GoFundMe going.

Jeff:

This thing’s going to be huge. It’s going to win so many Oscars.

Ian:

Well, part of that hypothetical question would’ve had to been, and also dp you produce the show Cops?

Jeff:

Right?

Ian:

If you produce the show cops and someone comes to your door, it might be a little different,

Jeff:

And the answer was yes.

Erika:

In that case, the answer would be, do I have the demographic for you?

Ian:

Right?

Jeff:

Yeah. You know what? I suppose if you look at it from that perspective, from the perspective of someone who’s made all of their money doing essentially like freak shows, criminal freak shows with cops, maybe I understand now why he didn’t even think twice about this.

Ian:

John Langley said, as long as the theme to the movie is “Tiptoes, Tiptoes, whatcha gonna do?”

Jeff:

We got to have a rap scene in this film!

Ian:

We have to have a variation of the song “Bad Boys” or else I’m Not In.

Jeff:

Now Langley plays an important part in this movie. Number one, there was a dispute on set because John Langley’s wife allegedly did not want Kate Beckett sale wearing this silly hat was demanding that she remove her hat. There was apparently a fight over that, but a more significant fight breaks out after the film is completed. It’s at this point where there is a rupture in the film in which Matthew Bright refuses to work with the movie editor that was hired by Langley. Now eventually the edits will go on without Matthew Bright turning the film into a 90 minute rom-com, which Matthew Bright says is not his original intention was not his vision. This fight then boils over in a semi-famous, urban, legendary kind of way in which the film was premiered at Sundance, and it’s here that Matthew Bright would take the stage and go on a bit of a tirade about Langley allegedly verbally attacking Langley, and then allegedly was forcibly removed from the stage by people that work for Sundance. The movie Festival Bright, however, says that this was not true, that he was not removed from the stage forcibly.

Ian:

I’m guessing that story is a bit of both. Maybe somebody sort of pulled him off the stage and he wouldn’t describe that as being forcibly removed. I’m guessing he did it. He seems like this type of person probably who did it. But…

Jeff:

Yeah, and I think that probably contributing to that is the fact that after this film, Matthew Bright, basically this was the end of his career in Hollywood. Matthew Bright, I believe, has said publicly that he feels that he’s been blacklisted, but he hasn’t gone on to do much else after this. This was kind of the beginning of the end, which is funny because for those of you who have not watched the trailer go and watch the trailer, because this was a movie that I think people clearly believed that this was going to win a ton of Oscars, like the most Oscars. Gary is literally described as this being a role of a lifetime. Everyone believed this, it was going to be a hit. It gets shown at Sundance. The director is yelling about it, and the thing can, it’s just it tanks. The movie does not do well at all.

Erika:

Was the director’s cut shown at Sundance or the edited version?

Jeff:

Only the edited version. So this is the other wrinkle. You are not able to access the director’s cut anywhere. However, there is rumor that Matthew Bright has a director’s cut, would like to release it if a fan movement could start, which that’s just never going to happen, just never. But allegedly, he has sent a copy of the director’s cut to the director of the film Drive who apparently really enjoyed it. So the other thing that we should talk about behind this film before we get into reviews is that a lot of people trying to be generous to this film often will refer to the incredible special effects that allowed for this film to present allegedly, and I’m put in a lot of weight on the word allegedly to produce a realistic image of a little person out of the body of Gary Oldman.

Ian:

Oh boy.

Jeff:

I would love to hear both of your opinions on whether or not you thought the special effects, which I will note…this is early 2000s. We’re not talking pre-CGI 2000s. Were the special effects “incredible” in your opinion?

Ian:

Well, I thought they were incredible. Not that they were good, but incredible that everyone in the crew and everyone on the set was like, yep, that’s good. Let’s just stick Gary Oman in a couch and have some little legs popping out from beside his torso. And yeah,

Erika:

I would say if by incredible you mean not believable. Yes, yes. Incredible. Truly

Ian:

Non-credible effect.

Jeff:

So famously, Gary Oldman is not just on his knees, he also is wearing a prosthetic hump. He is apparently wearing prosthetic makeup on his face, and his arms have been tied behind his back to shorten or make the appearance of his arms being shorter than they actually are, which again, when I rewatched the film with that knowledge, his movements made so much worse sense

Erika:

Watching him without that knowledge, his movements made very little sense.

Jeff:

So we have our own opinions of this film, obviously, and we are probably actually kind of aligned with the critical response on this film. So let’s hear what’s a critical response? Well, as you can imagine right now on Rotten Tomatoes, this film holds a 20%, which is 19% higher than I thought it would be.

Ian:

Two

Jeff:

Roger Moore, probably not the one you’re thinking, Roger Moore famously has written, giving it a one out of five, and said quote “still like road accidents and the films of Uwe Boll, it’s worth a glance as evidence of how a whole lot of people, many of them agents whom one suspects must have been fired after this can get anything so terribly wrong.

Ian:

Most fascinating about this movie is that everyone involved had established Hollywood careers and everybody was like, yeah, this is a good idea. Guys,

Jeff:

The sense of GED is that this is a great example of follower syndrome within Hollywood where once they got the first bit of actor, which I don’t know this to be the case, but I wonder if it was Kate Beckinsale given this whole lucky hat situation. My guess is that it’s like Kate Beckinsale was in, and then McConaughey is like, well, if Beckett Sales is in, then I’m in. And then Gary Oldman is like, well, if McConaughey is in, I’m in.

Ian:

See, I’m wondering if Gary Oldman was like, I’ll only be in it if I can play a little person. I think because he is an actor taking, he likes to take chances or whatever. Maybe this information is out there somewhere. But I have a feeling Gary Open was like, I’ll do it as long as I can be a little person and I have a wear a harness and a hump, and I’m on my knees, and they’re like, okay, you’re a big actor, and that would be interesting, I guess. I don’t know.

Jeff:

There definitely is. There’s an Oscar bait vibe throughout this. I’m feeling this is like Gary Oldman was trying to do My Left Foot, what was happening here, I think, or Lieutenant Dan maybe from Forrest Gump, I think going on here where it’s like, oh, we’ll use the movie Magic to make me into this disabled character and I will touch an authentic piece of the human experience and I’ll make people feel things through Rolfe.

So that’s what the film critics say, but of course, film critics are garbage. The real reviews come to us from user generated content on the internet. So I got a couple here that I want to share with you, get your sense on it. This one comes from Google Reviews. This is from LMT (Common Core Diva). They gave it a two out of five, generous, and they said Matthew McConaughey was an absolute jerk in this movie. I kept watching waiting for the funny parts. After all, Amazon Prime build it as joyful never happened by far and away, Gary Old space Man pulled off a great role. My whole beef is that Hollywood picked yet another way to make special needs children out to be beyond a parent’s ability. This is hardly what I would call a comedy a tragedy. Maybe.

Ian:

That’s a weird review. I mean, it sounds like they didn’t like it at all, but still two out of five. Why not? There’s one out of five at that point. I dunno.

Jeff:

Well, for Gary Old Man pulling off a great role…

Ian:

Gary, Old, Man.

Jeff:

Erica, can you help us understand what do you think they mean by Hollywood 50 at another way to make special needs children out to be beyond a parent’s ability?

Erika:

I mean, that was certainly a dominant plot theme here that this, I mean, Matthew McConaughey, I really appreciate how this review just fully conflates Matthew McConaughey with the character. So Matthew McConaughey…this jerk, this ableist jerk. I mean that is his character’s kind of, is that his family being little people? Is this, I mean, he treats it as a shameful secret, but really when he finally puts it into words without the help of a therapist, because he refuses to see one, his true fear is about the pain and suffering that little people experience, which is represented in very minimal ways elsewhere in the film, except in his imagination, his hyper-masculine imagination.

Jeff:

Yeah. Actually, when I first started reading this, I was like, okay, and then by the end I was like, okay, I think common core diva kind of won me over a little bit.

Ian:

McConaughey does treat the whole thing. It’s like a curse basically, even though he sees his whole family having a great time and they go to the wedding and they’re having fine lives, and you would think also if their child was a little person, what better family for that little person to be a part of than the one where it’s like Matthew McConaughey is the only non little person in it. It’s very odd. He be like, oh, okay. I mean, if they a little person, at least they have this giant family and community of little people that I’m a part of and stuff. Was it their cousin is the leader of the Justice League for little people or something like that? Yeah, I think this kid would’ve been okay with all that support around them. But anyway, he’s just a jerk. Matthew McConaughey is a jerk.

Erika:

What a jerk. Absolute jerk.

Jeff:

He does full blown launches cell phone into the night at one point in a fit of rage for similarly, no reason, but

Erika:

Moments before he invites two young women to join him at a party that he wouldn’t have taken his fiance to.

Jeff:

We have another review from IMDB, this one by Fedor8, which I hope is Fedora enthusiast. The title is, Whoever Dreamt Up This Nonsense Needs Our Help. (I agree.) Certainly one of the most idiotic films ever made a PC message movie that ends up making fun of midgets a dialogue. The situation, the acting, especially back in sale, all move constantly, somewhere between ludicrous and bizarre, sometimes unintentionally funny, not funny when it meant to be, and sometimes just appallingly dumb and even disgusting, like the Marxist dwarf wrenching with Arquette. Yuck.

Erika:

Okay. I feel like this reviewer’s actual beef is just that the movie was attempting to be PC because they clearly are not.

Ian:

They’re dropping the M word, just to make that point clear.

Jeff:

Yes. Yeah. The movie very clearly tells us not to use that phrase, and then he very clearly does. Yep.

Ian:

When he said, what did you say? Wrenching.

Jeff:

Wrenching,

Ian:

Is that a term for coitus?

Jeff:

Believe so.

Erika:

It’s a regional thing. Yeah.

Jeff:

It’s an upper Midwest

Ian:

Pittsburgh because of the steel town they’re wrenching.

Jeff:

I don’t want to tell on myself a little bit here, but I’m going to Peter Dinklage was a snack in this movie. I mean, the accent was terrible, but the hair, the handlebar mustache, he was ripped.

Erika:

The painted nails.

Jeff:

The painted nails. Peter Dinklage, I would say was not disgusting or yuck in this film. Maybe a little greasy, but I would say he was bringing it in this film,

Ian:

And again, that would’ve made more sense for him to be Matthew McConaughey’s brother, the two handsome dudes. It just made, anyway, I was thinking, make him either French or a Marxist. Don’t make him a French Marxist. It’s one too many things

Jeff:

And misogynist, they add that later. That is a stone cold misogynist at the end of the film,

Ian:

Too, right? Yeah. That whole relationship goes absolutely nowhere. It’s completely pointless. But I would still rather watch a movie about those two, like a road trip movie about they should do a sequel, like a soft sequel to this movie with Dinklage and Arquette meeting up again, and

Erika:

They could call it Freeway 3. Yeah.

Ian:

Oh, I like it. I mean, Matthew Bright, if you’re listening,

Jeff:

Make this movie. I did not make the movie Cops, but I will fund Freeway 3 with Patricia Arquette and Peter Dinklage. Our last review comes to us from Joe Masca with the title, just a bad movie, giving This a three out of 10. Again, generous. Joe Masca says, tiptoes is dealing with serious themes using a combination of romantic comedy and melodrama tools, life of dwarves, their relationships with big people, human value behind appearance, prejudice, and pride. All of those are serious subjects, but they get no more than a schematic treatment in tiptoes.

Erika:

Was this written for a first year of film school?

Jeff:

Honestly, it’s either that or it’s chatGPT is now put in reviews on the internet by itself.

Ian:

The prejudice and pride thing is very weird because did they just write it like that so it didn’t sound like the novel?

Jeff:

Right. They were like, we better flip that.

Ian:

Nobody will notice if we say prejudice and pride.

Jeff:

Yeah. I love the concept of life, of dwarves relationship with big people.

Ian:

I dunno for sure. I’m guessing that’s not what little people call regular sized people is the big people.

Jeff:

I hope it is. Erica, what did you learn about their relationship with the big people in this film?

Erika:

Big people are the problem.

Jeff:

Well, one is, yeah.

Erika:

I mean, strangely enough. One was, and then one was trying to redeem one, and then she wasn’t anymore. So it’s just a whole complex, big people melodrama that’s really making life difficult for the rest of us.

Jeff:

Big people were the most volatile in this film, by far.

Ian:

Well, there were some volatile little people at the party, in the party scene, I think as Maurice got a little volatile there,

Jeff:

Right? A little bit.

Ian:

A little bit. The French Marxist, if you don’t remember what he was, he was a French Marist. Marist, yeah. Yeah.

Erika:

It’s because he was bringing the big people energy.

Jeff:

Right. Marx was a big person, as we all

Ian:

Know. Well done the big beard person too. He was, I think, big beard.

Jeff:

Yeah. Yeah. So those are the opinions of the internet. I’d like to hear just sort of some general impressions. Erica, what are your thoughts on the film?

Erika:

I mean, it is not terribly enjoyable to watch. I’ve had worse, I would not voluntarily watch it again, but on second watch, I did think that if you can look past all of the ridiculousness, the fact that a woman gets pregnant, has a baby, gets married, leaves her husband and her roots never grow out, although I do now understand why she was wearing that ridiculous hat. If you can look past those things, the special effects and whatnot, I think there are some redeeming narratives below the surface.

Jeff:

Ian,

Ian:

I think it is more of, like I said, an interesting sort of fascinating movie than it is a movie that you’d want to watch ever more than once ever. It’s not like, again, there are bad movies where there’s, there’s boom mics in the sided, or it’s just badly edited or the sound is bad or something like that. There’s that type of bad, this movie’s well made. For the most part, it’s edited. Well, that kind of stuff is done okay, but it’s just fascinating that, like I said, everyone involved from beginning to end. The fact that it got finished is sort of very interesting. I find that sort of thing fascinating. And then it went like what? 2003? 2003. I found out about it in about 10 or 11 years ago, about 2013. That’s about, I think when I showed you the trailer, I’m pretty sure I showed you the trailer right after I saw the trailer. So we found out about it around the same time. Nobody talked about it for 10 years. So somehow they were able to hide this movie with all these huge stars in it. Most fascinating that these giant stars were in it and that Gary Oman was walking around on his knees like Dorf golf. It is worth watching for the oddity of it all. That’s about it, I’d say.

Jeff:

So you brought me to my conspiracy theory when you asked this about how do they keep this under wraps, and my conspiracy theory is that the reason I could never find copies of this thing for reasonable prices is because Gary Oldman is literally buying every DVD and destroying it.

That is my theory, but it should be noted. I will say, for those of you who don’t know, this film was included in a mail out in Britain, so there was a newspaper in Britain that there was one edition of the newspaper. The newspaper had a different movie every week, and one of the movies that was in the package was tiptoes. So it was shelled off to this newspaper at one point as a promotional giveaway, which is kind of counter to my conspiracy theory that they were literally trying to Nintendo, what was that game? Nintendo do this game or Atari?

Ian:

Atari, yeah, the famously bad ET Atari game,

Jeff:

Which they’ve literally buried in a desert. So there were actually a bunch of copies of this movie, which you can find in Britain. They’re everywhere. I think they use them as coasters in Britain, actually, predominantly. So now there is so much more for us to discuss, but that is the end of this episode of this week. We have a lot more, so if you haven’t watched Tiptoes yet, why don’t you take a second, find one of those coasters in Britain, pop it in your DVD player, take a little look, and we will see you back next week where we will get into the analysis of tiptoes. See you on the other side.

[Outro punk song, “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes]

I’m arguing with strangers on the internet. Everyone is wrong, I just haven’t told them yet.

Transcript – Part 2

Voice Over:

A walk down the aisle

Rolfe (Oldman):

Steven, he’s a very lucky guy. I just hope he’s smart enough not to screw it up

Voice Over:

Is just a beginning.

Sally (Powers):

They’ll be rough patches. There’s no doubt about it.

Voice Over:

Canal Pictures and Langley Productions proudly present command performances from Kate Beckinsale, Matthew McConaughey, Patricia Arquette, and in the role of a lifetime, Gary Oldman.

[Music intro, “Arguing With Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes]:

I’m arguing with strangers on the internet not going out today because I’m feeling too upset, argue with strangers on the internet, and I’m winning. I’m winning!!

Jeff:

Welcome back to another week of invalid culture. We are back for part two of tiptoes because one was not enough. As always, I am your host, Jeff, and I am joined again by beloved host. Erika. How are you doing, Erika?

Erika:

Glad to be back.

Jeff:

Oh, that’s good. I’m glad that you’ve accepted the request and we are also joined by special guest Ian. Ian, you survived. How are things?

Ian:

Good. Good. Yeah. I’m also glad to be back. This is fun.

Jeff:

Yeah. Okay, well, without further ado…I’m sorry. Can we please talk about this film? So our movie begins with the introduction of Steven, who is played by Matthew McConaughey. He is a firefighter instructor who is getting into a serious relationship with his bizarrely dressed girlfriend Carol played by Beckinsale. As discussions of starting a family begin, Steven invites Carol into his little family secret. His entire family consists of little people except for him. He actually has a twin brother, Rolfe, who is totally not 11 years older than him and is gainfully employed as a journalist. Steve has been going to annual little people conventions without Carol knowing has hidden his family forever from her. Carol struggles a little bit with the news, but decides to go ahead with the relationship because, well, only Steven seems to have a problem with the fact that his family are little people.

Erika:

May I point out that she is already pregnant when she learns this? This is the reason this seems to be actually the source of the bulk of their relationship tension, is that Steven is deeply unsure about bringing a child into the world, but has not yet revealed to her the reasons for this concern, which is that based on his lived experience with his family, who by all appearances seem to live fabulous lives, he’s deeply concerned that this child will have a horrific life.

Jeff:

Yeah, it actually does come up. In one of their discussions, he’s saying that, oh, they’re going to need all these surgeries, and she asks, did your brother need these surgeries? And he says, thankfully, no. So it actually didn’t even necessarily reflect his own…

Erika:

Family experience, which then I believe the follow-up question is, oh, was he bullied? And he’s like, no, actually he was way cooler than I was in school.

Jeff:

Yeah, he was a stud. He was a stud in school, which of course, it’s a very Oldman.

Ian:

A lot of contradictions there. We have to at least briefly address, we talked about her lucky hat, but Kate Beck in sales wardrobe in this movie, it is a whole other movie by itself. They were very aware that they were in the two thousands and they were a few years in and they’re like, let’s just, even though this is more nineties than two thousands, she looks like she dressed as a different spice girl in every scene she’s in. I think that’s the best way to describe it, is just it’s a lot of hats, a lot of…

Erika:

Oh, we got chokers, we have got millimeters above the butt crack, low-rise pants.

Ian:

The whale tail, I think is involved at one point.

Jeff:

Yeah, there’s bows. Her hair is also different, and the hair budget for this film must have been out of control. Very elaborate hairstyles only on Kate Beckinsale. Matthew McConaughey, Gary Oldman, have the exact same hair for the entire film.

Erika:

Don’t forget…

Ian:

The cornrows.

Jeff:

Yeah. Oh and the cornrows. That also would probably have cost a bit of money unless she just caved that way. It’s possible that Patricia, that was just her hair at the time, possibly

Ian:

Beckinsale gets her special hat and Arquette gets her special cornrows or else they’re out.

Jeff:

That’s the deal.

Ian:

Since she’s an artist, I don’t think we talked to, they live in a big loft in la, downtown la. I’m guessing somehow they make enough money to have live in a giant loft as an artist, a sculpture. I don’t know. Painter’s. A painter. Painter, and a guy who teaches firefighting, which is also a weird thing. Why not just make him a firefighter

Jeff:

And a former Navy man? He was in the military beforehand, apparently.

Ian:

Yeah, obviously there are people who teach firefighting, but why not just make him a firefighter? It seems last week we talked about being French and being a Marxist. Be one, don’t be a firefighter and a teacher, just be a firefighter or just be a teacher. I dunno,

Erika:

They’re allegedly in their prime child making years, which makes him, what, late twenties, maybe early thirties?

Jeff:

Probably even earlier, probably like mid twenties. He was in the military, so five years after. So yeah, he’s probably like mid to late twenties.

Erika:

It’s just that usually people who teach in a profession have had a career in a profession.

Ian:

I wouldn’t want some 25-year-old kid teaching me firefighting. It’s like, I’m your age. Why are you here? Why are you teaching me this?

Jeff:

It’s also really important to note that in the few scenes that we do get of Matthew McConaughey firefighter instruction, he essentially is just the drill sergeant from full metal jacket. Essentially, he is just screaming in their faces. He is fat shaming one of his students.

Ian:

He is a horrible person in every aspect of his life, apparently

Jeff:

He’s a jerk. According to the review,

Ian:

Handsome guys can get away with a lot in life, and he’s a jerk to his students. He’s a jerk to his wife. He’s a jerk to his family. Matthew McConaughey is a jerk.

Jeff:

Just a jerk. Just a jerk. There wasn’t even a script. He actually thought that that was his real life. He was just

Ian:

Be himself. Again, it was another prerequisite Dale hat, our cat cornrows and McConaughey is like, I’m just going to be myself and the character’s going to be like me.

Erika:

I’m tired of acting like such a good guy.

Ian:

All the regular size actors in the movie, these prerequisites that they’re like, I’m not making this movie. Well, except one wanted to be a little person.

Jeff:

Well, then Peter Que was like, can I be interesting? And they’re like, no, you’re French. You’re a Marxist

Ian:

And you drink, was it the cherry morphine? Codeine, right,

Jeff:

Or morphine. It might be morphine. I think it might be morphine,

Ian:

Some painkiller because he did have the surgeries, right? Was that the thing? And

Jeff:

Ulcers, he had ulcers and a hernia, right?

Ian:

Yes. I see. Yeah.

Jeff:

Now, before getting married, Carol, as we’ve said, becomes pregnant and she begins her little person era. She meets Rolfe. Rolfe comes to her house, she meets other little people. She reads books about little people. She learns not to call them midgets, et cetera, after getting married and having a very strange moment in which she opened mouth kisses Steve’s brother Rolfe, after getting married, tensions begin to arise and Steven thinks that a little person’s life can only be composed of pain and suffering. Rolfe meanwhile is struggling with the fact that his girlfriend is sleeping with everyone in Hollywood, and so he decides to move to a cabin in the woods with his little Marxist friend, Maurice and Maurice’s Traveler, hippie Magic Stone wielding life partner, which is of course Patricia Arquette. So this is sort of the middle of the movie, which kind of hangs in a little way. I was not totally sure where this was going after the wedding. I’m like, where is this going?

Ian:

Well, apparently it’s going to the Friday the 13th, part four cabin in the woods, a little side, the same cabin from Friday, 13th part four that Cory Feldman is in that movie. Anyway,

Jeff:

That makes so much sense.

Erika:

I feel like we lost something significant in the edits. What we see is marriage at the altar in the car, husband and wife, post wedding. She says, hang on, I need to do something. She gets out of the car, runs over and kisses her off on the mouth in her wedding dress

Jeff:

And says that she’s an amazing person or something along these lines.

Ian:

So is the implication that she always liked Rolfe instead, and how long is it from when she meets Rolfe to their wedding?

Jeff:

So I can actually fill some of this in because I was paying eagle eyed attention and there actually are some time cues throughout this film. So the way that I understand it, as I understand it, Rolfe enters into the equation right around the point that she’s become pregnant, in which as all women does, she balances her PIs stick on top of her coffee mug away to the results. I’m assuming that’s what everyone does. Okay. So that’s the start of it, which means that we’ve got nine months until baby pops out and they get married before that happens. But she is very pregnant when she gets married. I would put her at probably around the seven month mark, give or take when they eventually get married. When they get married, she’s known Rolfe for about six months. We also know that when Rolfe first enters the equation, Matthew McConaughey is on a week long training out of town.

So Rolfe and Carol have been living together at this apartment for about a week before Matthew McConaughey comes back for the party and have apparently been talking and hanging out, and he took her to meet all of those things according to the way the movie was presented. All of those things happened within about a week’s time from when Matthew McConaughey was away, and then there’s a gap that we don’t know about, and then they get married. They then have the child probably a month or two after the wedding, and then they break up about 11 months after that. Matthew McConaughey says that it’s been under a year that they’ve been going through this and he thinks that it’s better for him to leave.

Erika:

I’d say you’re on, except that baby was not 11 months old.

Jeff:

No, not at all.

Ian:

So she did fall in love with Rolfe though, is that, or was it just the time after the wedding that she fell for Rolfe at the cabin? Yeah,

Jeff:

So this is where I think we have this divergence in the script because I’m thinking that the idea originally was that Beck and Sale and Rolfe were sort of building this relationship together while Matthew McConaughey was off doing this firefighting trainings and such, and that this all culminated the wedding had to go ahead anyways, but she had started to develop feelings for him, but that is not presented in the film at all.

Ian:

It was jarring. It was very jarring how quickly I remember watching it and saying, oh, wait, so they’re together now at the end. I mean, apart from the mouth kiss and him being nice to her, there wasn’t any sort of relationship developed there at all. So yeah, it must be the edit.

Erika:

I mean, they are twins, so essentially they’re the same person. He’s just a little person. So it is almost like one walked out and the other walked in and boom.

Ian:

It might’ve been like she didn’t even realize that it was Rolfe and not her husband. Right, right. Wait, so there’s playing a trick. There’s playing a trick on her.

Erika:

He does have all the sensitivity, calm, attune that his brother lacks.

Ian:

Yeah, I mean they’re alike in every way really looks and demeanor.

Jeff:

And I think there’s this other side story of Rolfe and Sally who is his high school sweetheart. There’s sort of an on again off again, they fight a lot. Weirdly topical. Her boyfriend was from the Gaza Strip, and there is a weird sort of Gaza sub-story in this movie, which Okay, interesting. And

Ian:

Were they trying to, that’s so bizarre. They’re trying to make these weird political statements with the Jewish family and the guy from the strip. Just again, too many things, too many things. That’s a theme here. They’re trying to do too many things with every character with the plot.

Jeff:

So I, what’s happened, I think the idea here was that they were trying to set up that there were these two troubled relationships, that there’s McConaughey and Beckett sale and their relationship is strained because of a disagreement about having the child. And then Rolfe and Sally have this strange relationship because Sally is immature and is a sex addict.

Erika:

Maybe promiscuous. Promiscuous is the word you’re looking for.

Jeff:

Seems to not be able to say no in a lot of ways.

Erika:

I don’t know. I think she’s just hot and getting a lot of offers.

Jeff:

Fair enough. Completely fair enough. So I think that was the idea was both of them are strained, and I wonder if there were scenes where Rolfe and Carol were sort of talking about these problems and that maybe that’s sort of where the relationship starts to form. But all of this is fully imagined because they don’t show us it ever.

Ian:

They show more of the Maurice, or sorry, the Dinklage and Arquette relationship that goes nowhere than they do the one that they should have been showing us, which was the Rolfe and Beck. I’m mixing up the actor’s names, the character’s names, but yes,

Jeff:

So many. And again, this movie is 90 minutes, 99 0. I assume the director’s cut is four hours. So the middle of the movie also features, I think one of my favorite scenes, and this is where I’m going to contest something that Ian said last week about this beautiful web made technically filmed because the middle of this movie features an incredible scene that makes absolutely no sense in which Beck and Sale has a cell phone conversation with McConaughey and McConaughey is shot completely normally, and Beck and Sale is shot with a closeup of her mouth, and she is very breathily talking from Matthew McConaughey about nothing sexual.

Erika:

If there is a need to set the stage, it is a scene perhaps actually taken directly out of Red Shoe Diaries.

Ian:

I was literally going to say Red Shoe diary. Steve is somehow stuck in an episode of that and he’s in tiptoes and she got for a moment transported to early nineties cable erotica moments.

Erika:

But the conversation is not remotely sexy

Jeff:

And Matthew McConaughey is talking completely normally, and Kate Beck and Sale is breathy, very breathy.

Ian:

It would’ve been something if maybe they had made McConaughey somewhat the same way or shot him in the same way, but they didn’t. Not at all completely different. So yeah, maybe that was editing as well, maybe or in the edit something was lost there maybe.

Erika:

But this was the turning point in my rewatch because as I was watching that, I was watching her lips because I was like, there’s no way that she’s saying the audio that we are hearing right now. There’s no way. It is completely illogical what she’s talking about and the sexiness of this scene. So yeah, from there on out, I was watching Eagle eyed, what has been changed, what have been modified, because this is just so clearly a reach on the edit,

Jeff:

And I’ll note that there’s a moment where they pan up to her eyes and then backed out to her mouth again. And her eyes, the facial expression that she’s making is one of concern. She is concerned, which matches the nature of the phone call. In some ways

Erika:

They were probably fretting about having a baby because that was most of what they talked about. I can’t remember. I don’t know if it was in that phone call or I think it must’ve been in that is either in that phone call or just after the phone call that he reminded her it’s not too late to adopt.

Jeff:

Yes. Oh yeah. He was pressing adoption throughout this film throughout

Erika:

Already pregnant

Jeff:

And Beckinsale does make it very clear she’s not some sort of anti-abortion person that was also a broad, she was open to the concept. She just wanted the baby,

Ian:

Which I think is reasonable.

Jeff:

Fair enough, fair enough. So ultimately, obviously as you can imagine, Steven Relent and the Baby is born apparently little at a hospital that is apparently staffed only by little people. This will eventually lead to Steven and Carol breaking up because gosh darn it, Steven just can’t stand to see another little person, and he figures that it is best for the baby to be fatherless. Carol will eventually move into the cabin in the woods with Rolfe and after I think a breakup scene between Steven and Carol, which is all about how they love each other, but also Steven is leaving and tells Rolfe to take care of his son. The movie ultimately culminates with Carol and Rolfe kissing because apparently they are now in love and the credits roll.

Ian:

Very jarring ending. I remember watching it and just thinking as soon as they start kissing and then the credits that that’s it. It’s the beginning and end of the relationship for the audience. Right.

Erika:

Second watch still fully jarring.

Ian:

Knowing it was coming. Oh boy.

Jeff:

Frustrating and abrupt. Okay, so that’s our film. That’s the nature of the film. But I think that we need to talk a little bit here about this edit situation because I have some theories. I think you guys have some theories. So I want to turn first to Erika. Erika, this movie is a mess. Is this movie a mess because of edits or was it always going to be a mess?

Erika:

Alright. I mean, I think it was going to be a sexy mess and it became something entirely other. I’m always here for the generous take. I’ve just got to believe that this was a good movie, that this was, I mean, I believe Peter Dinklage is quoted as saying it was beautiful. I believe he also said it was not problematic that Gary Oldman played a little person. So credibility questioned, but I don’t know. The portrayal of this community of little people just living great lives that is in the background of this strange problematic narrative makes me think that there was something good here and that got written out for Hollywood.

Jeff:

Yeah, I mean there is some compelling evidence that stuff was dropped here. There was, for instance, the fight that, the thing that does it for me is the fight with Peter Dinklage at the party because they start to get into a political conversation about how little people are represented and how the political wing of this little people organization is or is not actually supporting little people.

Ian:

Don’t forget the name of that organization is the Justice League of Little People in the movie. That’s what it’s called, which is odd.

Erika:

So I looked it up and it does not exist, but if you look it up, there is some real political baggage there. I’ll leave it at that.

Jeff:

Yes. Yeah, exactly. There’s that piece of it. It feels to me like there was a subplot here around opioids and people becoming addicted to painkillers because of medical management of DM as a child, but also was never fully dug into or explored in any way meaningfully.

Erika:

I mean, I think that something that didn’t get cut out even that is quite redeeming of the film is there’s a toxic masculinity commentary, right? Because McConaughey is so toxic. His character, what did they call him? A jerk. But he is, he’s just horrible and his twin brother is all that. He’s not. He’s the masculinity without the toxic. And there’s something that, I mean, not to say that that is redeeming, actually, now that I think it out, it’s kind of this impaired masculinity situation, right?

Jeff:

Yeah. The good guy wins, so to speak at the end of the film.

Ian:

I guess the good guy wins…ish. I guess they’re together.

Jeff:

Yeah. So my theory on the part of the edit thing theory is I think that they have flipped the final scenes of the movie. So I think that in the original script, I think that the Kiss actually happens earlier because you will notice that when the weird breakup scene happens, a Matthew McConaughey says to Rolfe, Rolfe take care of my son. Which is a weird thing to say to your twin brother as you’re walking away. And number two, Ralph actually takes Carol’s hand. They’re holding hands as McConaughey walks away after he says, take care of my son. I think that was intended to be the end of the film, that the film was supposed to end a century with this like, oh, it’s all wrapped up. McConaughey is out of the picture, Rolfe is in the picture, everything’s good. And I think for whatever reason, they were like, okay, no, no, no.

We’re going to strip all of the relationship building with Rolfe and Beck and Sale and we will just gesture with the kiss at the end that they’re now starting a relationship for another movie. The devil’s advocate, I think, to this question of was this movie ruined in the edit? And I was thinking a lot about this as I re-watched it is what could have been added to this film to make it better? And I don’t know, with what was provided to us as an audience, I can’t imagine if you added another hour to that film that you could actually save this thing. There are moments in this film that feel like afterschool special. Some of the scenes when they are laying in bed and just idea dumping, they’re just information dumping things about little people feels so afterschool special. So edutainment of a lot of this thing feels very entertainment, and I feel like if we had more film, it would’ve just been more of that.

Ian:

Are you talking about the guy who made confessions of a trick baby?

Jeff:

Maybe. Perhaps Matt Bright was part of the problem.

Ian:

I feel like if this movie had been made in a different alternate universe and had been made today, it could have been a good movie. It would probably be written by little people at the very least, maybe written in directed. It would just be more a real movie. This is not a real movie in a lot of ways because was not made by the people that it’s portraying really.

Erika:

That’s a huge question I have of this film is why, what was the inspiration? Where did this guy who I guess I’m assuming is not a little person,

Ian:

Matthew? No.

Erika:

Matthew Bright. Where did he get the idea to make a film about little people?

Jeff:

Well, as we understand it, his own story, his claim is that he wrote it as an 18-year-old and it was intended to be a sex comedy where it was funny to watch little people have sex.

Erika:

Do you know the one scene in the movie that actually captures that vibe is when the parents meet the dinner, when both sets of parents come together

Jeff:

And they very clearly the trying to drive this, what’s that movie? Who’s coming to dinner? Guess who’s coming to dinner? What was that famous? Yeah, guess who’s coming to dinner? What’s City? Yeah, that’s clearly what they were aping in that scene, and then they subverted our expectation and they were like, no, no, the parents are actually not upset about the little person thing. They’re nervous about the Jewish thing.

Ian:

Great.

Erika:

Aren’t we all.

Jeff:

Aren’t we all…

Ian:

I was going to say, so Matthew Bright, we talked about, so Forbidden Zone, let’s talking about the origins of this movie. So he was in the band Oingo Boingo with Danny Elfman, who famously, yeah, he wrote all the themes for all the Tim Bird movies, Batman, and he did Men in Black and stuff like that. And they did a movie in 1980 or 1979 called Forbidden Zone, and it’s just a very, very weird musical. So Matthew Bright is a bit of a weirdo, so I think he had this idea, this weird idea for a weird movie, little people and their sexual hijinks or whatever. He said it when he was 18, so he is just this 18-year-old weirdo punk in LA something, the underground music scene wanted to make a movie about little people, and I don’t know exactly the timeline. I don’t know how old he was when he made tiptoes, but over the years it clearly evolved into something else. Maybe he talked to people about it. I’d like to know if you talked to actual little people about it and they maybe gave their input about what kind of movie they’d like to see, and I’m sure this was supposed to be a very, very different movie when the genesis of it came to him. I would like to see how it went from weird little person’s sex comedy to what it became. I would like to see the evolution of that thought process, but

Jeff:

Yeah, maybe that’s the movie. Maybe that’s actually the movie is like, how did Matt Bright get from that point? At this point, a very fascinating journey. As listeners of the show know we have a rigorous, perfectly scientific tested way that we rate all of our films, our scale, the invalid culture scale, which as you know, we play a little bit like golf. The lower the score, the better the film. So let’s take a little look. Let’s see, final thoughts here on how we feel about tiptoes and the carnage that this movie has left behind. So let’s get started. On a scale of one to five, with five being the least accurate, how accurately does this film portray disability?

Ian:

I wouldn’t know exactly. I might not have a great insight into this. I’m guessing some of it is accurate because they show all these little people we’ve talked about living great lives, they have some of the best lives of any characters in the movie. I’m going to say three. I can’t say for sure either way, but I’m going to say three on that one.

Erika:

You know what, I was going to go two, but you swayed me. I’m going to go three. I think most of the actual portrayal a little people was good, and I think that the negative view from the non-disabled character was the problem. So yeah, I’ll join you on three.

Jeff:

So I was actually a little bit more generous than you guys. I actually gave this a two. I kind of felt like they actually did a pretty good job of showing a diverse world that the little people were living in. They showed lots of different little people, they had different interests, they had things outside of their disabilities. They also gave us lots of information, and as Erika says, the villain of the movie was the big person that was really the problem that needed to be overcome. So I don’t think this was horrible and I feel terrible saying that. On a scale of one to five, with five being the hardest, how hard was it to get through this film?

Ian:

Okay, so I’m going to give this a four. It was hard just because it is an awkward watch. I’m guessing it would be, I mean, depending on who you’re watching it with, again, it’s not a good movie. I said it was technically sound. There was the one red two diary scene that was technically not great, but apart from that, not a bad movie to get through. It’s just awkward. Again, it always comes back to Gary Oldman’s character. It’s just so silly and it’s just so distracting the whole thing. So it is just like, oh my God, and they’re replacing him with actual little people and they’re going and the legs and the chair and the, I’m going to give that a four. It was hard to get through just because the Gary Oldman character is so distracting and weird.

Erika:

It’s a two for me was honestly, I was dreading the rewatch and then I was actually, I was pretty captivated. So yeah, surprisingly I wouldn’t watch it again, but I wouldn’t say it was hard to watch.

Jeff:

So I gave this one a four and I originally going into this, assumed I was going to give it a five, but Erika on the rewatch, I distinctly remember dreading when I turned it on. I was like, oh geez, here we go. Watching my clock. I literally googled if there was a way to speed to watch faster on Plex, if you could watch it at double speed so I could watch it in 45 minutes instead of 90 minutes, and they just would talk fast, which spoil, alert, alert. I couldn’t figure out how to do that. And before I knew it, I was 60 minutes in and I continued watching it. The rest in one sitting, I was like, wow, this actually wasn’t as hard as I thought. So I said four, I’m actually going to revise it down to a three. I’ve convinced myself this wasn’t the hardest thing to watch, and I think the oddity of it also kind of helps get you through it. It is just so perverse in so many ways that there is, it’s like a car crash you don’t want to watch, but you kind of have to. On a scale of one to five, with five being the maximum, I don’t even know that I have to ask you this. How often did you laugh at things that were not supposed to be funny?

Ian:

Well, I think we’re all going to have the same answer here. That’s a five. That is a five for me. Again, Gary Oldman, the French accents, the kids in the park, throwing the Frisbee with the adults, making out this movie is full of moments of unintentional humor, and for that I maybe should revise how hard was to get through it because that does make it a lot of more fun to watch, watch. But yeah, this is a five,

Erika:

It’s only a four for me, and that’s just because I’m not sure that I ever actually left. It was just WTF factor where I was like, oh my, oh God. Oh, it was, it wasn’t not humor for me per se. It was the laugh where you kind of put your face in your hand and you’re just like, oh, it was more like that.

Ian:

Fair.

Jeff:

Yeah. So I gave this a five as well. I originally gave it a four for the similar reason to Erika that there wasn’t a lot of belly laughs by any means, but I gave them a bonus mark because the things that were supposed to be funny were so not funny that I felt that that needed to be honored in some way. So the absolute abysmal attempt at humor I think gave them an extra bonus, a bonus mark. So I bumped it to a five last, but certainly not least, on a scale of one to five, with five being the most, how many little steps did this film put back the disabled population?

Ian:

How many tiny tiptoe steps? I’m going to say one on this. I don’t think it brought disabled people back at all. The people who are the problem in this movie are the quote big people who made it for one thing, Gary Oldman and essentially black based, all the horrible characters. Matthew McConaughey is a horrible person. Kate Beck and sale, not great, not great, sort of a boring person. The disabled people are the most interesting. It’s not offensive to them in the movie. They do say the M word a few, maybe one too many times, but I think in the end, this film does not bring disabled people back at all. So I’m going to say one on that.

Erika:

My gut said four and I’m just going to run with it. Honestly, I totally agree with what you’re saying. I agree there is some good representation. Honestly, I looked up the criteria of the fries test. I was like, does this film pass the fries test? And I do believe it does, but I don’t think there was any consideration for acting disabled in the fries test, and that’s a massive fail. And so all that star power, and although congratulations to Gary Alman for his efforts successfully bury the film, we still have the stars of the show. The dominant narrative is one of a negative view on disability.

Jeff:

So noted moderate. Jeff Preston comes right in the middle. I give it a 2.5 because I think that one

Ian:

Wait, we can have gradients on it?

Jeff:

It doesn’t actually end up mattering in the end, but I do it to be cheeky. So I gave it a 2.5 because I think one leg was being dragged backwards by Gary Oldman on his knees and the repeated assurances about how much pain and suffering little people experience. I think the audience was definitely intended to kind of sympathize with what’s, say Matthew Broderick, not Matthew Broder. It would never be in this film. I think that the audience was intended to sympathize with Matthew McConaughey a little bit. We were supposed to be a little bit be like, yeah, maybe she should ab report the child. Maybe she shouldn’t have a little person child. I think that that was sort of there, even though at the end we were supposed to be brought forward to it. But yeah, I don’t know that this did a very good job of necessarily arguing on behalf of little people, and so I’m going to give it a 2.5.

Ian:

Lots of differing views on that question. That’s good.

Jeff:

Okay. We have tabulated our scores. Drum roll please, with a score of 38.5, which we will round up to a 39 tiptoes is a crime, may have been committed.

Erika:

I think that is really on brand with the film.

Ian:

Yeah. Again, it always comes back to Gary Oldman. It would be a different experience without him, his character, or without him doing that character. Anyway. That’s the crime. I think actually legally, he committed at least three crimes by doing what he did in this movie.

Jeff:

Yeah, I mean, you always know it’s a good and valid culture movie. If it feels like a human right is being violated,

Ian:

If anything movie has done it, then it’s this one.

Jeff:

Well, that pretty much wraps up our interrogation of Tiptoes. I would say that you should take your own view and take your own opinion, but I can’t in good conscience make that recommendation. But thank you for joining us for another fun episode of Invaled Culture. We will be back next month with a very interesting movie with a very interesting special guest. So we will see you in March. Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

 

[Musical interlude by Mvll Crimes]

 

Jeff:

And thus concludes another episode of Invalid Culture. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed it or not. Do you have a film you would like for us to cover on the pod, or even better? Do you want to be a victim on invalid culture? Head over to our website, invalid culture.com and submit. We would love to hear from you. That’s it for this episode. Catch your next month then. Until then, stay invalid.

[Outro song “Arguing with Strangers on the Internet” by Mvll Crimes]:

Everyone is wrong, I just haven’t told them yet.