Split the Corner Podcast
2 ex bartenders have their favorite bar conversations. Your home for phone down bar discussions on movies, music, sports, history, hypotheticals and whatever else we feel like.
Split the Corner Podcast
Season 2, Episode 6: Facing Your Fears Sounds Terrifying
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On today's episode of the Split the Corner Podcast, Kaz and Kyle are finally, and we do mean FINALLY, bringing our listeners the final 10 films that round out their picks for the 25 greatest sports movies of all time. What comprises the final 10, you ask? Hockey, golf, bobsledding, and...dodgeball? The list is finally done, but before the guys get into all of that, they are discussing National Face Your Fears Day, why that sounds like a terrible idea, and how you would even greet someone on that day because saying "Happy National Face Your Fears Day" just doesn't hit the ears the right way. If you're going to face your fears today, we wish you all the luck in the world. If, like us, you're not going to do that, well...we get it. Cheers!
Welcome to Split the Corner. What can we get you?
SPEAKER_02What's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Split the Corner podcast. My name is Kyle, and across the internet universe from me, as always, is my good friend and co-host, Kaz. Kaz, how you feeling today, bud?
SPEAKER_00I'm feeling great. I'm excited for this. This is it, man. This is the bookend for the episode that we started with, and we have dragged on for far too long, and we get to finally put a nice little bow on it today and move on to the next thing. I I feel like I feel like this is so much of season one energy that like we can't become season two until we we finally put this to rest.
SPEAKER_02And to catch everybody up, if you are an OG split the corner, split the cornite, cornerite split the cornerian. There's gotta be something. Split the corner.
SPEAKER_00He who splits corners. That's singular. They who split corners. I don't know what I'm going down the pronoun trail right now. Corner splitters. Corner corners. Corner splitters. It sounds like a like a part-time job in Iowa. Um but but hey, I I'm I fans of things have been called weirder stuff, I guess.
SPEAKER_02Let us know if we should be referring to people who listen to the show as corner splitters or split the cornarians, or whatever it is you said. Anyway, if you've been listening for the entirety of this podcast, you know that in season one, episode one, we opened everything up with a discussion on the 25 greatest sports movies of all time as perpetrated by the Hollywood Reporter. We thought uh collectively that that list was, and I'm going to use a very technical media savvy term uh to make to make sure that everyone knows that I am legit. Uh, we determined as a podcast that that list was ass and wanted to do it better. So we've spent several episodes going over sports movies, uh, we did basketball, football, and baseball. We collected five from each of those sports, giving us 15 in total. And we decided that we were going to just uh kind of allow the other uh 10 spots to be taken up by hockey, golf, and a couple of miscellaneous movies. So stick around with us till the end and we will reveal the last 10, and then we are going to talk about it for a little bit and we are going to post our top 25 movies, sports movies of all time, in order as we agree upon as a podcast, and then we're gonna move on to the next thing. But if you've been listening to these episodes and you've been sticking with us and you are are intrigued by how we are going to finish this up, we're gonna give you the last 10 at the end of this episode. Post the end of it, post the results of it, and thank you for sticking with us for this long.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're not gonna make you sit through a ranking of our top 25 while we negotiate what comes in 16th and 17th. We'll figure that one out on our own. Thank you for all your help to this part. We can take it from here.
SPEAKER_02Um that being said, is it weird that I thought that 16th and 17th would be the most hotly debated?
SPEAKER_00No, it's probably not. Uh, but you know, that's probably where everybody would lose. I'd probably give everybody too much credit that they would make it to the 16th, probably losing right around the sixth. So uh, you know, we'll we'll take care of that, and then you can either agree or disagree, and we're happy to have the discussions because I do believe while I I if anything we're erring on the fact of being overly thorough, I do believe we put the time in on this. Like, sorry if you came for the journey and you felt like it was too much time. I kind of agree with you. Um, but we did we did the due diligence, man. I really do. There's some hot takes in a couple of these categories. There's some things that we're standing on that I I don't I we might be fighting till the day we die, but I I believe firmly in in the statements that we're making here. I I really do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I agree with you, man. I mean, they wouldn't have made the official list if we hadn't fully agreed on them. So stick around to the end of the episode. We'll give you our final 10 and then keep an eye out on social media for us to post our listings. But I think that it's time that we uh kind of get into something here, Kaz, that I didn't expect us to bring up and something that I'm not super comfortable with. But today is national face your fears day, and I think we need to talk about uh fears. I'd like to wish you a happy face your fears day, and if you have any intent of doing that, like good on you. But my my fears are not things that I can just face right away, and I don't intend on doing it today, so but we can get into that. So, Kaz, uh happy national face your fears day, buddy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I feel like this one is is an awkward happy, like that ha you're really wishing yourself happy national face your fears. I don't know anybody that's happy to face their fears. I unless you're an adrenaline junkie, but I would even argue that those people aren't actually afraid of those things. They're not like if you're one of those people that's like, I love the rush I get from roller coasters, you're not scared of roller coasters. Right. So I'm happy's a weird one here. Okay, well then let's Is there a is there a word for you know like what what about like what about like Krampus night for Christmas? Like you don't wish somebody a happy Krampus night. Is it like a is there a is the is there a term that that bodes more warning and and kind of beware face your fears day as opposed to happy face your fears day?
SPEAKER_02Beware of face your fears day. Oh no, beware, face your fears, your fears kind of like the Ides of March, right? Like that was beware the facing of fears.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, okay. I can dig that. Um face your fears day is coming. You're forced to participate, so beware.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that works a lot better than happy. It it'd be like happy, it'd be like wishing somebody a happy root canal, you know.
SPEAKER_01Hey, happy root canal, happy face your fears.
SPEAKER_00Makes me wonder what other days it would have it would have worked for, you know, like National Iguana Awareness Day, you know. Is it happy iguana awareness or is it beware iguana awareness? You know, like if they're falling out of trees under the roof of your car, it's not a happy day for you.
SPEAKER_02Hey, happy national colonoscopy day. Right, that's a beware kind of day. Yeah, you know, like get yourself checked. Yeah, happy cancer awareness day. Like, I just that doesn't play either. Happy AIDS awareness. You can't do those. Can you wish somebody a happy AIDS awareness day? That seems not right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but beware of AIDS awareness. They seem like two separate days at least.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. You have to celebrate one in March and one in November. Just spread them out.
SPEAKER_00All right, so uh so go back to go back to needles. Are are is that a fear of yours? Let's let's cover some of like the big three, right? Like the fear of needles, fear of I don't know what heights, fear of enclosed spaces.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I'm not a fan of needles. I mean, if I could go today without being stuck with one, I'd consider that a win. But if I have to go to the doctor and get a shot or something like that, that's not a big deal. I mean, it sucks. Um, I have uh alopecia areata, which means that I have a form of alopecia that is stress-induced, and it reveals itself on the top of my head. So I get these like crazy little bald spots on my head. And it started when I was in my early 30s and it's only happened a handful of times. But uh two out of like the four times I've had to go to the dermatologist to kind of get it looked at and see, like, hey, what's the best way to correct this problem or like to get my hair to grow back or whatever? Two of those times they shot uh uh uh steroids directly into my scalp. And it's not just like one per little spot, it's like they jab this thing into the top of your head and inject your hair with your head with steroids to get the hair follicles to stimulate and therefore to grow. So I've gone through this a couple times, it sucks, it burns more than anything. But like if I was afraid of needles, I don't think even if I didn't want big random bat ball patches on my head, I don't think that that was something I would do if I was afraid of them. So, like, not a fan, but you know, stick me and let's move on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, for me, I just can't watch it break the skin. Yeah, I I have to look away for that moment. I know it's happening, I just need to not witness it. It that there's like the moment of puncture. I'm uh it's more of a nausea than anything else, it's just off-putting for me.
SPEAKER_02It's like uh for me watching people get their bones broke in like skateboarding accidents or something like that. I can't watch that stuff. That's not a or like like the pimple popper people, yeah. Gross, dude. That's just gross. It's gross. Um like I can I can do but that's the thing. I can deal with like combat sports. Like I can watch UFC, like if you are facing off of somebody and you're bloodied up that way, okay. But if it's an accident of some kind, no, I mean I if if I'm watching combat sports and somebody like goes for a head kick and breaks their shin in half, like I don't need to see that either. I've I've gone most of my life by avoiding witnessing things like that, but in general, I'm not a big blood and gore guy. Like it's it's I'm not it's not a fear, it's just like you said, it kind of turns my stomach a little.
SPEAKER_00No, and we seem to be obsessed with like I I saw it in the NFL past couple weeks. Anytime somebody goes down with some sort of horrible injury that I don't want to watch, all of a sudden we have to watch this replay 18 times in slow motion from every possible angle. And I'm out. I I can't, I'd I'll change the channel and come back. Like, I'm just they're like, no, watch his ankle in the slow motion from behind. You'll see that the bone is no longer like I no, we don't need to do that. Just he's hurt. They carted him off. We'll tell you about it later.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, his ankles facing the wrong direction. I remember one of those very specifically of seeing some dude having his his he was sitting up with his legs out in front of him, one foot was facing up, the other was facing down. Like, I don't need to see that, dude. And again, not a fear, just like a nauseous thing. So am I afraid of needles? No. I don't like them, but I'm not afraid. You said heights, right? Are you are you a heights guy? Do you like heights?
SPEAKER_00It depends on how stable I am. You know, like if I'm if I'm out on a balcony on the 80th floor, I'm alright. If I'm on a ladder about six and a half feet up and it's got a wobble to it, I'm not okay. Yeah. That that's you know, I've I've lived higher up, I've been, you know, I've hiked some places, I've been some places where you know you're looking out and down, and and there is that that French term, the the call of the void or whatever it is, where like you want to just lean a little further and lean a little further. But I I don't that doesn't bother me so much. Um yeah, in insta, maybe it's just ladders in general. Maybe I just don't like ladders. Um, but anytime I don't feel very comfortable and stable, then I don't like it immediately. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't think that I have the call of the void. I think I have the call of the wall. The call of the other way altogether. If I got a hand on the wall, like I'm probably okay. Um, I'm with you, man. I remember I I think I do have a fear of heights. I remember two instances in particular. I went to the Toronto. I went to Toronto when I was in like a freshman in high school, and we went up into the the needle, the space, the space needles in Seattle. What's that one called? The one in Toronto, the whatever the needle thing in Toronto. And they have it so that there are sections of the floor that are made of glass so you can see down. I would not walk over it. I just wouldn't. And like it kind of made me. I don't want to say I had vertigo, but it just it just was very uncomfortable. And um years before that, I think I can I can pinpoint this. I was at a camp as like a sleepaway camp. And one day we did a high ropes course and it was like you're swinging on things and you're grabbing onto things and you're you're very well attached, and I was having a blast. I'm swinging on things, man. I'm freaking Tarzan of the goddamn church camp. And no problem. And then they're like, okay, we're gonna do this other thing where they had a telephone pole and they had um these little things that you used, your hands and and feet, they were like little plastic things, and your your goal was to climb all the way up and then stand on top of this pole, right? And so I thought, no problem, I got this. I'm hooked up to something, there's no way I can hurt myself. And I scurry up this thing like a squirrel, and I get my feet on top of this telephone pole, and I started to look around and I had a complete and total mental breakdown. I like gripped up on it like a koala, you know, hands and arm and legs just holding on to it. And there's I remember we talked about this at another episode where there were very cute girls at some of these camps that I went to, and there was one in particular that I had a thing for, and I blubber cried right in front of her. And uh that was a very traumatic episode for me. But maybe, maybe that was where my fear of heights. I don't know what it was, dude. I knew I was secure, but I got my feet on top and I lost my mind.
SPEAKER_00See, that would have been the line for me too, though. I'll climb all the way to the top, I'll touch the top, I'll ring the bell. You know, maybe I'll sit up there, but I'm not standing on the top. That's that's a bit, that's a bit much. And I've done I've done a lot of those ropes courses and wall climbs, and you know, I'm very comfortable in a harness. I I feel super safe and all the zip lines and all that stuff. But yeah, there would be a there would be an absolute line of like I'll get to the top and I'll touch it. But I don't need to stand on top of a telephone pole. I don't, I'm good on that.
SPEAKER_02I had one of those like tween early teenage moments where I got down and I was super embarrassed, so I went and sat under a tree and really obnoxious, like teenage pop punk was playing in my ears. I mean, I didn't have headphones, it was just there.
SPEAKER_00Well, could you could you do what about those people that like climb 500 feet up into the air on the on the the towers to like change the light bulb or like fix the the battery on the wind turbine or whatever? You see those videos, those guys get way up there?
SPEAKER_02Can I if I knew how to say it in another language, I would, but hell no. Dude, like that stuff, it makes my legs tingle. Like it's do I'm it's happening to me right now. Like I'm I'm thinking about this. I've seen videos of that stuff, and it makes me just uncomfortable all over. I couldn't do like the thought of that is just terrifying to me. I I you have to be a special kind of person, I think, to be able to complete a task like that. Because it ain't me, brother. It ain't me.
SPEAKER_00That's that's how I feel about like the old tiny like New York climbing on the on the on the metal, putting up the buildings, like all those iron workers and steel workers and all those guys that were like not harnessed and just sitting here on steel beams and doing and climbing up the one side and down the other, like I that is bananas to me.
SPEAKER_02Which is why they thought every generation after them was soft. Yeah, they might have been right. Yeah, I you're not gonna hear an argument from me. That's insanity. But here, let me ask you this why is it that until what 50, 60 years ago, 70 years ago, throughout all of human history, there weren't any safety regulations that would prevent you from falling off of stuff? Somebody had to have that idea. Oh, you know, we've we've had you know 400 deaths from people falling off of skyscrapers trying to build them. What are you guys thinking about you know attaching a robe to them? Ah, you're a sissy.
SPEAKER_00Well, I it was true of the bridges too, right? Like they put they were falling into the into the pits while they were digging out the bridges, and they just leave you down there and fill up the cement and and in you go. Like it I wonder I wonder how much of it was rejected by the workers. I don't mean to turn it into a bit, but like I really can see people being like, I've been doing this for 30 years. You want me to put a rope on? You're telling me I can't stand up here on my own? Like this this is and then all of a sudden they're like, I'm gonna go to the union. Any union's gonna make me wear a rope. I don't wear a rope. Like this is like the hockey players that refuse to put on helmets towards the end. You know, and they're like, I'm grandfathered in, and they're like, grandfathered out a little bit. Like, what why are you fighting this fight? Just put the helmet on.
SPEAKER_02Last guy I remember, I think the last holdout was a Philadelphia flyer by the name of Craig McTavish. Who played uh, I think he was in on the very tail, his tail end was the beginning of like the Legion of Doom with Lindros. Yeah, I remember Renberg, yeah, Craig McTavish.
SPEAKER_00And I remember asking uh probably my dad why you know how come he doesn't have to wear a helmet? Because at the time I was a little kid hockey player and I hated wearing a helmet. So like I didn't need that kind of influence in my life.
SPEAKER_02Why is he not wearing a helmet, Dad?
SPEAKER_00Oh, he's not a pussy. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_02Because he's a man. Meanwhile, his nose is on the left side of his face. Ugh. No, so all out on heights, dude. I like I don't like flying either. Like, I need to be pretty lit up before I get on a on an airplane.
SPEAKER_00I have to pass out. I've I'm I've fully come to terms with it at this point. I'd like to get to the point where I'm not that way anymore. I wasn't that way for my first probably four dozen flights. Um, you know, I used to be able to just kind of put my feet up and read a book. Uh, but I've had a couple rough ones, and they have it is now a kind of a guttural reaction. Like I don't really have any control over it, you know, and that's I tell people all the time, I'm like, that's why it's an irrational fear. Because it's irrational. Because I understand the science. I totally understand. I know how turbulence works, why turbulence works, I know how the plane flies, I understand all of that. Like, I'm I'm not logically afraid of the plane falling out of the sky, but when it shakes, I would like to stop the ride and get off. And that's the only way I can describe it.
SPEAKER_02Drunk Kyle is far less afraid of flying than sober Kyle. So sober Kyle and Drunk Kyle got together and they had a conversation, and they decided that whenever flying is a necessity, that drunk Kyle will take the lead. And hopefully sober Kyle comes back by the time the plane lands. But I can't do it, man. I don't I mean, I can do it, and I have done it, and I probably will do it again, but I'm not I'm not a fan. It's the turbulence, man. It's the taking off, it's the landing I don't like. What if the pilot sneezes? Midland. What if he sneezes?
SPEAKER_00I have this very false belief that like when we get down to a certain level, then I look out and I see the ground and I can start like making out people and whatever, that's when I'm like, oh yeah, we could probably survive from here. It doesn't matter what happens now, we'll we'll probably be fine. We'll probably probably walk away from this one. So I I know that that's again, isn't a rational thing. Like I I understand that the plane could come to a complete stop and then burst into a ball of flames, and we're not walking away from this. But in my head, the moment I can like read the billboard, I'm like, nah, we got this. But no, you do you only you only get one up and one down. That's uh a couple of my flights where like the plane in front of you doesn't clear the runway in time or something to that effect, or and and you've got to like touch down and then immediately bounce back up into the air. No, you don't you don't get another up. You had one up and you used it in the beginning, and you get an up and a down. That's it. We're not doing this again. Um that's why I'm not a big fan of layovers, because I feel like that's it's too many ups and downs in a day.
SPEAKER_02You're taking my you're taking it out of my hands. You're rolling a very lopsided dice right now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, all right. So do you speaking of the irrational ones, what it what would you say is your biggest fear?
SPEAKER_02It stands alone in a category all by itself. I have a very real, very irrational fear of snakes. I don't know what had happened. I never had a bad incident with a snake. I mean, I've never really lived in snake-infested places, but I think I've talked about it a little bit before, but dude, I don't mess with snakes. Period. Full stop. I don't know why, but they freak me out to the point where I can't look at them on TV, I can't look at them in a book. God forbid I see one out in the wild, because that's the best way to get me from point A to point God knows where in the fastest amount of time. But all out on snakes, dude.
SPEAKER_00Completely out. See, I'm I'm sort of jealous of that. Um because it's something quantifiable and palpable and avoidable. Um, you know, you're afraid of snakes. Cool, just don't go around snakes. My my biggest fear is uh is and I hate to take this whole conversation down this turn, but my biggest fear is uh death. Um that's I don't know why. I am terrified, and I uh I love the people that have that like who's it, Captain Hook in in Hook, the the Dustin Hoffman line, where you know death is the next great adventure. Like I I love people that have that mindset of like it's just another path. Um, but I just can't it just terrifies me, and I have no idea why.
SPEAKER_02First of all, Captain Hook didn't say that. Peter Pan said that. To die would be a great adventure. So fact check. Dude, go ahead and pull out your phone right now. You cannot fight me on Hook Trivia. You just can't. To die would be a great adventure. For those keeping score at home, that noise meant I was right. I understand that that that death would be a fear. That makes sense to me. I don't think that I share your being terrified of it. I think it's an inevitability. And I don't think that an inevitability should be necessarily thought of as as a fear because you can't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00But that's part of what's terrifying about it, right?
SPEAKER_02But see, I take a little bit of comfort in that. I can't stop myself from dying. Maybe I maybe I can't choose the way I die, so maybe I'm afraid of different ways to die, but I know I'm gonna die. So there's nothing I can do about it. They haven't gotten the technology yet where you can put my subconscious or my consciousness into a into a robot, which I think would be sweet, but that technology doesn't exist, therefore I can't do anything about it. Let's move on with our lives until we can't, because we're dead.
SPEAKER_00See, but I do feel like I would take that path. I would uh I am I am scared enough of what comes next that I would say, no, put me in a machine and let me hang out here for a little bit longer. Like I I do, I hope that when my time inevitably comes, I am able to, you know, look back on this life and and say I you know lived it and and I'm ready for whatever comes next. And I I hope that I hope that it's not just because I'm exhausted. Like I hope it comes from like a legitimate place of of the new adventure and the next step and kind of the the greater journey. But yeah, I don't look at it that way right now. Right now I am that person that would cling to every ounce of staying on this plane of existence.
SPEAKER_02Well, sure. I mean, you you don't want to don't want to die necessarily. Like I don't think anybody wants to die, you know, in general. That's obviously a very broad brush statement, but you know, most people don't want to die. And it's not about the want, it's about the knowing that it's gonna happen. I think that's I think there's comfort in it, to be honest with you. And I think it it means that you're gonna or me for me personally, that means I'm not gonna dwell on it. I'm not gonna let it be something that I think about on a consistent basis, unless it's like, hey, Kyle, do you want to, you know, go juggle knives or something? Like, I'm not gonna do that because that might kill me. I'm gonna I'm avoiding things that are going to kill me, if possible. But you get in your car every day, that might be it. I got hit in a in a in an accident right outside of my house not long ago. The guy hit the shit out of the front of my car. I was okay, but that could have been it, man. Like another couple inches, that could have been it, but here I still am.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that inevitability and the and the the brush with it and those moments where uh you know we're we're getting older. We're the things start to hurt for no reason, and you get a cramp in your back that feels like a chest pain, and the next thing you know, like I that it's just it it haunts me, man. It really does. Hmm.
SPEAKER_02Well, is it uh oh man, I don't know if I really want to go down this path, but that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00Let's take a quick pivot, and um it it's too metaphysical for for what is supposed to be an episode about sports movies, but I would like to before we walk away from from fear, um what was the movie that really messed you up? Whatever age it was, some of us saw some things too soon, some of us you know, some certain things had certain effects. Like, what was the movie that messed you up? If you were to tie, you know, the the movie that that you were most afraid of, what was the one that did it? Killer clones from outer space. Same. Really? We that whole our whole generation saw that movie way too young. Wow, I was at a fifth grade birthday party where the attraction was supposed to be uh a ninja turtle, like a guy dressed up in a ninja turtle costume, yeah. Um, like with like old guy Reebox on so that we all knew it wasn't a real ninja turtle, which when we were in fifth grade was like a big deal. Uh, so instead we ended up sitting inside watching Killer Clowns from Outer Space.
SPEAKER_02And that I oh that movie, dude. I had a fear of clowns as a kid, like from a very early age. Clowns just freaked me out, and I'm in my 40s now, and I remember a nightmare that I had when I was a kid that involved a clown and my dad leaving me at the circus. I remember it plain as day, even sitting here right now, like it's replaying in my head, but I had a fear of clowns. But I remember it was a Halloween, and all the families on the block kind of got together and hung out after trick-or-treating. And I remember we we kids, I mean, I might not have been in third grade yet, but that movie was on, and I mean that terrified the bejesus out of me.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I've watched it recently, and I I get it, like I get why it terrified us as children. It is more of a comedy if you watch it recently. Um, the only other one that that ever got anywhere near that for me was uh when the ring first came out. That one messed me up a little bit. I do I do remember turning my TV around when I went to sleep that night. Um you hit the wall. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I don't know, when that came out in like 99, 2000, something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we were I was in high school. You were old enough to know better. Yeah. But you know, felt alright, gonna turn TV around. Like I had outsmarted them.
SPEAKER_02Um oh dude, I I was a I was uncomfortable going upstairs at night in my in the house that I grew up in until I was much older than I'm prepared to tell anyone.
SPEAKER_00Well, and these things, that's what they want, right? They want you to keep thinking about the movie afterwards, and and they want it to affect the way that you live your daily life. And and I'm good for a lot of that, a lot of like the psychological horror and and sort of I just and and I've said this in previous episodes, just don't jump out at me for an hour and a half. Yeah, so like I don't I don't have a place for a lot of like the slasher films because it's not fun. Like I just it it it doesn't have to be watching movies doesn't have to be a positive experience, but even the negative experience is a journey that you're gonna go on, right? And jumping out at me for an hour and a half is that's just not a journey. That's just like I I just don't need that.
SPEAKER_02I don't know. Some of those like old like the older slasher flicks, like the older Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street and all those, like I I I've watched them within the last couple of years, 10-15 years, whatever it is, and so my memory's not great on some of them, but they're comedy now. They're they're so over the top that they're kind of funny. Like, I don't know if you ever saw Freddie versus Jason, where Freddie Kruger and Jason Voorhees basically battle each other. Yeah, I laughed my way through that entire thing. I remember seeing in the theater with with somebody and just thinking it was the funniest thing. But then I went and saw um what was it? What was Rob Zombie's movie House of Houses of Thousand Corpses, House of a Thousand Corpses, and that one got me a little bit because there's an element of realism in it, and I think maybe that's a fear that I have is like torture.
SPEAKER_00That movie hostile got me on that one. Yeah, I that was that was I was going down my saw rabbit hole of like those kind of psychological thrillers of like it's not so much a horror movie, the villain is is the choice, and you know, you have all these decisions to make, and I that's I I'm with you on the the you know the kidnapped tourist kind of as a fear. Um it just uh and maybe that's maybe that's the evolution of of horror. I didn't we just have a conversation about Blair Witch and how revolutionary that was with the with the found footage, and then you move into like the paranormal activity movies, and it's kind of more found footage. Um, I'm surprised we don't have one entirely made out of ring doorbell footage at this point. I mean, that's pretty much the only thing they haven't touched. I think you need to stop talking now because I think you just came up with a billion-dollar movie idea.
SPEAKER_02Doesn't Amazon own ring doorbells? Let's just let here look, we're gonna get it out there for any legal purposes. Dibs. Did dibs dibs. Well, you mentioned Saw, dude. Saw Saw really freaked me out. Saw, um, like you said from this, I mean, from the psychological standpoint, like, yes, it was very gory, and there were some things that were very difficult to watch from a from a violence and gore standpoint, but the psychology of that movie is really what messes you up for a couple days after you see it for the first time. And what would I do in that situation? How would I handle this? And like, am I strong enough to handle these different situations? So I think I'm with you that psychological horror is far more um what's the word? Psychological horror is far more uh intimate in terms of fear, whereas the jump scare lasts for a minute and then you're you move on. It's the psychological stuff that you're you're you're left to deal with for quite some time.
SPEAKER_00And because it wouldn't be split the corner if we didn't take the opportunity for a perfect pivot, um some of these sports movies, that's exactly what I go by. I go by kind of that cultural relevance of how long does this stay with you and you know what effect has it had on its sport as a whole? You know, and and and some of the new list, these these ten kind of miscellaneous sports that you know golf gets rolled up into, but but some of these are some of these worked their way into the sport where like if you go through actual athletes that play in the NHL, they'll tell you that their favorite movie is Miracle, like 99 out of 100 times. And some of them just kind of worked their way into the culture where you have a movie like Cool Runnings, which I don't know a whole lot of Bob Sledders. Maybe that's like a super relevant Bob Sled movie to Bob Sledders, but for me it's just it just seems like you meet a hundred people on the street, and you know, 99 of them have a favorite Cool Runnings quote. You know, so that that sort of you know, the the movie has to have some sort of relevance to to what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02The parameters that we set forward at the beginning of this were you know it has to be a good interpretation of the sport and it can't be a documentary, basically. So, like I think with the movies that we chose that we'll go over here in just a minute, but I think the movies that we chose, I think you're right. I think with some of these there was more of a cultural relevance uh standpoint to it. But I think it's also important to remember that with some of these picks, um they're not like real sports, but they did interpret uh sport, sports as a as a as a whole, pretty damn well. And I stand by this list, man. I think that there's some controversy on here, and I think we need to make it clear again that this is a miscellaneous list, but we did not include anything in the fight sport realm or the racing car realm or cheerleading realm or anything to that effect, and we did that on purpose because as we've talked about before, combat sports in general could have their own uh top 25, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, maybe in like season six, I'm kind of exhausted of ranking movies at this point, at least sports movies, maybe right, maybe we can talk about something else, but with no further ado, uh we are going to give the list uh that we've come up with to round out our top 25.
SPEAKER_02And I think maybe we might need to touch on a couple of them quickly, um, because I think some of them, like I said, will be controversial. But in no particular order, the last 10 movies to make out the split the corner top 25 greatest sports movies of all time are Happy Gilmore, Miracle, The Mighty Ducks as a franchise, or are we going with one or two because three sucked? I think we're allowed to say as a franchise. Okay. The Mighty Ducks franchise, one and two only, Caddyshack, Victory, cool runnings, the greatest game ever played, slap shot, dodgeball, and basketball.
SPEAKER_00Thoughts. I'm disappointed that there aren't more soccer movies. Yeah. For for the I don't want to say the greatest sport in the world, the most popular sport in the world, you would think it would have been more of a regular subject for just high-quality films. I mean, there's a lot of documentaries, there's a lot of like biopics, there's a lot of you know, there's like nine movies about Pele, there's like nine movies about Maradona, but as far as like dramatization, this is one of the greatest sports films ever made, there's only victory.
SPEAKER_02Well, that's not entirely true. Um, there is a movie called Offside that we talked about um in the very first episode. But it's uh it's an Iranian movie um about this group of women who are disguising themselves as men that's so they can sneak into a World Cup game or a qualifier or something. Um I've seen it, it's incredible, an incredibly made film, but I think the reason that I personally didn't fight for it to make this list was because there's not a lot of soccer in it. And as we've talked about, ad nauseum go back to the debate we had over draft day. If it doesn't have the sport in it, it doesn't make the movie.
SPEAKER_00Well, right, and what what keeps that from being, you know, a cricket match or a rugby match or uh that they're trying to get into the the one the one that I kind of had dangling sort of on the edge of of this list, um, which I didn't find out until we started doing this research. Uh, I didn't know that Fever Pitch was originally a soccer movie. Really? Which is a super clever play on the title, uh, considering they didn't change the title at all, and they switched it from essentially uh being a Colin Firth vehicle to a Jimmy Fallon Red Sox movie, and they kept it almost exactly the same. Really? Um my hesitance is Fever Pitch didn't make it. No, it didn't. So then why would Soccer Fever Pitch make it? I don't think it would. I don't either. So it it I'm I'm very happy to be done with this list. Um it was it was an undertaking that I think was worth the time because I think there are names on this list that I didn't expect to see.
SPEAKER_02Well, let's let's let's explore that for just a minute. What about basketball? Why did we put basketball on this on this list? Because I am fully on board with basketball being a representative, but why did we do it?
SPEAKER_00So uh basketball comes onto this list for me from two angles. First of all, it's kind of the quintessential satire of sports films. Um, it it goes so much as to, in the very beginning, call out everything that's wrong with modern sports, and it does so in one narrative overture. And but at the same time, in creating a satire of sports movies, it makes almost the perfect sports movie. It gives you almost everything that you want to see in a sports movie, from like the idea that sparks sparks the game to the training and the building and and everything that comes with like you get everything that you get from most of the other movies on this list, uh, but you get it with a made up game. But that's a made up game that almost everyone that Has seen that movie has tried to play it sometimes. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02And if you've never seen basketball, it is a movie based around two guys who have nothing going on in their lives who start a game in their driveway that is a combination of horse and with baseball rules, essentially. And it catches on and becomes a national thing. And there's a league created around it. It's called basketball. And it comes to you from the minds that gave you and us and the world South Park, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker. And I cannot agree with your assessment more. That's exactly what it ticks off all the boxes. Everything that you want in a sports movie, and then some because it's hilariously funny. But it's the satire that gets you. And you sit there and you watch all these other movies, and then you watch baseball and you go, yep, they nailed it. Hit it right on the head.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it's you know, art imitating life, or or life imitating art, or or however the phrase goes, but have you seen that it's coming true? Yep. Have you seen this this roof ball game with the football and the and the and the stove pipe and and it's gotta go around the pipe but between the chimney and the pipe, and then you have to catch it, and they're they're playing like national championships and stuff all over the Midwest, and like the driveway games that are becoming full-on sports, now that we have things like YouTube, are very much a thing. And I think the fact that again basketball is going to turn out to be prophetic, it just it just proves our point even more.
SPEAKER_02I mean, ESPN shows cornhole tournaments and pop dart tournaments and darts. I I you know what? I don't think you need to go any further with this than the fact that at one point in our society everyone was watching people play Texas Hold'em. Yeah, all the time. And those shows are still on, man. They still have you know poker shows and guys like Chris Moneymaker and and Phil, whatever his name is, and the other guy, and then the the dude that wears the sunglasses, and then the guy that wears the hood, and then the girl and the other girl, and then the other guy. Those people are all still on TV playing blackjack, still making money. I mean, I think that's the that was the precursor to all of it, you know. Oh, hey, let's put cards on TV. And I watched it, dude. I watched the World Series of Poker religiously for years, and I suck at at hold'em.
SPEAKER_00I'm also horrible at poker, just I I don't understand why people sign up to play a game and then don't play. Like that's an interesting take. You you fold and you fold and you fold and you fold, and I'm sitting at this table for a half hour and I haven't played yet. So, you know, eventually I'm like, I'm playing this hand, and then I lose, and I'm like, well, should have folded.
SPEAKER_02Uh I won a tournament at a bar once, and it got me a hundred dollar bar uh bar tab that was gone in five minutes. Yeah, right during the tournament. During yeah, just gone.
SPEAKER_00See, that's what I'm saying. All right, so while while we're while we're giving credit to our alternative sports, uh dodgeball. Yeah. I I think dodgeball is uh because I mean we we picked all right, so there's three golf movies there, there's three hockey movies there. Yes, there's only one soccer movie, but really can you blame us? Um like please, please tell me what soccer movies deserve to be on this list over some of these other movies, because I just I would love to have seen them. I'm a huge soccer fan. Please tell me that there's more out there. I've seen goal, I've seen kicking and screaming, I've seen offside, I've seen next goal wins. I've I you know I know that these episodes we try not to turn them into just listing movies, but at some point I feel like when all you put on the list for soccer movies is victory, that you have to kind of raise your hand and say, No, we've watched we watched a lot of movies, like a lot of movies, and that's the only one. Yeah, sorry.
SPEAKER_02The big green ladybugs, the children. Love Bend It Like Beckham. She's the man where the girl is a dude, so she can play soccer with her crush or whatever.
SPEAKER_00But even then, like soccer should be that should be the easiest vein to tap into for me, because that's where most of my fandom lies. So a a real real mediocre soccer movie should still be weighing pretty heavily on my list, and they just don't they don't get there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it's it seems like it's an undersaturated market, but to be fair, how hard are we going out into the world of international film to find soccer movies? I do all right, I'll watch some things in subtitles. I have to imagine that in other countries that have film industries, I have to imagine that soccer movies are like baseball movies here where there's like a ton of them, and maybe fever pitch in India is about cricket. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I don't understand. Well, and we did I there is a glaring oversight in in Shaolin soccer. Um I I just what would we have taken off? Yeah, you know, like I feel like if anything, uh another golf movie, you know, like there's a lot of really good golf movies, not so many with the hockey movies. I think our hockey movies are pretty well represented. Uh Mystery Alaska, maybe Goon, the the one with that movie uh with Sean Williams Scott. Sean Williams Scott. Yeah, that was a weird one. Agreed, but they made a sequel.
SPEAKER_02It never got going. No, I never understood what the conflict was. I don't know. I don't want to go down this rabbit hole because we're sitting here talking about a movie and talking about plot points, and I don't think many people saw that, to be completely honest with you. But anyway, um yeah, I agree. I mean it's underrepresented, but I'm that's why I'm glad that we put two alternative sports movies on here because I think they're good representations. You brought up dodgeball real quickly, but I mean, it's it's the satire of basketball turned down a little bit in some aspects and turned way up in some other aspects. You know, you're it it's maybe absurdist in a lot of ways, but you know, the the concept of of professional dodgeball. I think it was. It's it's an absurdist look at what uh uh people's uh obsession with sports is. And we've talked about what it means to be a fan and what sports means in our individual lives and what it means to society as a whole, but I mean you to take a look at it from a tongue in cheek perspective, I don't think is ever a bad thing. And dodgeball nailed it. I mean, that could have been a really shitty movie, honestly. It could have been terrible, but it was really well done and very funny, and I think that that's it's gonna stand the test of time, and I'm glad that we put it on the list.
SPEAKER_00And I would watch it. I'm admitting a hundred percent that if you put dodgeball on TV one night a week and there was a team from Philly, I would watch it. I feel the same way about basketball. I'd have a jersey, yeah. I'd I'd have a I'd have a jersey, yeah. Well, and and again, cultural relevance because after that movie came out, all of a sudden there's little dodgeball leagues starting up all over the place, and people want to play dodgeball, and they always like dodgeball. And I I miss dodgeball. So it it is the the cultural relevance of some of these things, I I I think is is a huge factor in in what gets picked and what doesn't get picked. Um, and some of these it some of these movies fell victim to you know not necessarily aging well. Right. Um, I I remember liking The Legend of Bagger Vance when it came out, and recently I found it kind of hard to watch. Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_02I'd agree with that sentiment.
SPEAKER_00So and I, you know, I can put bad news bears on there too. You know, like there's there's a couple movies that are, you know, as I've returned to them and and gone, oh let me, you know, let me I liked this movie, let me give it another watch, and then I watch through it and I'm like, hmm, yikes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I like to think of myself as not somebody who takes a look at a lot of things like outside of the the cultural temperature at the time. Not to say that I approve of some of the things or that me as a as a person, I'm like, yeah, that was probably a good thing to say, even at the time. But you're right. Things like like late ladybugs with the the dude dressing up as the girl, or she's the man as the girl dressing up like the dude, and all that stuff. I mean, listen, I got no problem with anybody doing whatever it is they want, but I mean I guess nowadays, looking back on that kind of stuff, you're going, ugh, that was a little much, even for then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because if it was a little much, then it's a lot much now. Yeah. And that's and and some of us being of particular age brackets, uh, don't even have a very good radar for this sort of thing. Like a lot of us don't even realize that we were supposed to be offended uh until someone around us is offended, and then we're like, oh, that's the I was supposed to that one was supposed to get me. All right. I I know now. I'm sorry. There you go. So so some of these movies fall victim to that.
SPEAKER_02Well, you live and you learn, I guess. But we have now completed our list. And just to run back over the 10 miscellaneous that we have to round out our top 25, Happy Gilmore, Miracle, the Mighty Ducks, Caddyshack, Victory, Cool Runnings, the greatest game ever played, dodgeball, slap shot, basketball. If you have stuck with us for the entire list, thank you. We appreciate you. We actually did work really hard on this. I'm glad that it's coming to an end. I'm glad that we can move on from it, but I'm glad that it's I'm glad that we stuck to it, man. I'm really glad that we we took the time to do it and keep an eye out on social media. I can't give you anybody, you or anybody, a time or or date for this to be up, but look for it within the coming weeks. I have to move imagine that from the amount of time that we took to debate some of these movies, that it's not going to be smooth sailing for us to get to a consensus on 25 in a row. So give us some time, but we'll get it out there and uh and we appreciate everybody sticking with it.
SPEAKER_00I do have an interesting shout out at the end of it all.
SPEAKER_02Hit me.
SPEAKER_00With all of the movies that I have watched to put this list together and to make sure that I'm coming into these conversations educated. The worst sports movie that I watched through the entirety of this process was a baseball movie called Ephis. And I think that it's a fascinating thing because Rotten Tomatoes calls it the best baseball movie ever made. And it is easily the worst film of the call it 60 movies I watched putting this list together. This baseball movie is, and I I might have mentioned it in the baseball episode, but it it has it has left such a foul taste that we're gonna do it again. This is a it feels like a like an independent film made by a softball team in New Hampshire about their baseball field closing, and that's it. The the premise is these old guys play baseball at a field and they're gonna tear the field down to put up a middle school, and this is the last game they'll ever play on the field and roll footage, and and they play and they're bad, and it like there's I just man, I sat through this whole movie thinking that there's gonna be something redeemable about it, or like for the love of the game, or something, and it just I just don't get it. So please someone explain this stupid movie to me.
SPEAKER_02Is it a documentary?
SPEAKER_00No, uh it's it's a fictional account of a group of fictional people in New Hampshire playing in a fictional baseball league who don't want a middle school to be built, right? And they're like, Yeah, but that's like 20 minutes away. Their biggest problem is that they have to drive. So, like, if you get a chance, if you are checking us on all of these movies, and and or if we helped you pick something to watch on a random Thursday night because we put something on our list that you've never seen, don't fall for efus. Movie was horrible.
SPEAKER_01I can't get over. I can't get over the fact that it was a choice to say a middle school. It could have been anything, it could have been condos, and everybody would have been like, yeah, condos suck, but it was a middle school.
SPEAKER_00We're not even rallying against a corporate developer, like we're just saying goodbye to the baseball diamond. Stupid seventh graders need a place to learn.
SPEAKER_02Fucking nerds. Next round's on us. Cheers.