Get Ready to Movie!
May 6, 2025

Harriet the Spy (1996): Nickelodeon Nostalgia

Harriet the Spy (1996): Nickelodeon Nostalgia
Harriet the Spy (1996): Nickelodeon Nostalgia
Do You Even Movie?
Harriet the Spy (1996): Nickelodeon Nostalgia

Henrique and David honor Michelle Trachtenberg with Harriet the Spy (1996), Nickelodeon’s first theatrical feature and a thoughtful adaptation of Louise Fitzhugh’s novel. Directed by Bronwen Hughes, the film follows 11-year-old aspiring writer Harriet M. Welsch as she studies New York through a spy route and records unsparing observations in her notebook. Trachtenberg’s curious, impulsive Harriet is joined by Rosie O’Donnell as mentor Ole Golly, Gregory Smith as Sport and Vanessa Lee Chester as Janie.
The hosts explore why Harriet’s confidence collapses after classmates seize the private notebook and read its cruelest entries aloud. Sport and Janie feel betrayed, while controlling classmate Marion turns the fallout into a Spy Catcher Club. Harriet retaliates by cutting a classmate’s hair, sabotaging Janie’s experiment and targeting Sport and Marion where they are most vulnerable. The movie refuses to make an adult the villain: its conflict comes from children learning that honest observation does not excuse deliberate harm.
Ole Golly’s departure, Harriet’s loneliness and her parents’ imperfect attempts to help give the story unusual emotional weight for a family film. A returned Ole Golly teaches Harriet that individuality unsettles people, apologies matter and good friends are worth fighting for. Harriet then uses the class newspaper to look more closely at the neighbors she once reduced to punchlines, discovers context behind their lives and rebuilds trust with Sport and Janie through empathy rather than revenge.
Production and nostalgia talk covers Nickelodeon’s enormous marketing push, the orange VHS, the Hey Arnold! pilot shown with some theatrical screenings and Toronto and Florida locations used to create Harriet’s largely timeless city world. Trachtenberg chose Harriet over Matilda, began principal photography on her tenth birthday and later heard from viewers inspired to become writers. Hughes’s playful movement, music and visual design helped a young cast handle scenes that remain funny without flattening their pain.
The conversation keeps its personal texture through a pot-roast debate, Henrique’s memory of Nickelodeon visiting his elementary school and brief recorded reactions to The Accountant 2 and Until Dawn. Most importantly, the hosts trace Trachtenberg’s career full circle through her role as Dr. Wagner in the animated Harriet the Spy series, her final television appearance. Both give the film an emphatic buy-it verdict, arguing that its lessons about identity, accountability and kindness may resonate even more with adults.
Links

0:00 Paramount Pictures presents Harriot, Harriet, Curious Spine, Rosie O'Donnell, and introducing Michelle Trachtenberg in the first Motion Picture Problem Nickelodeona. This summer, See the World through the Eyes of the Spine, I. Gotcha, Harry It the Spy Grated PG. Come celebrate Nickelodeon's first movie this July at theaters everywhere in a world where podcasts reigned. Supreme Two Friends Dare to Ask?

0:42 Do You Even? Movie hosted by filmmaker Enrique Kuto and movie of ficionado David de Noyer. Spoiler alert. So my finger, this finger right here, you see it's the right one, Yeah, is finally almost normal after three and a half months, almost four months. Well, I I cut it real deep with my cooking, not my knife. It was the cleaver and it I mean like it literally looks like a surgical scar.

1:39 I'm not just flipping when that happened. Hot. Yeah, And it's extra funny because like I cut my finger and immediately knew what I did. So I did what I was taught when I was a kid, which is you go straight to the sink and you run it underwater to make sure that everything's still attached, and if it isn't. You go to the hospital. At the hospital, yeah, so. Everything everything was attached, but it was a pretty bad one. So I had my finger in a towel and I held my hand on top of my head and finished, well, no, no, have you ever made pot rost? Well, my point is, if you want to make a great pot rost, not a not a good pot roast, because it's not hard to make a good pot rost. It's very hard to make a great pot roust. You have to sear it really well on every side. So I seared the pot roast with a hand on the top of my head, and it's just like cause you can't you can't stop mid seer, and I was halfway seared already, makes sense, So so I sat. I stood there, hand on top of my head, searing and going ah ah ah because it really hurt.

2:51 That's usually what happens when you cut yourself. And then once the searing was done, I shut the heat off and then I went and I couldn't find super glue anywhere in the house, so I just bandaged as tight as I could and it stopped bleeding after about an hour, So that's fine. That's good. Yeah. This is why it's important and why I think every education system should include at least two classes of professional wrestling school, because if I had not went to professional wrestling school, I don't know that I could have stopped the bleeding as quickly as I did. That's fair, but it dug in so deep I cut about maybe a fifth of an inch below my cuticle that after it healed up and everything was looking good, about a month and a half later, my finger started swelling and I was like, oh, no, something bad's going on. It's infected or something. And I poked around and it hurt a little bit, and then I realized that it had cut the nail that hadn't grown out, so it had to pass through the cuticle, which caused a lot of pain for about a week. But then after it passed through, I just had to deal with having a giant slice out of my nail as it grew out. And last week it finally grew enough that I could cut that out and now I just have a very short nail, so hopefully it'll be a regular nail in another week.

4:10 Do you remember when you came and hung out with me the day after I had my toenail surgery when I got that ingrown tonail issue removed, and then it turned out they actually didn't remove it, and then when I went back for my check out, they had to recut me right then and there. Oh yeah, yeah, because they didn't remove the route the first time. Well, you know. That's sucked because I had I had, just if I remember correctly, I had gone to work and left work to go to my appointment, thinking that they were going to be like, oh, yeah, everything looks fine. No, they just went straight ahead and cut me right again and just and took the what had grown and then the actual route out that second time. Well, I mean, would you rather they never get it done right? No?

4:51 No, no I'm not. I'm not complaining in that regard. I'm more so complaining that it was just like you and I had had a day where it was just like I remember, like I had watched Diharvar avenge and shoot him up. I can't remember what we watched when you came over, but I remember those were the two I started with. And then yeah, it turned out that like literally a week later, had to go back for the check up and they were just like, oh, well, the root's still there, so we actually have to chop it once more. Again. This is what the doctors call a whoopsie duodle. Yeah, oh, they the one doctor was ripping on the other doctor because I went to I got to urgent care for the first time. I can't remember the first time you had it done? Was that urgent care? I can't remember, dude. It was either no, No, I went to Stanton. No, I went to my Actually, so I went to my doctor, but my doctor was not a like actual like foot doctor. And the second time I went to.

5:39 You went to your GP. Yeah, your GP is not going to be a podiatrist. Yeah, because my podiatrist was giving my GP ship because he was just like, yeah, I can't believe he missed that. I'm never going to let him live that down. What your GP originally removed all of the toenail thought he did? Yeah, oh I thought that was like a surgery. No, that was it. That was outpatient. I mean, I mean, so was my my goal out patients? Well, but I mean like that was that was just that was not a hospital, like that was a legit doctor's office. Yeah. Then I'm not shocked the GP would slip up because it's not really there. I wasn't. I don't think I was when it happened. I remember just being frustrated because I was just like, cool, Now I got to walk up another flight of steps with my like my toe bandaged up and in this like shoe thing that had the exposure to it.

6:20 Ah, but that's not that bad. You get to just pretend your foot is dark man. Yeah, that's great, West, like take the fucking left. Well, I'm happy that it's mostly healed. No, it's good. You know, the worst part about it was you don't realize how often you just stick your hand in things m until it either hurts or feels really weird every time you do. So, anytime I had to like dig around in a pocket or a drawer, it would hurt or just feel super weird. Yep, I can see that. And uh, not a huge fan, but I am very proud of how sharp I keep my cleaver because it really does look like a surgical scar.

7:01 It is impressive, like it is so it is so the only scar I've got left. Yeah, the one I've got on my thumb. You can barely see it, but if you can see that line right there, that's when you remember my first apartment when I cut my finger really bad on those serrated blades. That's so cute. Yeah, how do you cut yourself bad on serrated blades? I was fucking doing the dishes and it cut through the sponge when I was washing the knife. Oh, so you were going and stupid? Yeh, yeh. That's and but that and that perfectly answers the question. Yes, serrated blades are saws basically, Oh, you have to move them back and forth. Yep. I tell you about how I scared my friend Jess because I was teaching her how knives work, and I decided, without any thought about how this looks or how it works, I did exactly how I was taught how knives work, yeah, which is I took my arm out, and I took the sharpest knife that we had just sharpened, and I put it right up against my forearm, blade down and pushed really hard.

7:57 And she went, ah, which is what I did as a child. Did you add? I was like, see, it's the back and forth. Yep, that does it now? I mean you can cut, Yeah, you can, you can, but you would have to be pushing incredibly hard. Yeah, Because I was teaching her how to cut onions properly, and I noticed she was just pushing straight down and it was very difficult. It was giving her a lot of resistance. But it was funny, you know as she screamed and I was like, h that's how I reacted. I was seven or eight, but still is what it is. So yeah, that's that's something else. Well, I'm glad you're healing properly. Well, thank you. You are so welcome. No, it really was the worst was doing the oddities event because picking things up like you have to grip it hard and hurt your fingernail.

8:38 I've ever told you about my least favorite thing to do when I have my job at FYE. So Fye has the title cards that go behind the movies so that you know what you're looking for. Well, when your Suncoast, you have to you get a lot of those because like some titles either go out of print, some go pulled and just you don't get back in stock. So we had hundreds of title cards that had to be pulled usually about about monthly, I would say, maybe every other couple of months, and that involved going through it and you know, pulling them out, which wasn't the issue. Where the issue came was pricing later on with the title cards. So when you would go to put new title cards in, you would have to either do the on sale or the new stickering. Well, then when the sale was over, you'd obviously have to take the stickers off.

9:18 I can't tell you how many stickers I got underneath my nail, and I would just have those red marks, those black marks where you just got stabbed under the nail constantly when I was working that job. If only you could have had access to gloves. I didn't believe in them. That's fair, that's fair. There's a lot of things worth not believing in them. That's one of anyone wore gloves at that job for that for that particular, it'd be less of a literal pain. Toss hosk toss hosk. But no, that was That was probably my least favorite, next to UH because I love recall. Recall was always something I actually enjoyed. I was always more a total recall, total recall. I actually so when we still had the FYE in Piqua near me, the guys that worked there would call me up when they did recall because they knew I love doing it, and like we're just like we'll give you like pizza, and like, Doude, you really like doing this, Like are you being serious with us? And I was like, yeah, give me a clip bar, give me some titles.

10:08 Just dialing the police. I don't know what it was. I loved about it, but yeah, I mean it was just like if I got if I had that list and I had to basically scavenger hunt these things, which at Suncoast, they would end up in some different place, like places you wouldn't expect. Yeah. Well, when you have hundreds of uniform goods mm hmm, then it's very easy for them to get mixed up. I imagine it was similar to what it was like when I worked at Spencer's with T shirts. Oh yeah, because you know when it gets folded up real quick and dirty, they're all just black squares on top of each other. The bargain DVDs those basically all have the same z like all the same barcode on them. So when you have your list, you see its bargain bargain, bargain bargain, and then it has the title actually after it. So you would have to go through every single like there we had three places that they'd put bargain DVDs because we had the back wall that had like five or six shelves of them, had the car out front that had the that had them all on the pile and everything, and then we had someone on the other side too, So we're like three different spots that I had to go to to hunt down the bargain titles, which the bargain titles were always like at least two and a half pages long, So you're talking about like one hundred and fifty that you got a poll.

11:09 Well, I'm sure they got ditched a lot because people would pick them up with like a sense of you know that what's that called like impulse? Yeah, but then if they shopped long enough, they might be like, oh, never mind, I want this full price item. I don't want to fuck with this five dollars dollars, like I don't want it anymore. Well, the best was we would. Have the we'd have the Canadian releases of so like you would have like you know, the the US release of Pirate Radio was fourteen ninety nine, whereas this bargain copy was like five ninety seven, and like the only thing that was different was it had French on it, because it was those ones that were interchangeable, or they had all the stuff on the front. Yeah, like my first copy of Night of the dmons three three yep. And I think that was the case for one of my am for my Amityville nineteen ninety two DVD wouldn't surprise me was also a Canadian. Yeah, I've gotten a couple. Like I remember when I was working that job, I would pull a lot of those to take home personally too, because those bargain DVDs were the way to go, because, like I mean, you didn't have to pay the whole price that we were charging.

12:01 Because as much as I loved f Ye and Sun Coast prices are a little high. It's almost like that overhead. Yeah, it's almost like they had to pay your lame mass. It should have been like work here for free. You'd be like, okay, dude, thirty percent discount on used it was what would do me in half the time? I believe that. Yeah. It's like my buddy who worked at a gun shop. He was like, oh, I'm part time here, and I was like really he was like yeah, because I spend every penny I make here buying guns on the discount because the employee discounts are really good. Yeah, if I had not bought a single thing at my Foye job, I probably would have had so much money when I left there after like three years, three and a half, four years. I mean in defense of that job. That's the case with everything. Yeah, I mean that X, Y, and Z, But I mean money.

12:45 You don't put the drug addict in charge of counting the drugs. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend it, but that's on your supervisor. Yeah, they're the stupid ones. I was a great employee for that matter, because I'd put my money right back into the company. Yeah, you put your money where your mouth was as you gratched your neck and went oh. The best was like we would have people coming coming in to do you buy or like to sell stuff and whatnot. And I'm not going to name names, but there was a certain manager that I had that actually got let go of because of this. And I may have said this on the show already, but like our system would tell us what we had, like what we what we could offer for the item, like the top thing like with PONND stars, like making the offer, we would have the top price, and that was the price that we had. So, like for example, like if somebody brought in the original Alien Blu ray set, like that was Alien one through Resurrection. Mm hmm, I think we gave ten bucks for that in cash, and by that point, like it was this sixty dollars box set. Still. Yeah, so I remember like I offered the guy fifteen and he took it. That sounds right, I mean that was that that became like a regular practice. Thing was just looking at the stack that they brought it in and being like, hmm, what do I want?

13:51 David? What the hell are you doing? I'm vaping? Why the hell are you vaping? Because I can I. Mean, you didn't ask permission. You're is not a this is a smoke environment. I'm gonna get a sign made that says this is a smoking environment that's free, just to remove the free. What do you what? What is it so painful doing the show? You have to vape your way through it? No, I just wanted to take a small hit. No telling what my what is in my vape? I'm pretty sure everybody knows. I'm sure everybody knows. Well, you see unlike you. I'm smoking a Las Caravras, which is a cigar specifically for honoring the dead. Fair because I was trying to give a crap about your your concept for the month.

14:36 I mean, I'm smoking a super lemon haze. That made it so much worse. Why I told you, like, I'm smoking a super lemon haze. It makes all the people who've died glad they're not here anymore. But yes, we are talking about May they Rest in Peace month? That is correct, and I appreciate your attention to the theme of the month. That was Actually I mean I have that I've been saving up over the years. I actually won a five pack of year's worth of these. They released a new one every year, and I didn't know I won because Brian and Gonzo at my cigar lounge forgot. And then on New Year's Eve they're like, hey, by the way, they gave it this big bag. It might have even been eight Actually it was a huge bag. And and by the way, these are not cheap.

15:24 I think it was said New Year's Eve because I thought we were there when they gave this. That was New Year's Eve? Did you win something else that they forgot to give it to you because we were at the lounge and they brought us that. Wasn't like a big thing, it was. It was a small thing. Yeah, Or it might have been Jeff won something when we were there. It was either Jeff Jeff went into his locker and found those cigars one time. I can't remember if he won something. O just say, I mean it's possible, but this was like winning eight of these. I mean, these are expensive cigars when they're in in manufacture, and when they're not there, they they they don't even get that expensive. They just become impossible to get so because the idea is is that you buy last year's as well, and YadA, YadA, YadA. It's a whole whole thing. So a fiasco for a second thing, said bs Go. I was like, yes, David, honoring the dead is a BSEs But speaking of the dead, Yes, we just got back from seeing until Dawn we did, which we got a nice four D experience right before we went to it by having a massive rain storm.

16:27 That I drove through to get to your house. Did you have one earlier in the day or did that? Yeah, we had we had one, so I was inside at work obviously, So when it hit, we just heard like we heard it, you know, what was going on outside. I didn't get to actually see it, but I think you got it way. Well, Oh we did it. No, I was recording, I'm not kidding. I was recording a podcast in my office with my foam and my sound blankets and everything. I had to stop recording because the rain and thunder was so loud. Yeah, that I couldn't cut it out. Now. Granted, you know, when we're doing a podcast like this, there's latitude, there's room to run a noise reducer if you need to. People aren't expecting whisper quiet. But when you're doing Weekly Spooky, yeah, you need the quietest space you can get. Yet out of the atmosphere, it's all about you and the listener and nothing else. Yeah, So it's intimate. That's a good way to put it. So that's how loud it was.

17:21 When I got to my favorite Contra lane, I was beside it. I was not in it. He's never gonna let that go, yeah, But when I got. There, that's why I lost his ability. Like my my windshield wipers couldn't keep up with the rain on that way over. Do your wipers need to be replaced as well. No, because remember I did right before SEVERER TAXI. Oh yeah, you did, good, good on you. No. No, because I often am like, ah, hell well, I mean I need new wipers. You've been in my car when I have this smear smear smear smear story. The funniest example of like, I hope you're happy you just saved you know, eighteen dollars. Yeah. Was one time I was going to Pittsburgh to screen Depression the movie alongside Eddie Presley at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, Pennsylvania. And that was a hilarious situation. By the way, they finally booked it and had it ready.

18:12 And my dumbass boss at my job, a man who has so few genitals that when you're in the room with him you actually lose a testicle until you get away from him or there's a doorway between you or a priest. I had come to him and said, with about two weeks notice, I was like, Hey, they're showing my movie in Pittsburgh, and they're showing it with one of my favorite movies of all time. It's really important to me. It's on Thursday. I usually work a short shift on Thursday, so I need that day off, and I kid you not. He was like, well, I mean, we'll see what we could do. And I went and I literally, well there's a whole lot more. But I said. I was like, hey, that's cool, but like I won't be here, Like I'm not trying to be a jerk, but like I won't be here it's too important.

18:59 Yeah. There was also one time when one of my movies was in the newspaper and my direct supervisor was looking at it and he was all like pumping it up and being all proud, and then asshole main boss came by and was like, looks at it. He's like, I know she didn't mention your job. I don't want to say the. Place I remember that. Well, wait, I could say, now he's retired, Yeah, he's gone Date Axis Television. I worked there full time. I will not full time enough to have insurance a nonprofit work gotta love it. But so he was like, you didn't mention datv in this And I literally turned to him and I was like, you almost didn't give me the time off to go to the premiere to advertising. Yeah, and actually the two premieers before that, I would get off work at eight thirty. The premieres were at ten.

19:47 I would run to the theater as fast as I could do the screening, get home at one thirty, go to sleep, and have to be in at nine because I worked Saturdays for a couple of years straight. So my point be that on the way to Pittsburgh, I my windshield wipers were not they needed to be replaced, and I was very bad about those things. So we're driving back from Pittsburgh. It's the middle of the night and we start getting icy rain, not like so icy your car's gonna slide, but like rain is hitting the windshield and it's freezing a little bit, and you gotta get it out of the way. And my windshield wipers was and it comes back and the little strip of squeegee was just gone. So now it's either not touching anything or it's scratching. It's not, so we had to I was like I was there with my girlfriend at the time, and I was like, no worry, no panic, and she was like, well, what what what I mean?

20:48 Like you can't see. I was like, I'm turning the heat all the way up and putting everything through the defrosters. We're gonna pull over until the defrosters defeat the ice. Yeah. So that took about ten minutes and then we just zipped right back. But I remember that was one of those moments in my life where I was like, you know, if you would actually wait the benefit of that sixteen dollars you were waiting to spend against the negative, you would maybe be one Hamburger meal shot, but you could have been able to see the road in the middle of the night while you were driving. There is that they ever tell you that story about the car car stuff?

21:31 I find. I had a very old car for a while. I had a two thousand Volkswagen Beetle that I got when I was five years old, and I put two hundred thousand miles on it just about and I took I wouldn't say great care of the car, but I mean I kept that car in working order until the computer failed. Like I kept it in very good shape in that way. It was ready to run for a long time until that happened. But one time one of my back running lights was out and I was like, oh my god, because I was broke and I was living in Jersey at the time. And I was like, I just can't deal with this, Like it's not illegal for me not to have the running light. I'm just gonna leave it be. And some friends had even said like, well, you know, those running lights come in really handy when you desperately need people to see you because they're extra extra light. And I was like, yeah, I know, I know, but like I just can't deal with this. So a year goes by, maybe a little more, and it's at my mechanic getting some work that it needed done done and they call me and they're like, hey, so this and this is looking pretty good. Should be done on the timeframe we told you, but we noticed your running light is out. Yeah, And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, I'd noticed that. Yeah. And they were like, well, do you want us to replace it? And I was like, well, how much was that is that going to cost? And I kid, you know, he was like about nine nine fifty and I was like, yeah, go and go ahead and do it. Let's gohe and do that.

22:55 Yeah. So he's like, all right, well i'll get you. I'll give you a call in an hour or so when I have the final quote for everything all together. Yeah, I was like, great, calls me an hour later, and this is the best part. Calls me an hour later and he's like, all right, everything's looking the same, Like the prices are all basically the same as what we quoted you, but that running light and I was like yeah, and he was like, well, the casing for it had got water in it, so the casing's damaged, so that needs to be replaced as well. And I was like, right, and how much is that going to cost? He was like, oh, twenty one dollars and I was like, oh, that's not bad, So twenty one dollars. And then the bulb and he's like, oh, that's a tool thing, and I was like, man, I hope that twenty one dollars I saved for a year and a half was freaking worth it. So my point is the best advice I give about cars or about like taking care of yourself, your health, whatever, just if you know something's coming, even if you're going to put it off, just find out what it's going to cost, because you never know when you're going to realize that you put yourself out a lot to save almost nothing.

23:58 Well, it's like I've got I've got two denk was coming and I was worried that the price was going to be like a thousand plus each one of them. But luckily with my insurance, it's only gonna be about five sixty altogether. I mean that is good. But also you just you need to be able to chew. Oh yeah, so you know, and I don't feel like buying veneers just yet. Well, I have a saying, which is, if the bill can fit on a care credit card, you should be thankful. Yeah. Of course that was before I had a care credit card that held almost thirty thousand dollars in veterinary debt. Yeah. I was gonna say, yeah, but that's not a story for today. No, no it's not. But anyway, yes, Until Dawn we. Went to the theater in the pouring rain and saw Until Don. It was very four D because Until Don opens in a thunderstorm. Yeh, very fun. As far as the movie goes loosely based on the Sony video game, very loosely, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean I think they would even say that openly. Yeah, which is a classic for those who don't know the video game Until Dawn is literally a video game tea horror.

25:00 Movie basically, and choose your own adventure. Yeah, yeah, that's well, I mean that's a video game. Yeah, is you usually play video games? Yeah, I mean you could. You could argue that yes and no. But I mean that specifically is one where you have choices to make, like it presents you with choices. Not those games have choices. Not in the sense of like that like you literally have to choose one or the other, like what I'm saying, Like it gives you the option on the screen like Red Dead more so, I mean, yeah you have you have that too, but like is more open map and stuff like that's immediately what I'm thinking of. Oh sure, sure, well it's just it's but it is also a game. There's like you play it as well. It's not just watching cut scenes and choosing things, which there are games like that. Telltale Games makes some really fun games where all you do is choose mostly what's coming next where wolf among us or Wolf among Us which was really fun. Yeah, super good.

25:46 I've played that one. So anyway, it's not that much like the game in that it doesn't have the snowy locale, it doesn't have the same characters. It has a similar vibe of like this group of teenagers end up in this decrepit place, but then it goes into this whole time shifting thing where when everybody dies, the clock resets and you have to survive until dawn. But you have all your memories of previously what has happened. And some injuries from it as well, and you start to turn into something which we don't want to spoil that. I will say, while I did not feel like this film set my world to blaze in a good way, it was a lot of fun to watch a silly horror movie like that in the theater. It was very bloody, very gross. There were a few gross out moments that actually surprised me absolutely. Man, you could really our ratings basically mean anything now, like for real, because we saw like a full blown head smash, and like they didn't cut away or anything. They like showed the insides of the skull.

26:46 I mean we saw multiple human bodies and parts and insides just go everywhere. But I did enjoy it. I I don't think I missed something, but I felt like the ending didn't make a ton of sense certain ways. Yeah, I mean it did, but then when I was looking back, I was like, how does this all relate. I'm genuinely curious how much was cut out of the movie, because I mean the movie is at an hour and forty three minute runtime, so I mean we're right under two hours. Oh wow. I thought it was shorter than that. No, So I'm curious as to what it was, because it did feel like towards the end we really started speeding things up, and. I thought it was I thought it was speeded up from the start. It's more so that I'm still, like I said, like the thing the spoiler alert, there's one point where we jumped from they've done this four days to the last night, which is the thirteenth night.

27:33 Which was they ended up playing it off to where it was actually kind of cool. But at first I was kind of like, ah, yeah, come on, I kind of wish they'd played into the humor a little bit more. I was kind of expecting them to. Well, because once you see them die like the third fourth time, yeah, it's a lot less scary that they're gonna die. I mean the movie felt like a culmination of Cabin in the Woods meets Happy Death Day is how I is how I kind of felt with it. I just I think any horror movie with time shifting is Happy Death Day. I mean, there's a lot of like they said in the movie, there's a lot of movies that do that, but Happy Death Day is one in the last decade that has really really nailed that well. I tried not to burst out laughing because there was a part where somebody says, like in that movie that does that, and one of the characters goes, there are a lot of movies that do that. That part's kind of funny. Yeah, But what made me laugh was when they said that. I imagined the guy who's kind of an outsider character. I imagine him going Captain Ron, and for some reason, like just popped in. I know. That's why the face you're making is my point. That's why it made me laugh internally, because I picked. I was just like, I gotta pick, Like there are like ten choices, you know, Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day, Groundhog Day, Polm Springs.

28:47 Still not on Blue ray by the way, Palm Springs, No, Captain Ron. Oh that's surprising. No, you can. You can get it HD on Voodoo, but yeah, not on Blue ray still. But I just thought it'd be funny to give like the absolute wrongest answer, Yeah, but what about your thoughts on it? I had fun with it. I think, like I told you in the theater, I think seeing it once is good for me personally. I thought the monsters were great. I thought the characters, like, none of the characters bothered me, and I was really grateful. With that, to be honest, how would they bother you? Bad writing? Not likable that sort of thing, Like the characters were, but were all likable. I thought they were believable. Yeah, I'm believable, and also like they kept you wondering what was going on. My biggest beef is the way that they explained the ending, and also just some technical choices they took with the story basically.

29:33 Yeah, yeah, they and they tied some stuff together that I think may have actually hurt the movie instead of making it better. Well, and like I told you off Mike and the way on the way back, it's there were certain pieces of the game that I was kind of hoping they would incorporate in the movie. And I know they can't put everything in the movie obviously with the but having the totems as part of the game was always a great fun part of that game, sure. Because it gives you, well, it gives you potential for shadows exactly. Yeah, and I wish they would have done something with that. But I mean, at the same time, like they completely changed everything up. Yeah, it's not much like Until Dawn at all. I will say, I think I might have liked the movie more if they had not done the time shift part at all. I think it was an odd choice, to be honest.

30:13 I think they were trying to give us something, some more oomph. Yeah, because what Until Dawn the video game had was an insane amount of twists and turns, fake outs, surprises. But what else it also had was like a twelve hour playtime. Yeah, it was all It happened in one night and you had to survive the night, which they do that in this movie. But where I really really feel it got missed was it was just like the because you got to restart everything and do the Edge of Tomorrow and Crownhog's Day and Happy Death Day, the seriousness of their deaths started half, or the series of their death got less and less. Yeah, and the danger just wasn't there, yeah, because I mean and yeah, but I mean I got a sense of danger at the idea like this will be our last time.

30:54 Well, it genuinely had too like jump scares that I really. There were really really good jump scares in it, although the scariest one was straight out of the video game. Oh yeah. I was kind of literally lifted from it. Not surprised, but it was just like it was just like, oh yeah, they did that exactly the video game. There was a good scared. There was like two of those actually, and I think about. It, there was one for sure that I literally sure that I know that happened exactly that way in the. Game, peeking through the door. Yeah yeah, yeah. But overall it really was fun. It's fun. I didn't feel like having played until Dawn really had much of an effect either way. I didn't. It didn't hurt the experience, it didn't improve it much at all. I mean, you there were a few easter eggs where you'd be like ah, but that was that was about all you got. So, I mean, if you love horror movies, you would be stupid not to go see this movie because it is super fun. Also, you should support a teen slasher movie in the theater if you want to see more teen slasher movies exactly, because they generally don't get a lot of love in the theater anymore. And of course, you know, aside from your remakes and your big reboots and stuff.

31:58 You said the budget was low. They say it's fifteen on IMDb. That is low. Well, no, that's low. But I said like nine in the car and you see, yah, I said maybe. I said maybe. I didn't say yeah because I thought it's not like it was asking about a Harriet the Spy blu Ray. Well, regardless, it's not done too bad. You're right, No, it's doing all right. If it has good word of mouth, it'll it'll really be able to kick it into high gear the way Sinners kicked it into high gear. Because it had a pretty good, pretty damn good opening weekend, but it kept going. It seems like everybody's kind of on the same page with until Dawn from what I've seen review wise so far and rating wise, so I think I think it has potential to keep pushing. I just wish it was a little bit better. I haven't really heard anybody hate on it. No, I haven't heard like straight of hate.

32:40 So oh, well, what have you? That was that was loaded? I mean that that's it. I haven't heard any straight of Pat. I've heard basically that it's it's a fun movie, but it doesn't reinvent the wheel. No, no it doesn't. I mean it was trying to be something different, which is nice. I mean, it's never hurt to try it'll be different. But I would also say that we had a lot more fun on our movie we saw before this one over the weekend. Oh, the Accountant Too. The Accountant to was a friggin blast, Yes it was. I actually last night watched Accountant again, did you? Because I was showing Rachel she'd never seen it, and you know, The Accountant Too is a ton of fun. I'm so glad we got that sequel. I never imagined we would get a sequel like that to The Accountant, because The Accountant was a flick we saw in the theater and it stayed with me. I remember when I saw it came out on home to rent on digital and stuff.

33:29 I remember going I want to watch it again and checking it out again. It's a really cool concept. The sequel is definitely way more into having fun as to where the first Accountant was all about establishing world building and the character heavily. And all that. This one is very much playing up buddy cop cop. Yeah, Frank Rillo and Ben Affleck play brothers. Well, what I said, Frank Grill they're both really good actors, They're both great in action movies, and they both have at the same period of. We need a movie where Grillo and burnt All play brothers. What we need a movie where Burnhal and Grillo play brothers.

34:11 So I would love that. Yeah, but uh, but they're they're chemistry rough. They were barely in the first Accountant in the same scene. Yeah, but in this movie there together a lot, a lot, and their chemistry is off the charts. Yeah. So that's a really fun one to see. It's a lot of fun and hell in theaters. Great action sequences, a new characters that really worked out well too, I would say. And also I really really loved the I want to say too much, but I love the inner workings of the company that hires Affleck. That getting to see all that stuff this time around. Yeah. Yeah, they did build the world a little bit more. It just the stakes didn't feel quite as intense as the first one. Yeah, but that's I think that's a sequel thing. Yeah, especially with action.

34:54 Honestly, too, they they gave you a lot upfront with the JK. Simmons introduction scene that kind of spread the pieces out until we could put them back together a little more, because it was kind of like there was multiple stories almost going on, but they all actually interconnected into one towards the end. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. So yeah, the Accountant hell of a lot of fun, a lot of fun, super duper fun. Yes, And apparently we're getting Clown in the Cornfield like next week asap. Yeah, next week, and then well as recording this next week and then the following no, next week is no. The following week after Clown in the Cornfield is Final Destination. So we've got two big horror releases back to back in May. Which I mean, I get why they didn't want them to like come out the same weekend. Yeah, yeah, May ninth.

35:39 The Cornfield yep. And then the thirteenth is or sixteenth is a Final Destination. So and then not only that, we also have a remake of I Know What You Did last Summer coming until, which is a requel apparently. Yes, legacy sequel, requel, whatever you want to call it. Ye, yeah, I didn't realize it was that, yeah until I well, I saw the trailer for the first time to what's. Funny is I have given My memory is shit sometimes, but I have memory of Sarah Michelle Geller's signing onto the movie, but we only saw her one picture. And also she's technically dead in that series, unless she's playing a new character or ghosts. That could be who still ages. I guess she's not listed on the credits on Wikipedia. Yeah, I guess it could just be my brain summoning those Bronze and Stunt Doubles, those Cannibals and Invaders of the Lost Goal. That Harriet the Spy Blu.

36:27 Ray Final Destinations May sixteenth. Yeah, and that Final Destinations May sixteen. I got myself concious, and I know what you did last summer is. In July July sixteenth or July fifteenth, I can't remember. Now, it's somewhere in there. I was just I just got curious and then I threw my brain. July eighteenth, eighteenth. Okay, So a lot of really great horror releases, unfortunately or well, I mean it's exciting, yeah, but you know, it can be a little exhausting getting all these legacy sequels. I kind of in some ways feel like we're back to the two thousands when we were doing that all the time. There's definitely a lot of content on the market right now that's that's legacy sequel and then direct to video is not direct video but direct to streaming squel and whatnot.

37:13 And I mean it can be a bit exhausting, but I will say I am happy to go see these in theaters. Like final scene sounds like it'll be black. I haven't seen a File Destination movie in theaters since what would have been the Final Destination because I didn't see five in theaters. Oh so I saw four in four. I was actually the only one I've seen in theaters so far. And I think about it, Oh wow, yeah wow yeah. And then in regards to I Know what you did last summer, I haven't seen any of them until this one. In the theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, we say we covered it. Yeah, because you still want to need it watch all always again, and I luckily I have my birthday movie you can't wait, So can't wait. Nothing happens in that fucking movie. Oh we'll see if that's true.

37:53 Okay, I put it on my goddamn watch this on letterbox because of you. I want you to know that, which means there's potential that in my scored it could get a sign to me for mandatory film school, in which case I'm gonna cry. Who do I bribe to make that happen? Good luck? I ain't telling you shit. Oh, I'll find out. I always find out, David. So, would you like to get into the movie that we are talking about tonight? Good sir, I suppose. So this is a film that hit me very well when I was a young man, and I watched it a lot. Yeah, I rented the tape a lot, and then it was on it was on HBO, I think it was a lot of places. Yeah, and then eventually Nickelodeon would run it, but that took a few years. Yeah, because this was one of the first big Nickelodeon theatrical releases.

38:39 I seem to remember the premiere on NICK when they actually aired it, and I want to say that was like ninety nine. Yeah, that would be right, because it was nineteen ninety six when this film, Yeah, Harriet the Spy was put out and it's currently streaming on Paramount Plus. That is correct, And you can also, of course rent it, or buy it wherever you enjoy your digital rental. Movies digital only. No Blu Ray available, Nope, much to your shock and chagrin. Dude, I swear it was announced. I swear it was announced because we've gotten most of the Nick movies on Blu Ray at this point of this era of Nick movies, right. But yeah, I'm surprised this one has not. But yeah.

39:19 Harriet The Spy from nineteen ninety six, one hour and forty minutes, rated PG for mild language and some thematic elements. IMDb synopsis says, Harriet m. Welsh is a spy, but when her friends find her secret notebook, the tables are turned on her. Can she win them back and still keep on going with the spy business? That is not a very good It's not great. That's not a good tag or a good synopsis at all. My synopsis. When eleven year old Harriet decides to become a spy, spending days on the street, scoping out locals and snooping on her sixth grade classmates, Harriet's nanny, Golly, is suddenly fired, and she faces a harsher reality when the spy book or the spy notebook is exposed. That's a lot better actually, yeah. Uh. And then Bronwyn who is the director, bron When hughes.

40:00 She actually had a synopsis on some of the behind the scenes I watched, so I use it as well. Eleven year old girl who wants to be a writer, so she decides to practice by being a spy. That's pretty I mean, that's like, really pair it down, but it's accurate. Yeah, it is accurate. Taglines, Oh boy. Some kids collect insects, others collect dolls. Harriet m Welsh collects secrets. That's a good tagline, not bad, especially for a kids movie, you know, like it's it's different rules for kids. There's no lead, she won't follow, no question, she won't ask, and no way she'll ever get caught. That's a pretty good tag like that would make kids want to watch it cause it sounds really fun. It's not bad, but it gives more of a reporter feel to it. And she's technically not that because she's not really talking to a lot of people.

40:45 What are they supposed to say? Like, there's no privacy, she won't violate, no feelings, she won't hurt. There we go, there we go. Okay, Okay, I like that. See the World through the eyes of a Spy. That's a good one. And finally, on your case, how that one works with Harriet the Spy on your case? On your Case? Yeah. Director is bron Win Hughes on the film. She gets her a start in nineteen ninety four directing the Amy Grant video for Lucky One. Goes on to shoot another Amy Grant video for Building the House of Love in ninety four, then becomes the director on The Kids in the Hall in nineteen ninety five, Oh Wow, Okay, goes on to shoot Harriet the Spy in ninety six, directs Forces of Nature in ninety nine, Earth Angels in two thousand and one, Standard two thousand and three, episodes of The l World, Oh My God, l Word in two thousand and four, Breaking Bad episodes in eight, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, White Collar, Fairly Legal, hung Black Box Stalker, Teen Wolf, Damien, The Legacy, Queen of the South, Hawaii five, Oh, The Residence series in twenty nineteen thirteen, Reasons Why Better Call Saul The Walking Dead residential series for Netflix, Bodkin, and most recently in twenty twenty four, Earth Abides.

41:53 Wow, So very very accomplished television gal. Yeah, she took off and got into TV and did not look back. Well, let's where the actually back then, That's where the money was absolutely is and a lot of prestige TV too. Yeah. Several writers on the film, starting off with the writer of the novel, who was Louise at Fitzburg. She wrote Harriet the Spy in nineteen sixty four, The Secret or The Long Secret in nineteen sixty five, which was a sequel Nobody's Family Is Going to Change in nineteen sixty nine. She gets credit on IMDb for Harriet the Spy in ninety six, Harriet the Spy in two thousand and three, which was an animated series, Harriet the Spy, Blog Wars twenty ten, The Long Secrets in twenty thirteen, Sport in twenty thirteen, Harriet's Spy Is again in twenty nineteen, and most recently the animated series again Harriet the Spy in twenty twenty one. We unfortunately lost her back in nineteen seventy four November nineteenth, at age forty six, due to a brand aneurysm.

42:43 Damn, that's too bad. Moving on to our other writer, we also have Greg Taylor who was a writer for the film Prancer in nineteen eighty nine, goes on to do the screenplay for Jamunji in ninety five, The Christmas Box in ninety five. He gets a teleplay credit on Harriet the Spy. In ninety six, he gets adaptation credit on Summer of the Monkeys. He gets screenplay credit on the Christmas Wish teleplay Santa and Pete in ninety nine. Prancer returns in two thousand and one, Stealing Christmas with Tony Danza in two thousand and three, the TNT real movie Baby Yeah, Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle. In twenty seventeen, he writes, as well as Prancer, a Christmas Tale. In twenty twenty two, he wrote the new Jumunchi Or was he just a character? Nope, that was a he wrote it. Oh wow, that's a cool story tip. Another writer is Julia Talon. She gets an adaptation credit. We also have Douglas Petrie, who gets his start in nineteen ninety writing Clash Rugrats in ninety two.

43:31 Clarissa Explains it All, Ren and Stimpy in ninety six, Harryet the Spy in ninety six, Angel in two thousand Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Calling, the forty four hundred, The Batman in two thousand and seven, the series CSI Pushing Daisies, Charlie's Angels reboot in twenty eleven, which I had no idea that there was a reboot, Charlie's Angel series, Yeah, twenty eleven, Yeah, American Horror Story in twenty thirteen, Daredevil twenty fifteen, The Defenders in twenty seventeen, and writes for Outer Range in twenty twenty four. Wow, And our final is Teresa Rebek. She gets her started nineteen ninety writing American Dreamer, goes on to write Brooklyn Bridge in ninety one, dream On in ninety one, Really Alright, La Law in ninety two, Harriet the Spy in ninety six, episodes of NYPD Blue in ninety five, Third Watch, Gossip, First Wave, Lawn Order, Criminal in Ten in two thousand and one, Catwoman with Halle Berry in two thousand and four, Smith in two thousand and seven, Paris Criminal Investigations, Lawn Order, Criminal Minds in two thousand and eight, Smash, which she is the creator of, in twenty twelve, the TV series Okay, the musical series Copper in twenty thirteen. She gets teleperit credit on The Divide in twenty fourteen, of Kings and Prophets Walk in twenty sixteen, and most recently in twenty twenty two, the three sixty five. Wow.

44:43 Okay, yeah, So I mean this was the beginning well not even the beginning point for a lot of people. This is kind of like a like the early point. Bridge. Yeah, yeah, bridge is a good way to put it in. Yeah. Cinematographer on the film is Francis Kenny, returning to the show because they were also He was also the cinema photographer for one of our earlier entries, as Soon as I Can find It, Heathers in nineteen eighty eight. He shot Heathers, shot Heathers. So, just to give you a reminder, gets his career start with. Nineteen seventy five is How to Say No to a Rapist and Survive? How have I not seen that? I don't know, but it's I think it's a I think it's a how to movie. Yeah that. It did a lot of informational movies early on Red Fox Video and a Playing Brown Rapper in eighty three Cindy Lapper video for Girls Just Want to have Fun, Heathers in eighty eight, New Jack City, The Flash House Party, two Class Act, Coneheads, Ed and His Dead Mother in ninety three, Wayne's World two, Jason's Lyric, Harriet the Spy in ninety six, Bean in ninety seven, A Night at the Roxbury in ninety eight, She's All That ninety nine scary movie two thousand Kingdom Come How High from Justin to Kelly Steele.

45:44 Magnolia is remaking twenty twelve, Bonnie and Clyde remaking twenty thirteen, Justified in twenty fourteen, and Swatt Series in twenty seventeen. I checked, by the way, how to how to Say No to or rapists and Survive. That was a like speaking engagement that was filmed. Interesting. I mean, if that's if that's what you call entertainment, I think that's what it is. That's up to you. So moving down to our cast, we have Michelle Trachtenberger plays Harriet Welsh in the film, who we are also doing this episode to honor as we just recently lost. Her gets her start in nineteen ninety on lawn Order, but that's technically not where she gets her start. She got her start on commercials. Oh, sure. She was in a bunch of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese commercials, did some McDonald's commercials. A lot of the interviews I watched with her when she was promoting Harry at the Spy in ninety six were her talking like Cone and Rosie O'Donnell, and they were all bringing up her commercial history, and she had a lot.

46:37 Oh I believe it. Yeah, so nineteen ninety Lawn Order, Clarissa Explains it All in ninety three, All My Children in ninety four, The Adventures of Pete and Pete in ninety four, Harriet the Spy in ninety six, then does Dave's World in ninety six, A Holiday for Love Meet in ninety seven, Richie Richest Christmas Wish in ninety eight, Inspector Gadget Movie in ninety nine, Buff of the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, Buffy the Vampire Slayer in two thousand. That was the TV series. TV series YEP, Euro Trip in two thousand and four, Six Feet Under Mysterious Skin, Ice Princess in two thousand and five, appeared on episodes of House in two thousand and six, Beautiful Ohio in two thousand and six. I remember hearing about that show, and I never watched it. Yeah, Lawn Order Criminal in ten O six Black exmis and six appears in the Fallout Boy music video for this A and A scene in two thousand and seven against the Current two thousand and nine, seventeen again two thousand and nine, The Superhero Squad cop Out in twenty ten, DC Showcase Mercy Take Me Home Tonight, Weeds, gossip Girl, the Scribbler, Sleepy Hollow series in twenty fifteen, The Christmas Gifts in twenty fifteen, the Fred Olin Ray movie Right and Fred.

47:36 Said that working with her was delightful. Yeah, he actually said that she was She was the type of person that he just assumed he wouldn't get along, ye, And they ended up getting along very well. Robot Chicken series in twenty eighteen, Gossip Girl remake in twenty twenty two, Unicorn Boy in twenty twenty three, and I will get into this a little bit more in the trivia, but also makes an appearance on the Harriet the Spy animated series in twenty twenty three. Oh really, yes, So. He left us unfortunately February twenty six of this year, at age thirty nine, And we found out recently that it was due to complications from diabetes melatitis melitis. I'm not I couldn't in the e L l it us melitas melitis. Yeah, but yeah, Michelle Trachtenberg, I mean I remember seeing her and Harriet the Spy, but I'm pretty sure I saw her on Clarissa before I saw Harriet the Spot.

48:24 I first I knew her from Pete and Pete. Yeah, first, because that was I mean, her character was very memorable in Pete and Pete, and I remember popping. She popped up in like all the Nick shows for a hot minute. I remember her being on stick Stickley Yep and promoting Harriet the Spy. I remember what a big deal Harriet the Spy was. There was kind of this as far as I remember, there was kind of this cult mentality about Harriet the Spy where it was like Nickelodeon would be like, children, you love Nickelodeon, we need to rule the theater, demand your parents take you to see Harry at the Spot. That's how they did with Nick Magazine. So I mean, I wouldn't surprise me at that's time.

49:06 I was a Nick Magazine subscriber. I would get it from our library at the school, and then I think, mom, let us subscribe to it for like six months once well that I. Mean their heyday was over by like ninety nine. I mean I had never read it past. Then, Nickolaida Magazine, Please please. I used to go to the news stand when I wasn't subscribed because I'm only subscribed for maybe a year because it was pretty expensive. I remember begging to go to Barnes and Noble to get the Halloween issue. Yeah, because the Halloween issue was the best one. It had all kinds of things, like they would do mad libs that were spooky and stuff like that. Now posters. One of the ones that always stuck with me was you were you were supposed to fill in the details of your own scary story. Yeah, and it says like he comes after you see this scary guy and he's standing there with a blank in his hand, And I remember laughing out loud as a kid because it was like it was like a roll of bloody dental flaws and the other one was a paper mache machete, which just looks hilarious when you're reading it. So I remember having a lot of fun. I really am very grateful.

50:16 I got to be a Nickelodeon kid in the era where it came to be Yeah, because that was a real I had no idea. I mean, we had no idea. We were just watching TV, but we had no idea that this was like the first real television made for kids that was intended to speak to kids as almost adults. We didn't realize we were getting like underground art. We didn't really, I didn't realize when I was a kid that, like I was learning about doo wop and stuff from watching Nickelodeon. Yeah, so there was a lot of awesome things that came from it, And I'm positive that a large portion of my obsession with media, both viewing and creating, comes from how obsessed I was with Nickelodeon. I was into Nickelodeon until really until I couldn't anymore. Like when I was sixteen seventeen, I would still like watch SpongeBob occasionally because.

51:07 That was but but like I grew up. I remember when Rugrats started, Yeah, I remember because that was exciting. I remember when Snick became a thing with the big orange couch. I was obsessed with Are You Afraid of the Dark? Of course, desperately obsessed with our Afraid of the dark. There there was. It was such a special time and one of those that I actually it's not often maybe maybe it is, but it's not often that you get to look back at a special time like that and say, like it worked out great. I mean, like for me, like I didn't. I never took for granted Nickelodeon. I was an obsessive viewer. I loved it. When I watched that Orange Years documentary, it it was just it was like pushing over a pile of bricks onto me of memory. Yeah, because there was so I tuned into so much of that Nickelodeon because we stole case. Yeah, so yeah, that's that's my I just wanted to that little tidbit is what especially makes Harriet the Spy.

52:08 Special for you? Yeah, because that was such an incredible time, and not just Nickelodeon, but I mean, and when Harriet the Spy came out and all of a sudden, it was like, well, Nickelodeon's now going to give you movies that you're going to really enjoy. That are a big deal. I remember being a kid and being so young, I didn't understand why they didn't air it. On the channel. You know, I didn't understand it. It's like, well, we this is way more expensive, and it has to have box office and this and this and this. I was just like, why don't they just show it to us? And because the two films that really were a big deal in that early time period were Harriet the Spy and Good Burger. Good Burger is a phenomenal movie. It still holds up. Yeah, it was a surprisingly solid coming of age movie. Yea, more than anything, especially more than SQL well that came of age in another way. But yeah, so it was a very special time. You know. Eventually they got so big that they became very corporate. It was still you know, for kids and everything, but it just didn't have that same vibe.

53:11 Well have you seen the picture of what used to be like the Nick Zone at Universal Studios versus what it is now, And it's just like the childhood died entirely. I all I wanted in the world was to go to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida and see Nickelodeon and get slimed and get slimed. We did have a Nickelodeon. I think I've told you the story. We had a Nickelodeon the event. Yeah, well we entered someone actually, my friend Jamie entered Nickelodeon takes Over Your School. Yeah, but we came in third. So we got an assembly with Nickelodeon stuff and they they pied a bunch of teachers. They slimed our principal and that was an elementary school. Yeah, that was pretty memorable. It was pretty dope. But you know, but we didn't get the full Nick takes Over Your School where like, you know, they take up your whole.

53:58 Day at the entire obstacle course, they bring all. The celebrities and they just go, you know, Kaca Cuckoo. But yeah, Nickelodeon. It's it's impossible to explain it because I remember there being basically almost nothing to watch, yeah, and then there being just there was more Nickelodeon and more Nickelodeon. I remember when Nick Junior would I would wait for Nick Junior to end during the summer so I can start watching my Nickelodeon. I was going crazy for it. So yeah, so Harriet the Spy brings up a lot of memories. But then on top of all of that, I love it. Yeah, I loved it. Then I still am very fond of it to this day.

54:39 So I don't know what prefaced me saying all that, but I needed to get that out. That's fay. Harriet the Spy really is a special little movie about growing up, being a kid, being curious, having interests, and learning to be a better person. That's like a major that's like the entire point of Harriet the Spy is learn is that you're a child, you're becoming an adult, and you need to do it well and you need to learn from your mistakes. So moving on through our cast, we also have Rosi O'Donnell, who plays Old Golly. She gets her start in nineteen eighty one, Would Give Me a Break, goes on to be stand by Your Man in ninety two, A League of their Own in ninety two, then does Beverly Hills nine oh two, one oh and ninety two, Sleepless in Seattle in ninety three, another Steakout ninety three, which is a movie I love. I've seen another steak Out so many goddamn times.

55:28 I've only seen steak Out. You've only seen Steakout. Stakeout's the raunchier of the two, for sure. Fatal Instinct in ninety three Car fifty four, Where Are You in ninety four, I'll Do Anything in ninety four now, and then in ninety five, Larry Sanders Show in ninety five, Beautiful Girls in ninety six, which is also the same year as Harry at the Spy and also the same year that the Rosi o'donald show starts two or nineteen ninety six, two thousand and one. Yeah, and that was that was a big deal for it was a very big deal for a minute. Yeah, And Rosy o'donald was very loved by the Nickelodeon audience that she used to do guest appearances on everything everything. Then we also have All My Children ninety six, Very Brady sequel on ninety six, The Nanny, Twilight of the Gods, Wide Awake, Murphy Brown, Ally McBeal, Tarzan, Third Watch, The Practice, Flintstones, Viva Rock Vegas, Spin City, Will and Grace Riding the bus with my sister Queer as full man.

56:19 Did you ever see riding the bus with my sister? Oh? Yes, there's tons to laugh at and make fun of because it was very broad. Yeah, but it was actually a good film. Absolutely, Oh, it's absolutely a good film. I always liked that movie. But yeah, there's that's one of those films you can clip just about any of it out of context. Yeah, and you have a laugh riot on your hands. She was also I actually skipped over something, so she did, I'll do anything. In ninety four The Flintstones. In ninety four Red and Stimpy Show, Exit to Eden, then we get to Larry Sanders' show. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that the Flintstones movie was what made her insanely in with Nicholas. Leg of their Own was the first one. Flintstones got her know what.

57:00 I'm talking about with the kids with got because she was promoting I think that's why we saw her so much as she was promoting The Flintstones. Yeah. Originally it was funny too because one of the interviews was like, I said, Michelle Trackterberg all the Rose o' donald show, and she was saying like the first thing that she saw Rosie in was a Lead of their Own and that she's watched it a bunch of street movie. Oh yeah, one phenomenal movie. So yeah, right, lost my sister. In two thousand and five, Queer as Folk Nip Tuck American dropped a diva Curb Your Enthusiasm, Web Therapy, Happily Divorced, Pitch Perfect two, Empire Mom, American Dad Smith, Russian Doll Lee of their own remake in twenty twenty two, and just like that in twenty twenty five. Yeah. I mean she's definitely eased up on movie roles. She's gone a lot more into her into her stand ups and a lot of her She's even doing some spoken words stuff.

57:44 Now being a pundit. Yeah, yeah, very much so. So I think I think I didn't she just move to Ireland. I think she's threatened to. I don't know if I know she moved, Okay, I think it was to Ireland. But oh, she's she's she's just gone. Yeah. Gregory Smith, who plays Sport in the film, gets to start in nineteen ninety one on the Commission, The Hat Squad in ninety two, Street Justice in ninety three, Highlander Series in ninety four, Andre in ninety four, Are You Afraid of the Dark in ninety five, The Outer Limits, Big Bully, Then does Harriet the Spy in ninety six, The Climb, Meet Krippendorf's Tribe in ninety eight, which is a movie you cannot make today. I haven't thought of that movie. Yeah, I want to rewatch Krippendorf. Oh it's readily available. You can find it for those who are not aware. In ninety eight, Richard dreyfe is starting a film called Krippendorf's Tribe where he plays a what's the I just Paully, just thank you couldn't think of it that basically fakes an African tribe. He can cox this whole scheme.

58:41 One, but then he doesn't expect people to care so much that they want to see the tribe, so he has to start faking it. It's the tribal person. Richard Dreyfuss and Jenna Elfman both honestly at their best. Oh yeah, you can only rent it's it's not streaming for a you know, free anywhere. So he does Krivendor's Tribe in ninety eight. Then he also does one of my favorite movies in ninety eight, Small Soldiers. I love Small su Me too, The Patriot in two thousand, American Outlaws two thousand and one, Touched by an Angel Wrinkle in time Kids in America? Ever would boot Camp, which is boot Camp if you haven't seen as a great little thriller that him and Milacunis did. It's about those adjustment camps for teens that they send a bunch of teens to the island and try to make them better people. But turns out that vantage Eli Stone two thousand and nine, Fakers Hobo with a Shotgun in twenty eleven, dream House in twenty eleven, Franklin and Bash in twenty thirteen. But in twenty twelve he gets to start as a director on Rookie Blue, then directs Shadow Hunters, Saving Hope, Unspeakable, episodes of Arrow, episodes of The Flash, DC, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Katie Keene Riverdale, and most recently has shot episodes of Superman and Lois as well.

59:54 Wow, Yeah, I'm glad I had I had no idea he was idly working so much, and his character Sport is probably my favorite character in the film and was when I was a kid as well. So what was your first time watching Harry at the Spy? So I'm almost positive that we went to the theater to see Harry at the Spy because I remember just the friggin' deluge on Nickelodeon of telling you to go see it, go see it. Yeah, And I'm sure my mother would have taken me. Actually, I bet you I should. I should text her later about it. I bet she loved that movie because she loved Rosi o' donald and see it's all coming back the more I think about it, because I remember how much she loved Rosiy o donald.

1:00:37 It was kind of like I could get mom to like, my mom wanted to watch True Lies just because she loved Jamie Kurtis. So I remember that, and I remember renting it again and again and again and again on VHS tapeh So, yeah, it was. It was smack dab in the middle. I would have been ten years old, eleven years old, and it was just one of those movies. I remember. It was one of the first films that I got very emotional during because I was a very bullied child. And this film isn't just about you know, being the nerd or getting bullied. It's about all of it. It's about becoming the bully. It's about all kinds of important things that are complicated for children. And I like that.

1:01:22 I like that, especially in that era, they weren't afraid to give kids a dose of reality. I also love how there was a habit in the eighties and nineties to have people get bullied but then that bully becomes their best friend, because that really did happen in school too. Somebody would be picking on you, but then all of a sudden they're just around a lot, and then you're sitting at lunch together and now your friends or. You've hired them as your bodyguard. Yeah, or the movie My Bodyguard exactly. Or you end up, you know, showering at the at Springwood High School and then the coach he hangs out at leather bars and stuff. Or you're hanging out showering and tough turf where you just get beaten with locks inside of side. Just pieces of fish and sop blocks. M but no, no, so yeah, it was. It was a very formidable movie for me. And that's kind of like I'm still wrapping my head around it. It's like there are certain movies that when I revisit them, I'm shocked how much of an impact they had on me. Absolutely, Like when we rewatched It's one of our longest episodes that we'd ever done.

1:02:22 When we rewatched Oh Gosh, What Hot American summern I couldn't believe how influential that had been on me. Yeah, I hadn't seen it in almost twenty years. Yeah, and I was like, wow, No, this movie like affected what I thought was funny my entire life. Yeah, but what about you, Dave. I So, I distinctly cannot remember how I first saw it. I just remember that it was either we had rented it or I have this I have a memory of my cousin having like the orange vhs like oh yeah. So I don't know if it was my cousin that brought it over to my grandma's house or if we had rented or whatnot, but I know myself, my sister, my mom all eventually saw it together and it was just one of those movies that, along with like hocus Pocus and George of the Jungle, and I'm trying to think of some other one like who frame Roder Rabbit that like we would rent a lot like this is one that would always be like, oh, well, you know, what do you kids want to rent tonight? And then Erica would usually throw out Harry at the SPI even I would, And we rented it a lot growing up.

1:03:21 But also it played TV a lot, Yeah, played NICK a lot as well. So I mean it was one that I really took in a probably more than I realized, But it wasn't really until I revisited in college that I saw what a deep movie it was. Yeah, for a childhood psyche let alone, just the experience. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's not a farce. It is a kid's movie. It's a kid's movie, no doubt. And it's a kid's power It's it's a kid power movie that doesn't go in the extremity of the kids defeat the adults, I guess is the best way to put it. There's no there's no like big bad adult boss in this movie. They're all basically at each other at some point. Yeah. Yeah, it's not like Matilda. Yeah, or I mean, it's not Let's Save the rec Center.

1:04:05 It's it's not camp Nowhere, It's not anything that like it bushwhack, bushwhack. Yeah, it's it's kids are being kids and in doing so, having to face everything that a kid would normally face. And they they amped up looking at how kids' lives are different. Yeah, that's why I really appreciated Sport. Yeah, because he had a very different life than everybody around him. It felt very live action Hey Arnold on this watch to me, hmm, just from the environment of the city and the characters, it felt very of that feeling, which I mean funny enough. I'll talk about in the trivia a little bit, but I believe it was either the theatrical like experience included the lot the pilot episode of Hey Arnold when you went to go see it in theaters.

1:04:49 Really what some of the trivia says, Yeah. I mean that could that could very well be. Yeah, it's Hey Arnold's an interesting element of Nickelodeon as well, because if you look at when it came out, it came out right when kids like me who had been watching from the start were becoming teenagers, and all of a sudden there was this very good teenager show to kind of the fill the gap when Doug was gone. Yeah, because Doug was a phenomenal show that really like like directly helped me handle a lot of my insecurities and worries. Yeah, Like, I still think back to Doug Yancy Funny, and I'm like, man, I'm so glad I had him around to like make the mistakes first and look like a dork and then you know, because half those shows would just be like, would just be like you're a dork and people like you for it? Yeah, and you'd be like what, Yeah, but I'm afraid of people. It's like no, no, no, they like you.

1:05:41 So would you like to get into it into what into Harriet the spot? Oh well, Hell's bells and taco shells. So we open with basically a view of every single piece of equipment that is in Harriet's spidel over the credits, which I love the credits for one, because you got to like a nice little jazzy bee to it. You've got some animations along with this jazzy. I'd call it funk funk. Yeah, I would go far. I would say funk. Sorry, I'm thinking of hay Ronold. Still well, I'm mean. Yeah, hey, Arnold's yeah, more jazz than funk. Who did the music? By the way, Uh, good question. I thought for sure you were going to cover that one. Nope, that is not When I tackled, I get it, you don't like the music. That's okay, that's. Totally what it is.

1:06:21 Yeah, I understand, holy hate it is. It's not like I was watching hours of interviews on YouTube of the show. No, I meant you hate the music. I didn't say you hate the movie. Jah Jemshd Chiff Charifi, JOm Sheeed Scharifi. JOm Sheeed Charifi. Yeah. Yeah, composer for a lot, holy shit, music department for Hard Boiled in nineteen ninety two. No, this guy has a lot of Rugrats movie Thomas Crown Affair, Rugrats in Paris, down to Earth clock stoppers. Wow, So that's just the music department composer wise. Most of those are also him as a composer. Yeah, Muffets in Space, down to Earth clock stoppers. Yeah. Wow, not asuse resume has a though, but a pretty damn good resume no matter what.

1:07:02 Yeah, it looks like you did a lot of TV. Yeah, and TV gets tricky nowadays. Composers and TV get a lot more direct credit. Yeah, but I'm assuming that opening theme was was done by him. I would imagine it is great. It's great. Yeah, it was banging my surround system like it was like thumping my living room. I can believe that. So after we get through the credits, we get a narration from Harriet if she introduces herself as Harriett, and well, she's eleven years old and she's a spy And we see her spying as she's on a street corner, hiding behind a table of some of some items, looking at people, a man with tattoos, We see a kid that's on a leash, and she comments about the child on the leash. Uh. And also while this is happening, she also witnesses a robbery occur because an old woman is passing and a man steals her wallet.

1:07:46 Yeah, and it should be mentioned when this movie came out, like they sold spy kits. Oh yeah, and like every kid wanted a pair of binoculars. Every kid wanted a notebook. She's got the notebook, she's got the binocular she's got her gloves, she's got a magnifying glass, she's got a flashlight. I mean, she's got a little bit of everything in that spy belt. No. But and that's such a kid thing to give us that, Like it was on par with everybody wanting the talk Boy from Home Alone too. Yeah, everybody wanted that. Everybody wanted their spy kit. Harriet the Spy was so imitable and not just for girls. That's the other thing, Like, sometimes I understand that sometimes it feels good to be directly represented to see somebody like you exactly. Yeah, but I would watch Harriet the Spy and be like, I want to be like Harriet the Spy. Yeah. And Harriet the Spy was a little girl. I was a little boy.

1:08:41 Yeah, you know, nothing wrong with that. No, no, And that's my point. It's like, I don't think it's a stretch, because it's like, if you tell a good enough story, everybody's gonna want to be in there. Yeah. Sure. So, not only does you see the crime occur, so the thief starts running towards her, she stands up, alerting him, and he runs right into a bunch and I mean a bunch of eggs. Yeah, like one point eight million dollars worth of eggs. And at this point yeah yeah. And the thing I love about it too is we don't see the cops take him or anything that happened. Oh no, that was vigilante justice. He was hung in the back of the backwater of the back of that Chinese restaurant. Fair enough. Yeah, you don't mess with the triads, baby. We cut over to her at her school. We meet her friends, Sport and Genie. They all have this matching tattoo that they put on their feet, and that's what is the tattoo. I can't remember.

1:09:26 It's like a like a figure. Yeah, it's like a it's like a stick many, a kind of special stick man. And they have their little swearing to it. Of nobody knows about the tattoo or else. Death to all of them. Yes, it was a swift and painful death, which is very funny. Yeah, because swift and painful don't really go together. Swift would mean lacking pain, yeah, but a swift and painful death. Yeah. They draw this tattoo on their feet and then push their feet together to copy the tattoo. Yeah, and they say that it's because they wanted to be blood brothers. But this is way less painfully less pain which was so for a kid in that era, so identifiable because you would seen stand by me, you would seen if you were like me, you had seen it.

1:10:08 At the fact that like, how stupid it is to cut across your palm when you do a blood brother. That has to have come up. Well, I think that that's that's something that drives me crazy when like it's one thing if you cut your palm because you're gonna shake hands. Yeah, okay, but like every horror movie when they have to get blood, they always cut their palm, like, yeah, cut where you'll feel it for a month. Yeah. No, like cut the side of your arm and then no, no, no, because you use your fingers, you couldn't say your earm. Then just put a bandit on it. You'll like barely notice it's there. Ye. But also, just don't cut yourself. True, I don't want to be that guy. Yeah, but kids, don't cut your lifestyle coach. As your lifestyle coach, I'm telling you, just don't cut yourself. The one that always gets me the more I watch it is it chapter one, the final one that when they do the blood brother oath on that like they are really taking that bottle and just slice.

1:10:58 But and the reactions are like they are, oh yeah, it's not like it's not like some movies where like they cut their wrists in their arm or their hand or whatever and then just go whatever. Yeah, was I was just watching something, Oh I was. I've been rewatching Stand Against Evil and there's an episode where these goth kids come to town to try and summon and whatever. Yeah, and when when the kid cuts his paulm, he goes ow ow ow ow ow like when he when he does, it's he killed me. So while they're also at school, Harriet lives in New York City and they attends school with like I said, Sport and Genie. And that is when we also get a rounding of the classmates that are along with her as well. I don't have all their names, but.

1:11:38 It's an incredible cast of characters from snobby kind of entitled girl. Which is Marion Yeah friends. Yeah, Marion Hawthorne is the enemy basically they no one likes her, but they all are friends with her basically yeah. And and they're well, and they're ripping into her because they say, like when when Mary and Hawthorne gets out of her car to come in, they're like, oh, it's happening, and they also vomit. Yeah, but we also see the kid with purple socks. We see one girl that one of my favorite lines is she took last summer and decided to grow boobs, as she. Everybody likes her because she decided. Well, my favorite thing about is they say grow boobs, but then she drops something and leans over. Yeah. The reason that that scene made me laugh out loud as an adult was the way she bends to get it. You wouldn't you wouldn't see them, you wouldn't see her chest even a little bit.

1:12:23 I mean, so that would made it extra funny. But also like, yeah, every every boy is going to give her attention. So you've got that. You've got one girl that's obsessed with the pop star that she says she always looks like she's about to cry. I wish somebody would kick her and get it over with one girl that said looks like her face is pinched. So her spying is also a lot of gossiping on these people that she's around every day. And and she's she's saying a lot of things that are very borderline. Yeah, and I've had friends with kids, especially toward that age, who have that like period of being kind of mean because they have to kind of realize, hopefully God willing, that you need to be empathetic that not everybody has an easy life, not everybody has an easy day, because you know, for all of Harriet's situation, I mean, she has two parents at home who seem to love each other quite a bit, but her father makes a lot of money, makes a lot of money, very busy, and it's stressful. He makes a lot of money because he's working really really hard, and so she has some great things. But also you can see why she would want to bury herself in these activities because there's not a lot at home other than well who will talk about in a second.

1:13:33 And that's the thing is Old Golly is her grounding. That's the one that reminds her that people are people and situations and all this stuff. And I mean, Rosie O'Donnell in this role outstanding, No. She's perfect, a perfect choice for it too because and this is not anything against Rosie, but Rosie's very average looking, but she has charisma. That's why she's built such a good career. But she's very average looking, so you look at her and you wouldn't think much. But then she's got this this way about her in this film where everything she says is a gem. And I love where she'll just take the kids to do something because. That's my favorite. Yeah, So after we get to know the kids, we move on to that and basically she's hanging out with Sport and what was the other money and Jeanie and they're just sitting on the stup or whatever, and Rose o'donald's character shows up. She's just like, we'll be back before dinner.

1:14:20 Yeah, you got home before dinner. Your parents are not gonna be home the night, so I'm taking care of you. And yeah. They go to this artist's house and it's this backyard where this woman has been creating for god knows how long. It's just and to make sure the context is there. She's an O pair. She's she's the nanny or what have you, the almost live in babysitter. Yeah, it's who Harriet. Yeah, And she takes them to this friend's house that as an artist, and it's basically an area that the kids can have fun. They're drumming on the pieces of art. There's things that they can blow bubbles with, like all kinds of stuff that you would want to. They're drinking a big glass bottle of sprite or whatever it's which is at each other. Again my favorite, because not only does she take it down and like you know, shake it up and have them drink out of it, but tells them to shout out what they want the most. And Genie wants to, you know, win an award for her science. I can't sport.

1:15:06 I think wants to be able to like take care of his dad and whatnot. And then Harriet wants to see everything and know everything, and then also like tries to chug the bottle as best she can but can't do it. Yeah, and this is a great sequence because they're really being kids. They're jumping around, they're wrestling around, they're spitting so to each other and laughing uncontrollably. Yeah. The the the chemistry with the kids is really great, really great this one. And you really believe that they're best friends. Yeah, it's it's super super nice. And you know, Harriet is obviously very assertive. Yeah, but uh was it Genie Genie Genie? Okay, I did? I did? Remember. Genie is the aggressive friend. She's the one who's like quick to well to get in a fight.

1:15:50 One of my favorite lines for her is when she's talking about basically poisoning Marian, about putting it into a soda can that would make her insides like basically come outside. Yeah, and like acts it out. She's an amateur chemist at home, she's messing with her her easy bake oven and stuff, making all these concoctions, growing germs and sport. Is a lot more reserve. Yeah, he's still very playful, but you can tell that he's really only able to be that way with his friends, Yeah, because otherwise he's just not comfortable. Jane, Genie, Jane's okay, Janie. Yeah. And also sport is we'll find out a little later on. But he's got a lot of responsibilities. That is the main focus of his story by far.

1:16:31 No, in many ways, he's parenting his father exactly, and we don't know where his mother is, so we assume that she's not in the picture at all, probably passed away. And going back to Marion Hawthorne, she is the snobby classmate, like I said, that a lot of people do not like, but everybody kind of tries to get along with because she's the class president, which means she also runs the newspaper. So if you're on her good graces, you're safe well. And something worth mentioning about these kids, because a lot of them don't have you know, the kid with the purple socks or whatever I mean, she says, some really mean. She was like if I was known as the kid with the purple soie myself oof. My point though, is what do almost all of these kids descriptions have in common?

1:17:11 In her diary or her spy book. They're caricatures. Yeah, they're not fully formed people. They're a little taste. And then her commentary, Yeah, and then moving on. Well, and even the same thing when she sees the kid on the least, she says, if my parents ever did that, I'd trade them in. I'd trade them in. And she's she's got that sassiness. You know, she wants to be a writer. Yeah, And it's clear she's going to be able to the reason she's a spy is she was told, if you're going to be a writer, you start right now. Yeah, writing everything you can. And we see the people that she spies on. She's got some regulars, which include one guy I can't think of his name, but he's got all the cats and he builds these immaculate birdhouses. But when I say all the cats, he's got like thirty cats I counted in the one scene.

1:17:54 Yeah. No, And he's hiding from the health department. As well, trying to hide that he has all these cats because they'll take them away if they find out. She's spying on people at the Chinese grocery store. And specifically the Sun. Johnny, who is more American of the family and Harry has a date and wants to borrow the car which may come back. And wears like a leather jacket. Wear's a leather jacket. You know who he reminded me of was do you remember the episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark with the Chinese the cookies that fortune Fortune cookies? Yeah, where he becomes the artist and everything he has like three of the opens. That's what that whole setting reminded me of. I could see that. Yeah. Yeah. And she's seeing people when they don't know they're being watched, being watched, yah, which is how you get people at their most honest. Yeah, is when they don't know they're being watched.

1:18:39 Which brings us to a great moment in the movie where Harriet's parents are are going out so Golly as our wait actually only back up a little bit because I want to I want I want to really go on Golly and Harriet's relationship, because there's one scene in particular where Harriet's taking a bath and she hears her parents fighting and Golly comes in shuts the door and she's like, hey, I was listening to that, and she's like, yeah, I'm an opera singer, or I want to be an opera singer, but I can't, so I don't. Yeah, I love that line good. And she basically says, what's going on down there has nothing to do with you, so, you know, don't involve yourself in it. Your dad just has a very high strung job. What's high strung explains all this to her, and also is very nurturing about the fact that, like, you know, you you are, you're a good kid. That has nothing to do with you.

1:19:20 Don't involve yourself in that. It's very nurturing. It's best to let that be. Yeah. No, And and she's a great influence on Harriet. Yeah, and a really good example of how when adults take an interest in kids, the kids tend to do better. Yeah, because we even see the one of my favorite again, I keep saying one of my favorites. There's a lot in this movie though. But to get her out of the tub, she tells her there's a water bug, so she gets up all she slaps the towel on her, goes downstairs, and her mom's like, you want me to tuck you in? She's like, no, Golly can do it. And they go back and forth with this little uh saying from Alice in Wonderland with the story of the walrus and the oysters. I think I can't remember. Something along those Dade, Yeah, but it was a Lewis care thing.

1:20:00 Lewis Carrol thing. Yeah. So I mean we see that their relationship is very close, and she even comes to her that night and says, you know, will you always be here? And she's like, well, you know, at some point I'll have to leave, you know, because you're getting older and whatnot. But you know that day is not today. That cuts us into the next day or as as we're supposed to see it as. And Golli is making dinner and Harriet is, you know, asking her what she's making. She's making brought worse. We also hear knock at the door and Harriet's like, I'll get it, and she opens the door to see somebody that we've already seen in the movie, which is a guy that she calls the something thief thief yeah, fruit thief, yeah, because she saw this guy at the Chinese restaurant and he took vegetables and fruits and took them out the door. But we don't see what he's doing with them. They're just not his hands with them. Looks like he's stealing, looks like he's sealing them. Yeah, it looks like he's stocking them away. So she's like fruit thief. So immediately doesn't like this guy.

1:20:49 Well, and you know, she's having to compete for Golly's attention. Yeah, and this guy could not be nicer and more welcoming and more friendly to Harriet. And that's where we get the first example of more than a caricature. Yeah, because as they're talking, after he makes Harriet laugh a few times and stuff. The staring contest. It breaks her down because at first she's just like she's even kind of interrogating him a little bit, and he picks up on it, plays with her, and then they're completely good. Well, and then he tells her about how at one time he was very rich, Yeah, and he owned a company and he was constantly working, he was constantly stressed, he was constantly miserable, and one day he got up and he told his wife, and Harry's to start his wife.

1:21:34 You know, he's like, I want to, I'm going to start fresh, and I'd like, if you want to, you should come with me. And then he's like, she left me. She left me, Like I sorry. He's like, no, I mean it was her choice, you know, she had to do what she had to do. And and now we find out he's a delivery boy, yeah, which which is the joke she makes. She's like, don't think you should be delivered by now, But he's like, I'm a delivery boy. I may not make a lot of money, but I'm happy. Yeah. And that also gives Gollie to speak up and basically like mind Harriet of hermanner is also while doing so good, Ally realizes that she's burned her Broatworths that she was making and now they have to go out for dinner. Well, and that's his idea. He's like, that's just an excuse for us to go out and have some have a nice meal together and a movie that makes Harriet am mata Hari mind you too? Yeah, what a movie for Harriet to go. Now, it makes perfect sense that Harriet would watch mata Hari.

1:22:19 So we get they go to see mata Hari. They have a great time. They're they're fake sword fighting outside of the theater, but naturally with dinner in a movie. They come back late and mom and Dad are home now. And free and they were home earlier than normal, yeah, and. Freaking out because there's no note, no nobody called them and Harriet's missing. So they pull up and her mom's like, you know, what are you thinking, Golly, Like, you know you didn't do anything, you know, this is this is last draw. You're fired And and. There was already the only thing that shocked me when I was rewatching this was how little Golly's actually in the movie. Yeah, because they're even in the little bit that she's in. You see that there's a jealousy of Harriet's mother, especially when she turns down being didn't buy her own mother because Golly's here.

1:23:01 Yeah. And the thing I really love about the scene is it's very obvious when the mother says you're fired, yeah, that she's not fire yeah, because the dad is kind of like, well, whoa, And then Golly says, you know you're right, You're right. I think my time here is has run its course. Yeah, and I should be going, And even the mom goes what yeah. Well, even Harriet starts freaking out. And one of one of the one of like the things I love about having the captions on is there's some things that you can briefly hear, and one of the ones is this where like you can hear her mom being like, you know, I was, I was mad, like you know, you don't have to leave, and she's like no, no, like you're right, Like, you know, Harriet's getting older and this is the only this, this will be good for her, and I think it's time and you know, I've got plans that I want to do. So the next day, she's waiting for the bus and is sitting and Harriet comes out and the rain's coming down, and she's just like, no, Harriet, you know you it's okay to cry, but I will not stand any laughter.

1:23:53 Oh my favorite, my favorite moment. Yeah, because Harriet's like said, She's like, you know, it's okay if you need to cry, but I will not allow any laughter. Do not laugh, young lady, And so Harriet starts laughing. Really wonderful moment and a wonderful just example of dealing with children. Yeah, and that and at this point too, Golly encourages Harriet not to give upon her love of spying on people and observing people and basically staying true to your nature. And that's what I've always really Taken a Heart from Golly Is. Even though she sees that something in this kid may not progress well with the way that it's going, she still encourages her to do it because she knows that that's the only way she's going to find out the hard side of it too.

1:24:34 Yeah. No, it's it's it's it's it's all. It works so well. Yeah, and it's aged, in my opinion, very well. Very well. And it even even promises to buy her first book of a signed copy of Harriet's first novel, so like she's encouraging her to be a writer. So naturally, you know, Harriet gets depressed and she starts spying on people more. This leads her into the mansion of the famous Agatha. Plumber played by u one of the original catwomen. Yes, and she is so eccentric as ever is always in this movie. Sitting in bed talking on the phone. She's got a housekeeper, she's got a little dog. And she's going on this incredible tirade on the phone about the secret everlasting life is never getting out of bed, and as she says that her her maid or whatever is bringing her things.

1:25:23 Bringing her things, and Harriet by this point is literally snuck into her house and is hiding in a dumb waiter. The dog's alerted and basically ends up getting found out because the maid goes over the dumb waiter opens it and that causes both of the scream and Harriet's completely thrown out of the house. Yeah. I mean, she's lucky they didn't like call the police. She's very lucky they didn't call the police. Yeah. And just she's walking home, she's just repeating over a good spy never gets caught, A good spy never gets caught. Yeah, And that was a scary moment I remember as a kid watching that because yeah, you're they they're selling the fun idea of being a spy like Harriet. Yeah, but what the movie he's really about is much more than that. And I remember that moment when Harry gets caught me being like like as a kid, because I didn't want Harry to get caught. It wanted Harry to just keep being a spy because being a spy seems awesome. Yeah.

1:26:11 And so also by this point, she's also went back to see the guy with the cats. He unfortunately got caught by the health department. Oh that's a car breaking. They just take the cats away in a big sack, you know. And we didn't talk about it much with his scene because I mean, there's so much talk about this movie, but his scene specifically, like he's singing his tunes, he's feeding all the cats, have played at a time, working on these bird houses, and is just so happy. When she goes back, of course he's sadden. He has like, I think one cat, he has none? Yeah, none, No. They reveal later later on that he snuck one nothing to catch one. Yeah. And then also we see that Johnny did in fact borrow the van without asking and crashed it, and his family is extremely pissed now because the delivery van is total yeah, not ideal, not ideal. So all the stuff is happening, and she's also trying to reconnect with her friends.

1:26:55 She goes and sees Sport. We find out that his dad is in a creative slump with the book. He's right, his dad is what they call a starving artist, is their reference in the movie. Yeah, And we find out that Sport is basically taking care of his father as his father is failing to make much money to make ends meet. They're struggling all the time. Sport is cooking dinner for his father, cleaning the house for his father. Harriet saves his ass by saying that he dropped the dollar when he's at the store and he's buying bread and milk any short and he doesn't have enough money. So Harriet walks in and just says, Oh, I saw you drop this dollar when I came in, which is like, I get chills thinking about it, because that's just sweet. And it's a really good example of Harriet growing starting to grow because what did she do. She didn't just help him, She did something that would allow him to keep his dignity, and that's something that takes a lot of maturity to understand that, Like, I'm not here to embarrass you. I'm just here to help you. Yeah, because you're my friend.

1:27:52 Yeah. And it also plays into the fact she goes a visit Jane, and there's a whole scene with Jane his mom coming in and seeing that like one of her braw is being used for an experiment with mold, it burst on her. It doesn't go well. Harriet leaves, and you know, Jane's getting yelled at by her mother. But at the same time, we also get more monologue from Harriet basically saying, you know, I can't tell if Jane's a genius or if she's just like a weird. I can't tell, well, she says, she literally says, I can't tell if Jane's going to be like a genius this thing or this thing or a crazy person ended up in prison around. And she has talked about poisoning people twice in the movie by this point. Well, I mean, what kid doesn't dabble a little bit in poisoning? But yeah, this all leads to a scene where the kids are you know, Harriet basically gives up spying for a bit because she sees the sadness that it has on effect, and also getting caught at Agatha's just kind of turns her away. So she decides to give up spying for a little bit and spend an afternoon playing with the kids. And that all leads to this beautiful scene at the park where they're playing tag.

1:28:46 Well, and I want to mention one thing real quick that that was easy to miss because so much is going on. Yeah, right before this, she got caught spying on sport. Yeah that's right, Yeah, because she was standing on this this ridiculous pile of stuff to look in. But what she saw was while, yes, the household is not perfect, Yeah, Sport has a lot of expectations on him. His father is not able to support him as well as he'd like. Yeah, they love the hell out of each other. Yeah they do. And at one point, Sport puts on a chicken well no, it was a glove glove yeah, yeah, and his dad starts making this joke and they're like singing about him being a chicken and like pick somebove and swings him around. It's a really sweet moment, though, And I think that's so important to establish that sports Dad is not just like a lazy drunk or something. Sports Dad is struggling to try and stay true to himself and take care of his son.

1:29:36 Do we ever hear about mom? We never hear a word about her. I didn't think so. I would assume that she's probably passed away because there's there's no child support, there's no nothing. Yeah. It just I just got that vibe. Yeah, and his dad clearly is as in as he can be, and his son is trying to pick up the slack because he loves his dad too. Yeah, And I just wanted to mention that really quick, because that really helps set the stage for what's really going on with Sport. Well, and it also gives us a chance to bring up something that's going to come back here in a little bit where Sport does all the chores of the house and at one point is wearing a maid's outfit as he's cleaning, and Harriet ends up taking a picture of him, which is just between friends, right, Yeah, no one's going to see it. When they catch her spying, they just laugh it off. Yeah, they just got like, well, because he knows Harriet's a spot.

1:30:16 Yeah. But but yeah, So now the tag scene is the tag scene. They're they're having a great fun, the kids are playing. But as this is going on, Harriet lets down her guard and leaves her notebook unattended, and it just so happens that Marian Hawthorne finds it. And she begins reading through it, sharing some of Harriet's cruel opinions of everybody. And everybody's hearing we're hearing this, and the kids are having the effects to it, like the boy and the socks hearing about I tries to the girl with the face like puts her face down, like I mean we're just seeing all this take and. She said, just grew breast. Just laugh, just laugh. Yeah. And then we get to you know, Marian is still reading. And that's when Janie and is like, you know, well how about you know, I beat it out of you, and that she's like, well, I don't want to hear what she says about you.

1:31:02 Yeah, and but then she and and this is also the big thing is Mary and Hawthorne doesn't just read. She reads the mean parts only. Yeah, not that the nice parts were super nice, but she reads only the mean parts. Yeah, and her tone of voice makes it so much worse. She says, she thinks you'll you're you'll end up being a crazy person. Yeah, well no Janie reads it. Oh yeah, but she reads out a loud a bunch She reads. Out a lout of a bunch of them. Yeah. But Janie actually because she's like here, because she holds it up to her, and that's when she takes it and she's just like, you know, will she be lenious or end up in jail? And then sport I don't even think really hears much except for the thing about with the money that well, well. What what what she said that would hurt sport because it wasn't filtered was and because she's a child. Yeah, is I don't understand why sports dad just can't get a better job, a job to take better care.

1:31:50 Of sports, Like you know, I have to go home. It's spaghetti and night. Oh that broke my heart. Holy shit. Yeah, yeah, there's so many sad moments of this scene. It's critical. Yeah. He literally goes, I have to go it'spaghetti and I've got to make spaghetti. I can't be here, and he just leaves. Leaves, and so by this point, Marian puts down the lawnch She's just like, you go sit over there till we figure out what to do with. You, and then just keep you, which is a hell of a line, until we figure out what to do with you. Yeah. So this inspires Marian to have the Spy Catcher Club and basically has every single kid that's not Harriet join it. Harriet's life becomes a living hell. She's on the bench one day reading or writing, and all the kids surround her banging on trash can lids. They torment her nonstopah.

1:32:30 And basically make sure that any attempt to spy is thwarted. Yes, So if she's hanging out with her binoculars, people are like, hey, spies over here, you know, and they're yeah, they're just terrorizing her and also reminding her constantly of all the mean things she said and how nobody appreciates her opinion. And naturally, this also leads to her neglecting her schoolwork. Her parents get concerned. They talk with miss Ellison, and now there is a daily notebook check. All of her notebooks are confiscate. Yea. They don't her writing anything anymore. Yeah, to the point where, yeah, they're having them. They're having her notebooks checked at school, Yeah, which is kind of crazy. It's a good I mean the fact that Ellison does it in front of the entire class, like doesn't pull her out in the hall and do it like literally all the kids are laughing. Yeah, they all laughing. She has to stand up, she has to get padded down.

1:33:18 I mean, it's it's crazy. So this all culminates to a scene during art class. Yes, and they're all doing their little paintings of blue paint. We see that Harriet is walking over with her tub and we also see another kid coming behind her dumps blue paint all over her. This inspires Mary and to come over and start helping, but instead she's actually taking paper towels and wiping and pouring more onto her. But then Harriet just hauls off in smacks face, which was very visually interesting because it left a perfect blue hand for the yests. So now we enter into dark Harriet. But we go into My favorite scene is the ending of this scene where she runs home, fills a bathtub with water, and just dives in as the blue paint comes off of her. And I love that shot always.

1:34:06 It's been a memorable shot ever since I've seen this. The whole thing is very memorable, and again very It's tough because you know, you want to feel bad for Harriet, you know, for being bullied. Yeah, and I remember as a kid feeling bad for her for being bullied, but she was also being kind of a bully in her. Way, especially now. But but well, well that's why I said we're entering dark, dark Harriot because. Nowrriot, sweet Harriet. Oh gosh, so love now she Since she can't have a notebook, she takes her compass a writing compass, yeah, art compass, and carves the names in her desk of all the kids. When I was revisiting this this week, I was really really shocked that that doesn't come back at some point, because like, that's destruction of school property.

1:34:55 For one, she did kids not carve up their desks in your school. For two, it's not quiet. It's not quiet while she's doing it, Like no, they're watching a film on a projector and she is just carving away. For the record. I think the reason she can get away with that, in part is because this is phase two of the anti Spy Club, which is basically ignoring her. Yeah, because they're only two. The only thing worse than everybody looking at you and making fun of you, yeah, is people literally just turning their backs that don't want anything to do well. And that was the start of the anti spy club. As she comes in, you know, the next day, into school and Sporta is ignoring her, sports ignoring her, Janey's ignoring her, and she realizes that she no longer has any friends. And then after the pain incident, all bets are off. So she carves this name and she gets into a list of revenge that includes cutting the one girl's hair.

1:35:39 Oh that one messed with me even a lot now because That was something Bully's threatened me with all the time, was that they were gonna cut my hair while I was at my desk. I got hair plucked while I was on the bus, which is why I stopped. I mean, there's a multitude reasons I stopped riding the bus, but one of the ones being that I started getting tormented to a point where I was just like two mile bike ride in the morning. Fuck it, I mean I was spit on. Yeah, bust, that was. That was pretty rough. Yeah. When I tell people that, I always forget until I see their reaction, how mortified they are that I used to have to wash my hair and my backpack every day after school because it would be covered in spit. I had my backpack sliced open one so that was really not cool.

1:36:22 By a knife, some kind of blade. I don't know what it was. I just I think it was an exact a knife. Oh, I could do it too, or just like one of those blades. But yeah, So she cuts the one girl's hair. She scribbles inside the one girl's locker that has all the pictures of the the pictures of the pop star. We also get a taste of sports made picture being printed and put all over the school. Janie's experiments fucked with when she turns on a bunch and burn her hotter and boils it over. And then the piece that resistance, I would say, is marian is told that her dad, Well. This one's just cruel. She just looks at Maryann. Looks at Marian in the bathroom, tells her that she heard her parents talking and that her dad has not seen her in next about of years, lives at a different place because he had an affair with his secretary, and sends her what sends her a gift every year.

1:37:09 And that's basically about it. Yeah, I said, he lives this far away and he hasn't visited you in three years. Yeah, and I mean naturally marian doesn't take that. Well, well, then she puts the coup de grasd because he doesn't love you. That's the part that that Yeah, that that look yeah that, And then you finally feel bad for Marianne a little bit. Oh yeah, I mean, Marianne at this point runs off. So then we get to Harriet back at home and we hear her parents calling her down. She does not move from the bed, and by this point too, she's so depressed. She's so sad. Even though she's doing these things to get the revenge that would make her feel better, it's not. She's lost her friends, all this stuff. So it gets to a point where her parents are talking to her and she's, you know, trying to tell them that she's fine. They start bickering right by her. She tells them I'm fine, I'm fine, and screams it throws something, and they're just like, no, I don't think you are fine. And we see them taking her to a child psychologist.

1:38:03 Which honestly was probably the best possible thing for her, and we have kind of what's become a cliche the psychologist for the kids, like uh. And then the psychologist is like, what if we play a game? And he pulls out like a old nineteen seventies rock'em sockem robot. Puts his hat on backwards, sits backwards in a chair. Up psychologists, let's wrap a bunch of problems. But yeah, she's like, you know, why does a grown adult have this many games? And he's like, you know, well, you know, I know you have toys at home. Yeah, And so we even get to a point of they're playing rock' soccer robots and she's kicking his ass. He's writing notes down and she's just like, what are you doing. He's like, oh, just writing, and she's like can I or how does it happen? Because he offers the notebook? Yeah, I think he says, would you like to see what I'm writing? Yeah?

1:38:43 Yeah, And that's when he's like, well, how would I give you a notebook of your own? The rest of the session is spent. She's back writing, and then he's like, you know, well, Harry, it's time to go. Can I keep the notebook? I'll talk to your parents. Yeah, And you can see, you know, her light up again because this is just so important to you. So you see that she starts doing better. She's playing with her dad one day. Her mom and her dad are sitting on the herb and she's doing the what is that thing called? Oh well, it's like an orgami, the orgami fortune tell fortune teller. Yeah, and you know, she's to ask her dad to pick one. He's like, turn around and she's like, that's not what it says. He goes, no, turn around, But actually it's not his voice. It's Golly's voice, because Golly is back to visit her for a little bit. Yeah, which makes sense. I mean, why would she want to stay away entirely anyway? And she probably had heard that Harriet's been happening. Yeah, and who better to help her than one of her greatest confidants. Yeah.

1:39:34 The thing I like about that scene too is you get that's when you get a full shot of her mom on the stoop with her dad, and her mom is smiling like at Golly's presence being there, And I do like that little detail absolutely so. Naturally, she tells Golly what she's done, and you know, Golly basically breaks it down to her that you know, you've gotta you gotta atone for these horrible things. You gotta you know, you have really good friends. You don't want to hurt them because of stupid things like this. Yeah. I love this scene. No, it's it's and it's important because because Harriet becoming a little shit is a valuable lesson for kids watching it, because all of us are going to be little shits. Yeah at some points, and like I said, we just you know, we all hope that the kids gain empathy. Well, Golly tells her two specific things she has to apologize, but she also has to lie, and she's like, what do you mean, lye, And she's like, you know, well, you can think those things about people, but you don't want to tell them. You want to, you know, you want to be friendly with and you want to make them feel good. If you tell them the truth of what you think about them, and it could be the truth about them, it's not gonna make them feel very good.

1:40:32 So you have to apologize to them to get them back, and lie to them sometimes. Yeah, small lies to make people not feel bad about themselves. They're not harmful. No, So that's when, you know, Golly basically tells her, you know it is it's worth it in this sense, because Harriet's like, you know, well, it's not worth it to apologize, and she's like, it's worth it to be an individual. No, it's a really good I love it. I love that One's such a good scene. Yeah, and her individuality is what makes others nervous. And that's when she basically again is telling her you have to say true to your nature, but in doing so you also have to be kind about it. Yeah. No, it's great and this is what blew me away revisiting it because honestly, I might have watched it once in my early twenties. Yeah, I hadn't watched it since.

1:41:14 So it's been probably fifteen to twenty years since I've watched this movie. Yeah, and the heart of it is exactly where I remember it. Yeah. So she ends it by saying, good friends are one of life's blessings. Don't give them up without a fight. Great line. So she tries to make amends with Sport, and that's when we find out that sports Dad has gotten a successful gig because he's gotten he's gotten his advance, he's got in his check which is what ten thousand dollars And he says. Ten thousand dollars, but that's in nineteen ninety six months, so that's like eight million dollars. No, it's a lot of money, and especially for them when they weren't, you know, homeless. No, they just were struggling. They're struggling. And the way he talks to Sport, how excited is how he's like. He's those nikes at the straps and the buckles.

1:41:55 Yeah, no more, no more having to buy milk and milk with change. And then he said, then spaghetti only when we want it. Yeah, we can have steak if we want to. And then Harriet you know, pops into say congratulations, how does it feel to you know, to be a writer? Yeah, and he's like it's amazing, It's a dream. And then she says awesome. He's like, we should all go to dinner. We'll go somewhere I love the slices. We'll go somewhere really fancy and. Just abuse the waiter. Yeah, and sports like, oh, Harriet can't yeah, and he's like, what do you mean she can't. Yeah, she's yeah, and he shuts the window on her, basically telling her, you know, fuck off. At this point, and same thing with Jane goes to Jane sneaks into Janie's sneaks of Janie's window, and Janie's not happy to see her, even shows at the door and tells. Her again well and by by sabotaging Jane's experiment, it exploded on her mother. So now Janie's not allowed to do her thing either, just like Harriet wasn't allowed to write in a notebook.

1:42:44 And so Janey puts her right outside the door, and that's when she basically looks at the door and she goes I'm sorry, Janey, okay, and is again just trying to make amends, but you know, she's really hurt her friends, so it's not just going to be as simple sorry at this point. So we've also one thing we missed by this point is that Mary suggested that their holiday play or their their yearly play be a celebration of healthy foods. Yeah, and this is leading us to the best, the best climax of this movie, where Harriet is in class with all our students and the teacher is telling them, you know, the guys start thinking about the play, and that's when Harriet raises her hand and she says, you know, miss Elison, I've been thinking, I don't think it's fair for the class president to both be the class president as well as the newspaper writer. And I would like to nominate myself as the newspaper writer. And she's like, you know, okay, well this is interesting. You know, well, who else you know would would like to see Harriet become the writer. We see some hands go up a little bit, but one of my the the best thing about the scene is the boy in the purple socks finally speaks, and.

1:43:42 That was the other thing is. He's known for his purple socks and never talking, never talk, and drules while he sleeps too. Yeah, yeah, because he falls asleep in class a lot. And he delivers this beautiful little dialogue of basically saying, you know, well, I think you know we I think I would like to have Harriet as the writer because different people need to write, and we need to, you know, hear people's different different opinions, otherwise we're all going to have the same opinion. Well, and Harriet politicked it pretty well. Yeah, she didn't say that the class president shouldn't be allowed to do it. Yeah, she said, I think that's too much, too much for one person to do. Yeah, and yeah, the kid in the purple sox he chimes in and says like we need different voices and whatever, because he's actually smart. He's very smart. Yeah, So naturally the class decides to raise their hands. Harriet's elected the writer. We see her take out a typewriter on her bed back at home and starts typing. And that's when we close the movie with just a montage of things that we see, Like we see that George, who is the fruit thief, is actually giving the fruit and vegetable way to these children that are behind, and.

1:44:39 He's be and with the blessing to the restaurant because he ends up doing it with the owner. She's like, oh no, no, give them more, yeah, give them more, yeah, which I love, although I will say, upon rewatching it as an adult, they're like nineteenth century, just like errant children. He's giving stuff to it. I was like, where are all these ragamuffins coming from? But Alissa, have you penny? But it was, but it is a really sweet moment where you realized, like what he was actually doing is being altruistic and kind when and sorry a little emotional, yeah, but what's what's even more special is he wasn't just being kind in helping people. He was doing it when no one was looking, because that's just who he is.

1:45:21 It's not you know. And I'm I'm a big believer in life that when people say like, oh, yeah, they gave all that to charity, but like they wanted attention or attax right or whatever it's I always say, I'm like, but did that build a school? Like did it still help? Or did the money not work? Because it was because somebody wanted to feel good? Whatever is But there is something very special about doing something with no desire for any anything other than a good deed to be done. And that's something that we that Harriet's realizing as she's reframing her bit of spying that she's still doing. She's realizing that she's not seeing people at their worst, she's actually just seeing people at their truest.

1:46:02 That's the truest. And if you just look closer, which I love because there's a gag where basically she sticks her head through the bars of the window, which almost gets her head completely stuck, but by sticking your head further, she sees the kids getting the food and realizes that I had to take a closer look, which is a beautiful metaphor combined with literal. You know, it's it's a wonderful moment. Yeah, And we also find out that the Spy Anti Spy Club is becoming a bunch of bull crap. One of my favorite moments of that though, is that we see that Marian and her assistant or whatever are giving them cake to build this clubhouse, but also they're getting full sized pieces of cake bigger. Than full size they're getting. Yeah, they're getting like little slices and they're getting these giants that they're like, well as the leaders, we need our strength. So that is the final straw, but I love it. She turns the sports sports like this is crap or whatever, and she's like, you don't have to be and he's like, you're right.

1:46:54 He gets up and leaves and grabs a handful of cake on his way out, and that signals all the kids to just get the hell out of there. Yeah, so the spy Club is completely disbanded. Harriet ends up apologizing to everybody. They also like her writing, like she We see that they're enjoying her writing. And she's also basically given up spying to do the newspaper writing, which is which is great. Yeah. And it's constructive, yeah, and it's helpful, and she really does realize that, like, kindness is important, Yeah, empathy is important. You don't know everything, even when you want to, when you're trying to know everything, you don't know everything. Yeah. And this is all in the article. This is that we're hearing the article as she writes it, and we're seeing this montage. So the article goes to the class, the whole class sees it, and that's when we cut to the finale, which is the play as we see a stink bomb go off for one whoops. But then the kids also break out into a dance and get up off that thing.

1:47:47 And they just have fun. They're all dressed as food. Yeah, so Harriet's an onion. Yeah, and they take out a giant turkey baster and start limiting under. It is just side note. Yeah, the most nineties thing that they have added to it. I love that Limbo was a real thing in ninety five ninety Like Limbo just was in tons of stuff. It was because there was that period of where like everybody loved everything Jamaican for like a hot minute, and Limbo stuck. It did stick. But one of the things I love too is she apologized to everybody except Marian in the article. But Marian accepts the apology because she realizes that she was shitty too. Yeah. No, and that's fair because Marian is a bully, yeah, and she needs to work on that. But I think Harriet did realize that one of the reasons Marian is the way she is is she's insecure. She does feel like her father doesn't love her. Yeah, and it's it's hard, I know what, because you came in when I was finishing the movie, and I remember at one point you were just kind of like, you know, man, that must be rough, and I was like, whatever, your dad always loved you.

1:48:47 I think it was more so the fact that, like, that's probably the harshest thing that Harriet does in her exacting revenge is telling somebody that your parent doesn't love you. So it was it was brutal. No, it was brutal. And and that's kind of the thing, is like a very adult moment is learning that just because you can hurt somebody, just because you can get a dig in and win, doesn't mean you Shouldn't mean you should. It doesn't mean that just because somebody's meaning you doesn't mean they deserve it either. No, So that's important. So yeah, that is the end of nineteen ninety six. Is Harriet the Spy. And it's a damn fine film. Damn fine movie. So do you want to guess what the budget was on it? Uh? Eight million, twelve million? Okay, it's close budget of twelve million. It opens July fourteenth, and nineteen ninety six and makes six million opening weekend worldwide, ends up grossing twenty six million five hundred and seventy thousand dollars.

1:49:33 That's bad. I'm sure they cleaned up on home video video. They probably end a lot and think about when it was time to show it on Nickelodeon. Most of the license fee would be nothing. Well and correct me if I'm wrong. But is this the first Orange VHS? I don't know for sure. I think it might be. It could be, but there were a lot of Nickelodeon home videos. I don't know if they Yeah, there's I couldn't say for sure. Yeah, that's one thing where I really don't know because Orange was so synonymous with Nickelodeon. Yeah, so they were so good at branding. They owned a color from the rainbow, they did, indeed. So they filmed in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Florida. They also filmed in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Broaden When commented, it was Paramount's financial decision to make Toronto look like New York. Although, to tell you the truth, nothing looks like a row of brownstones and stoops like New York. So we just started choosing great locations to create a visual experience.

1:50:26 That's awesome. Yeah, this was Nickelodeon's first feature film. The screenplay was adapted from Louise Fitzherg's nineteen sixty four novel of the same name director Brown. When Hughes commented on the adaptation, certain things about the sixty story, especially the relationship between the kids and their parents, had to be adjusted to make sense because you don't have that same kind of formality that you had in the book in the sixties between the parents and the kids. So those things needed to be made more natural for nineties kids. But it was very important to me that the things that really affected Harriet in the book would be things that really affected Harriet in the movie. The result mixed elements from various decades, but Hughes aspired to create a time film that featured a little technology, because in all honesty, it doesn't. Yeah, it's almost I think there's a telephone. Yeah. The letters that Harriet writes on the top corners of the pages and her notebook spell everybody hates.

1:51:10 Me, damn. Yeah. Michelle Trachtenberg opted out of Matilda in favor for this film. I I think she would be a little old for Matilda. I think so too, Yeah, so, but I think that was. I think it turned out the way of supos Yeah. Many theatrical versions included the pilot episode of HAYRLD as a short before the start of the film. Wow. Rosie O'Donnell Oh Golly remembers reading the novel when she was ten years old and it was one of her favorite novels as a child. She immediately accepted the role of old Golly when it was offered to her as a result without reading the script first. I'm sure the money didn't hurt either. I'm sure it didn't. Michelle in real life was a huge fan of tomato sandwiches and spent many days on set consuming whole tomatoes as a snack. She was also a big fan of the books, so she was very happy to accept the role when she got the call.

1:51:54 That was another thing. By the way, there's making her own tomato sandwiches, and every day she's tomato sandwiches with and her mom's like, don't you want to try something different? Roast beef. I was a kid who preferred to eat for a very long time, preferred to eat the same thing. No shit. Oh, but I was a picky eater. Dude. It's hard to believe that now, because I will I will eat anything put in front of me. You don't have to agree that much. It's more so that like finding out the tay nine officially has a ninth spice level. I want to see you take it down after watching you eat hot oils. I want to see that as long as nobody vapes on my food. First at I'm sorry tynine, I just I had in my neighborhood. We had one of the best Tai restaurants I've ever eaten at. And it closed and that broke my heart. They said they were going to reopen and they never did.

1:52:39 I'm sorry. Did taynine close on your birthday when you made reservations too? No? I would never be so foolish. No, that's no, that's crappy too. Yeah, but I'm just saying, like I had a tie, like I had a Thai restaurant that was in the corner that was so nice. I would take people from California who came here to do work and stuff there and they would go, this is incredible. And those people are hard to impress, you know, when they hear O, We're gonna have typ food. No high. It was not the place we went after filming Haunting Inside with Yes okay thoughts. So yeah, and I took bring Stevens there as well. I took everybody I could there. Yeah, because I discovered that place with a friend when I was eighteen years old and it was it's like it was like a little hole in the wall. Yeah, and nobody seemed to know about it. And then I move away. I come back three years later and that place is packed every Friday.

1:53:23 I would never go even for takeout on Fridays because it was so busy. Yeah. So anyway, the. Young child actors commented that Rosie O'Donnell was basically a big kid. O'Donnell commented that Golly was a childlike spirit and grown adult with the message to the kids to always stay true to your nature, a message that anybody can use at any time. Damn right. Bronwyn was known to wear many different hats on set, both figuratively and literally, would snap her fingers to get points across while directing, and was said to have a great artistic sense and visual style. That is one thing I don't think we talked about enough in this movie is the shot style in the directing style of this movie is very creative. Yeah, and it looks like an older film, Yeah, a little bit, And I think that's on purpose to kind of give it a reality.

1:54:04 Especially those scenes in the Artist Park. Like the style that's in those scenes as well. It's very very beautiful. I mean it's it's a film where unfortunately, but fortunately, the content's so good and the direction feeds it so well, you just kind of don't notice it, which is honestly, the best compliment is that we didn't even notice how well you directed it because the movie's so good. Yeah. Charlotte Sullivan, who played Marian and the film, were called on the shoot when Bromwin would direct us if we weren't walking, She's like, okay, you'll bop bop, bop this way and then bop pop pop this way. She was always dancing. I don't remember her not dancing on the set, and music was always playing. It was very cool and in terms of performance art, she was very pretty ahead of her time. It was a great way to also direct children. It was a way to keep things alive. Nice. Yeah, I like that. Earth A Kit was very excited to take the role of Agatha, as Eartha herself fit the character notes of eccentric and a lot of fun.

1:54:49 Yeah, no, I that was my first like knowing her, exposure to her, Yeah, because I didn't know she played I mean I watched Batman, yeah, but I didn't know she played Catwe yeah until later on. But yeah, she was so perfect for that role. The final dance number required a choreographer who went by the name of Roland, who worked with the kids extensively for the final scene. All the young child actors had a fond memory of the day where they got to wear their costumes for filming. Bron Went while in prep for the scene, commented, she wasn't sure what was going to happen or how it would go, but mistakes are funny and make for great additions to film. Damn right, especially for a kid's movie where it's finally where we're getting the relief of the joy and the fun after having the we had to eat our we had to eat our veggies, so now we get the pudding.

1:55:32 In a twenty twenty two interview with et Tractedberg commented that she still told fans is still told by fans twenty plus years later that her character inspired some of them to become writers, and is still very moved by the effects of Harriet the Spy tractor. Berg, nearly breaking into tears during the interview, also shared a memory that she had held Rosy o'donnald's first child, Harper, while on set, who was now twenty six at the time of the interview. That's awesome. She also added that she remembers touching Sarah Michelle Geller's tummy when she was pregnant with her first kid on the set of Buffy. Yeah Tracktonberg went on multiple state wide promotional tour in prep for the film's opening, during which she visited two Planet Hollywoods, where she donated her Spy built as well as the yellow coat for displays.

1:56:13 I love that. That's so great. At the nineteen ninety seven Kids Choice Awards, Harriet the Spy took home the Favorite Movie Actress, a role for Rosie O'Donnell. At the Young Artist Awards, Best Leading Young Actress for Michelle Trachtenberg and Best Supporting Young Actress Vanessa Leechester, who plays Jamie in the film. Well, I mean that's a little bit of nepotisticness, but. You know, and as we wrap up, prepare yourself because this one, this one got me. Okay, So another adaptation to Harriet the Spy was released as a television movie in twenty ten titled Harriet the Spy Blog Wars, with Jennifer Stone in the title role. In twenty twenty one, an animated TV series based on the novel, with Beanie Feldstein as the titular character, was released on Apple Plus, and in April of twenty twenty three, it was announced that Tracktenburg would make a guest appearance in the series as Doctor Wagner, which would be her final television appearance before her death in February of twenty twenty five.

1:57:00 Wow, so talk about full circle. Closed her legacy as being the doctor on the episode of the show. And I could not think of a more appropriate final appearance, even if it, unfortunately was. The last one. No, that's that's a that's really special. It really is. So what are your final thoughts on ninety ninety six as Harriet the Spot. I mean, nostalgia says own it. Yeah, nostalgia says own it because it's special to me. I think that if you have children and you've never seen this, or you haven't seen it a long time, watch it with them. Oh yeah, they'll love it. And if they don't beat it into them or beat them with it either way because it's still on DVD only more or the vh oh oh yeah, it really it depends on how bad your kid is. But but no, for me, it's a by it. I'm not I'm not going to preface that any further. It's a it's a by it. It's a great film to have, a great film to watch, a great film to appreciate, and uh yeah, that's all I've got.

1:57:55 What about you, it's a buy it for me as well, it's I find this too well. This is absolutely a kid's film. I feel like adults will will get more from this film, especially kids that grew up with this movie now going back and revisiting it. Obviously, it is a adorable performance, not only just by the entire child cast, but Tracktenberg is so good in this movie, and she's so bubbly like in the interviews. Like I said, I watched several to get some of the facts and everything, and one of the things I took away from her is that she was just so much, so much a kid, but also was very mature to the point of being able to talk to these adults and be on these talk show appearances and was just so cute about everything and very real about everything too.

1:58:37 No, she was incredible in every way. And watching that twenty twenty two interview with ET, she not only did did I find out that stuff around about Harriet and Buffy, but she also has a two B TV's a true crime series called Mary Murder. Is it something Mary and then Murder? I can't remember what the first word is, but she's narrating it. It's a true crime series that she narrated. She created during COVID, one of probably the last projects that she ever had a hand in. Wow, And I haven't watched it yet, but I'm definitely gonna check it out. But she was just If you can watch it, it's an eight minute interview and it's just her and another person from ET on a webcam, and you just see her being so genuine about not only just her life in these films, but like she was ten years old. The first day of filming on Harry at the Spy turned that was her birthday. Her birthday was the first day of principal photography.

1:59:26 That's awesome. Yeah, So, I mean she talks about that, she talks about the whole thing with Rosie talks about how genuinely that was just an environment for her to come about and now being you know, twenty plus years later, she just can't believe how lucky she was to have that experience. I would agree, and I think and I think that's the perfect way to wrap it up and saying how lucky we are to have this movie, because I mean, I've read Harry at the Spot. It's a it's a phenomenal book. The movie is just a time capsule not only of Nickelodeon, but of kid power movies. Like I said, to an extent, that aren't the Let's trap the snowplow man into snowplow and all that stuff. It's it's being real. It's being very genuine to the time. Well and much like Missus Doubtfire, Yeah, it's a film.

2:00:08 The reason they had to update it was the nineties was the era of not all families look the same. It's much more common parents split up and challenges arise. And while they didn't go in as you know heavily, as like Missus Doubtfire, Yeah, they were much more about showing what the nineties was for kids. Absolutely, and that was why Nickelodeon was so successful for so long. Was they had their finger on the pulse of like, we're going to show kids the world they see, Yeah, but we'll show it in a way that helps them learn. Yeah. So yeah, I couldn't agree more. So. We always like get in the show with a couple of recommendations. I have two this week, the first one being nineteen ninety six is Matilda, currently on Netflix and rentable on Prime and Fandango. A girl gifted with a keen intellect and psychic powers uses both to get even with her callous family and free her kindly school teacher from the tire tyrannical grip of a sadistic headmistress. If you haven't seen Matilda, I'm a I'm sure it'll come to the show at some point, but b it is so worth revisiting. That movie just gets better and better.

2:01:08 They showed that at the drive in during COVID. Yeah, and it was really awesome to revisit it. It's a lot of fun. And the other recommendation I have is twenty twelves The Perks of Being a Wallflower, currently available on Max, rentable on Prime and Fandango. Pittford, Pennsylvania in nineteen ninety one. High school freshman Charlie is a wallflower, always watching life from the sidelines until two students, Sam and her stepbrother Patrick become his mentors, helping him discover the joys of friendship, music, and love. Fantastic movie. I've heard a great book. I have not read the book, but the movie I fell in love with when I was in college, and I need to revisit it's been a while. My recommendation is a film I wish I had seen as a kid, but I saw it in my later twenties from nineteen ninety five. Angus. I was gonna.

2:01:49 I was wondering if you're gonna pick Angus. Because Angus is phenomenal. Yeah. Here's the synopsis. A miserable, fat teenager secretly has a crush on the class beauty ends up becoming the surprising p participant to dance with her at a high school dance, meaning he's got to get his act together with the help of his best friend. And the reason that movie's so great that's not a very good rundown is not only does Angus have to learn to have confidence and all these things, but the beautiful girl he's obsessed with is complicated, Yeah, and has a really hard home life, and they handle it in a way that I thought was really wonderful. Yeah, as a lesson two kids. Yeah. So I love Angus from nineteen ninety five. If I had seen it when I was a teen, it would have been one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, because it just it's perfect.

2:02:37 It's all about being a outside kid and outsider. Yeah, and I identified and you just reminded me of one that I'm going to go ahead and throw into the one that you and I love that does not get talked about. I think it's twenty Seventeen's The Edge of seventeen. Yeah, I think it was twenty sev twenty seventeen, which is seventeen girls. Yeah, fantastic movie. I cannot recommend enough. Coming of age story, a lot of fun. Another great story about an adult taking an interest in a kid. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of good fun on that one. So do we have any emails this week? Believe it or not? We do. Last I checked too. Oh, but you never know which one's gonna make me. Okay, First we have one. This one is from Jaden and the subject line is just appreciation email Okay, hey, excuse me. Hey, guys, just want to give you a shout out all the way from Australia. Oh hell Yah, want to write to say thank you for the amazing and fun podcast you guys have got me on to some new favorite movies like Trick Like Trick and The Slumber Party Massacre. Oh yeah, would you guys ever do an episode on my favorite movies Scream or Aliens?

2:03:45 Both of those are highly possible scream especially. One Aliens is great yea scream is really likely. Yeah, and then the final keep up the great work, Jaden. Thank you so much, Jayden. I will tell you on a current podcast that I guessed on our buddy mike'sh a this podcast this week in Geek, we just did not only a ranking of this entire screen franchise, but we did two episodes breaking up trilogy one through three and then four through six. So if you find those on this week in Geek, there's a lot of scream talk on that. Yeah. And I want to mention before I read this next email, yeah, that you can send us an email at do youevenmovie pod at gmail dot com or go to dooevenmovie dot com. Send us an email. We absolutely love love, love love hearing from you, guys. This next one's from Daniel. Okay, the subject is a request or to Oh hey, guys, I've been waiting patiently for my request and haven't heard it yet. So I'm going to request it for my birthday. Okay, technically my birthday is August eighth, but that's a Friday this year, and I know you do your show on Tuesday. So my request is twenty nineteen's ready or not?

2:04:51 Oh? Hell, yeah, you should write that down. I don't even have to all remember that. No, we'll we'll do ready or not. That's a great suggestion. I have another request, which you can do whenever you have time or just feel like doing musicals or in this case, an opera. That request is I bet you've guessed it, Repo the Genetic Opera. It's a great movie with incredible actors, and to make it even odder, Paris Hilton. Can I get you to watch that movie? I don't know. I'm a huge but willing to give it another chance. I guess yeah, I was gonna say so I might be willing to give another chance. Then he put yikes, but honestly, not that bad at Paris Hilton. A special thanks to mister Kuto. Extreme apologies if I spelled that incorrectly, you missed an Oh, there's two o's in there, forgiving all of his weekly Spooky listeners a special advanced listen of Krawl I released. I released Krawl and Crow early on there because my voice was was shot and I needed something on Friday, so I figured why not give him out a little early for I did, in fact listen to it both on Friday of last week and Tuesday of this week. As always, we all appreciate everything you guys are doing for us. Even when your horse from all of the podcasts, you still find a way to push through and keep us entertained where or whenever we decide to listen. Peace to your mother. Lol. Daniel, thank you, Daniel, Daniel, Ready or not, it's definitely gonna happen. Yeah, So Repo, we'll see, we'll see.

2:06:20 Repo is possible, but we'll see. But yeah, I would say, ready, you're not absolutely possible. Screams possible, aliens possible. So those are some good recks we got. Oh yeah, absolutely. At one point, I'm going to go through our entire end of our episodes, and pull these recommendations out and write the middle list for I've got a short list going for us that is only four hundred items right now, so we can absolutely add some more to it. Yeah. So, but with that all being said, yes, I suppose it's time to get out of here. Would you like to know what we're talking about next week on the show, though, I guess I would. Okay? So May They Rest in Peace is going to continue as we are going to highlight a film that both is getting a sequel the week that we are going to be dropping our episode, and we unfortunately lost the great Tony Todd recently, who plays Death in two thousand's Final Destination.

2:07:06 I'm really excited. I haven't watched the original Final Destination in a good six or seven years, so I'm really looking forward to revisiting it. And if you want to revisit it, it's readily available on Max right now. You can also rent it on Voodoo in Prime or wherever you get your movies at. There's a great blue rays set out I'll set out now that is one through four. I don't even know. I don't even if it was a hit four K yet. I don't think they have Yeah, I don't, but yeah. Final destination from two thousand next week on the show, as we pay our tribute and respects to the great Tony Todd. An incredible actor, incredible body of work. Who can wrap the Candyman song so well. His appearance on Holliston's candy Man Hungry. He's running out of things with rhyme with candy Man. That means a showers almost over. But with that all being said, thank you guys so much for listening to us. Yeah, I even movie. We really do appreciate it, and we really appreciate the kind messages and emails we've been getting about the show. I'm happy to bring this level of movie nerd friendship to you all, and it really does mean a lot. It really does make us want to do the show even harder it does than before. So but until next time. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe. If you're listening on your favorite podcasting app, make sure you subscribe her there. If you could leave us a review, we do appreciate it. But all that's left to say really is we'll see you next Spies.

2:08:27 Tuesday, Final listenation Day. Oh, that's that's going to be dangerous. Audios guys