After eighty-nine straight weeks of De Niro magic, the Mikes have learned a thing or two about a thing or two. One (or two) of those things is that the quality of an episode has virtually nothing to do with the quality of the film in discussion. Some of our favorite conversations have been catalyzed by movies we’d never recommend to a living soul, while some of Bob’s most acclaimed masterpieces have resulted in 90-minute episodes of us dutifully agreeing with one another. This isn’t a list of the best films we’ve covered — it’s a list of the best episodes of ‘Our Hero De Niro’. Three of these episodes are about some of the greatest films of all time, two of them are about films I rated a sum total of three stars, one isn’t about a film at all — and we recommend them all.
Episode 89 — The King of Comedy (1982)
This week, Mike and I covered Martin Scorsese’s 1982 black comic masterstroke ‘The King of Comedy’, starring Robert De Niro as the delusional striver Rupert Pupkin. It’s the rare Scorsese-De Niro collaboration neither of us had seen prior to discussing it for the podcast — we both went in reasonably blind and the experience was all the richer for it. De Niro brought the script — written by Paul D. Zimmerman — to Scorsese a decade prior to its production. Scorsese didn’t bite upon that first review, but came back to it in the early 80s as his growing fame drove him to feel a stronger emotional connection to the material.
We discuss the film’s anti- and alt-comedy lineage (‘The King of Comedy’ as artistic forebear to the work of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim as well as Tim Robinson), the subtle storytelling genius of Rupert and Masha’s friendship, Scorsese’s quiet respect for the film’s working-class characters — and have an interesting disagreement about whether Rupert’s final set kills or bombs. We also touch on the film as early evidence of De Niro’s at-the-time underappreciated comedic genius, agreeing that only an actor with truly preternatural comic sensibilities could play a man as singularly unfunny as Rupert Pupkin as well as De Niro does. It’s a great episode and a fantastic introduction to ‘Our Hero De Niro’.
Episode 64 — Goodfellas (1990)
Back in March, we covered Martin Scorsese’s 1990 mob classic, ‘Goodfellas’, starring Robert De Niro alongside an ensemble cast featuring Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and virtually every actor who would later play on ‘The Sopranos’. Scorsese was adapting ‘Wiseguy’, a journalistic nonfiction book by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, who cowrote the film’s screenplay with Scorsese. It was a massive critical and commercial success and is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, having served as substantive and stylistic inspiration for innumerable subsequent works of art.
In a lengthy recap and discussion of the film, we cover a broad array of subject matter, particularly the film’s unique three-act emotional structure as an addiction allegory hinging on the film’s slick and distinctive style. In addition, we reflect on the challenge of the character of Henry Hill as written for the film, and how that challenge has grown for me over the years, as I’ve been watching the film since I was a teenager. We also discuss which character each of us most sees himself reflected in, and have a surprisingly thoughtful discussion on the gender politics of method acting.
Episode 61 — The War with Grandpa (2020)
While Robert De Niro’s early career was characterized by groundbreaking turns with darkly compelling dramatic performances, his later career has woven in quite a bit of lighter material. Much of it isn’t very good, and ‘The War with Grandpa’ — covered on the pod back in March — is a particularly stark example of the bad end of things. A COVID-era film shelved a few years prior with the closure of The Weinstein Company in the wake of its principal’s sexual assault scandal, it was resurrected by 101 and Brookdale Studios. It was an adaptation of the classic 1980s children’s novel by the same name, and much of the discussion of the film focuses on its fundamental misunderstanding and bastardization of its source material.
Friend-of-the-pod, wife-of-the-pod Caroline guest hosts, contributing her literary insights, having recently read the film’s novelistic basis. The discussion focuses largely on the oddly violent nature of Peter’s titular war on his Grandpa Ed, a relatably kind old man whose characterization feels intractably at odds with his grandson’s thirst for blood. It’s light on plot, so naturally the episode is ripe with divergences ranging from the hosts’ Animorphs animals-of-choice, to grocery stores’ degradation of the self-checkout experience as a response to mounting shrink, and Caroline’s Science Corner™ coverage of the term “grand old boar”.
Episode 48 — What Just Happened (2008)
Last December, we covered ‘What Just Happened’, a 2008 Barry Levinson-directed film with a screenplay written by Art Linson, adapting his own showbiz tell-all. The fourth (and worst) Levinson film Mike and I have covered on the pod — we both loved his 1996 legal drama ‘Sleepers’ — it was a commercial and critical flop, and stars De Niro playing a lightly fictionalized version of Linson himself. It’s got a pretty stacked cast, notably featuring Sean Penn and Bruce Willis playing fictionalized versions of themselves.
Mike’s broader thesis on the film — well-articulated in the episode — is that its failure is a result of its desire to satirize Hollywood dysfunction operating in tension with its overweening tendency toward sympathy for its protagonist. A drab film inspires great discussion, though — with this episode serving as the debut vehicle (pun intended) for ‘Car Talk’, one of the podcast’s most storied and beloved recurring segments, as well as my love for Richard Russo’s campus novel classic ‘Straight Man’, freshly improvised verses to the Diarrhea Song, and the “I’d Rather Be Watching ‘Godsend’” bumper sticker.
Episode 59 — Heat (1995)
Earlier this year in February, we did an episode on Michael Mann’s 1995 heist thriller opus ‘Heat’, starring Robert De Niro as Neil McCauley, a slick criminal operator with a singular discipline and one of the great 90s salt-and-pepper goatees. It’s a cat-and-mouse drama, with Al Pacino playing the cat opposite De Niro’s mouse as Vincent Hanna, a workaholic LAPD detective doggedly committed to bringing McCauley and his gang down.
Mike structured the episode in two halves, hinging on the film’s absolutely legendary diner scene, with six “hot questions” threaded throughout his recap. We have a uniquely vulnerable discussion on our respective styles around communication and confrontation and how each of our unique handlings of angry situations diverges from the other’s, making this episode a great introduction to our personalities and relationship. In summation, we discuss the ways cops and robbers structure their internal and external lives and how these structures affect their experiences and expressions of humanity. Mann, we argue, treats professionalism itself as a kind of moral order — the only thing separating a real criminal from a rich dilettante playing at one.
Episode 55a — All Mike’d Up: Pizza Takes
Practicing therapist, friend-of-the-pod, and frequent guest-of-the-pod Philip aka “Lips” joined Mike and I for our January discussion of the modern mob comedy classic ‘Analyze This’, but this discussion was too freewheeling and too deranged to be contained by the podcast’s typical format. Instead, it was carved out into an episode of ‘All Mike’d Up’, our podcast-within-a-podcast. It started off innocently enough — Mike came to the episode with two “indefensible” pizza opinions recently expressed by each Philip and me. Mine was milquetoast enough — “I don’t believe in pink sauce [as a valid pizza topping]” — but Philip’s was so edgy, so earnestly indefensible, that it catalyzed a minisode-sized discussion.
As Philip contends that pizza as a food category is sufficiently homogenous to make intracategory distinction impossible (comparing the category to American Chinese food), Mike and I respond in kind — with Mike focusing on style taxonomy while I highlight metaphysics and Aristotelian substance theory. It’s an ‘Our Hero De Niro’ event that has to be heard to be believed, and an excellent introduction to the podcast’s more absurdist bent.