Difficult People S3 E9-10: LA, Ayahuasca, and Aimee Mann

Chris and Spencer wrap up their chat on this season of Difficult People!

In "Sweet Tea" we finally get the much teased Big Lebowski sequence and some major shakeups...

S: “Sweet Tea” is the episode of some big changes! We have Julie giving up acting to start a career in crafting, Billy being sick of New York, and Arthur quitting his job at PBS… although Arthur decides to return back to PBS.

C: This season’s been kind of fitful in trying to create long-game plot points, but this felt like it was actually developing something that could have lasting implications.

S: Julie referring to Etsy as a cult is one of the most relatable lines from Difficult People I have ever heard. But then she turns around and uses weed baggies as her own new product, the “dream baggie.” I’ll take 20.

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"Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback."

For better or worse, the date April 20^th infamously sparks an eternal flame in the hearts of potheads across the world in celebration over their vice of choice – and the canon of cinematic stoners is certainly no exception. Hash-loving hippies have long cropped up in motion pictures as anti-establishment icons, quasi-kings of interminable philosophy, and occasionally as crutches for comic relief or character development. While the presence of marijuana in the movies holds a certain time capsule cache in relation to broader anxieties over cultural identity within era-defining films such as Easy Rider or American Beauty or even Children of Men – not to mention its propagandist roots in cautionary tales such as Reefer Madness – it has chiefly acted as a dispensary for daffy, dippy diversions in cannabis-centric comedies like Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, Half Baked, or Cheech and Chong. 

Occasionally, a film strikes Humboldt gold and elevates the presence of the iconic drug to a – ahem – higher place, whether artistically, narratively, or thematically, and the prototypical example would have to be the Coen Brothers’ cult classic The Big Lebowski; that film relies on the aforementioned haze to bolster its emphasis on the transient absurdity of best laid plans, societal systems around class and gender, and sorting personal truths from fiction and lies. And provides the visual opportunity to stage a Busby Berkeley porn parody in an outer space bowling alley with trippy aplomb, a black-and-white stairway to heaven, and Julianne Moore in a Viking helmet.

On that note, who are some of your favorite jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers from the history of cinema?

"The Dude" Honors John Goodman for his Star Ceremony

John Goodman, currently onscreens in Kong: Skull Island, just got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Jeff Bridges got in "The Dude" character via The Big Lebowski with a quick costume change to honor him.

Watch:

John Turturro Set To F--- With The Jesus

In the 7-10 split of having your cake and eating it too, John Turturro is trying for a spare. Which is to say, after nearly two decades of zealous celebration over his scene-stealing (and very small) performance in The Big Lebowski as the crotch-swaddling bowling-ball licker Jesus Quintana, he's doubling down on that legacy and directing a feature film that stars Jesus at the wheel. After a few years of Turturro's titters, he's finally making his own spinoff movie, Going Places, and he's already in production.

Currently starring in HBO's The Night Of, a very different kind of crime story, Turturro reprises his role as Jesus Quintana alongside a cast including Bobby Cannavale, Susan Sarandon, and Audrey Tautou. Notably absent from this project are the original creators of the role themselves, the Coen Brothers, but perhaps they'll attach their names as producers as they have for their last grand-brainchild, FX's Fargo.

If you could give any iconic supporting character their own standalone movie, who would you choose?

Required Viewing: Julianne Moore Acts for Tips in Times Square

I was hoping to hear a little Boogie Nights! But this will more than do. Billy Eichner is a national treasure. Or at least a regional treasure. Does he go over well in the southwest?

P.S. Mark Harris made a funny about this video on twitter.

ALL Oscar campaigns are basically this brilliant @billyeichner segment w/ Julianne Moore acting for tips in Times Sq.

It's funny because it's truthy.