(beatboxing)
(scribbling)
- Hello, internet!
My name is Daniel "Hot Dog Whisperer" O'Brien,
and welcome to another salty episode
of Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder,
the only show on the internet
that probably regrets mandating
between three and four new couch gags
in every episode's intro.
Today's purple episode explores:
(beatboxing)
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
Devotees will recall that I no longer have a boss,
ever since Cracked's former editor-in-chief,
Jack O'Brien, stepped down to focus on quote:
"pursuing the real killer or killers", end quote,
blah blah blah, whatever that means.
Obviously, I'm thriving with a lack of oversight,
which is why I'm dedicating an entire episode
to the couldn't-be-more-timely mystery
of why the 90s abused Andie MacDowell so much.
To wit!
(beatboxing)
Andie MacDowell was all over the 90s romantic comedy scene.
She was your go-to choice when you needed
a sweet, vaguely country gal with an infectious smile.
And maybe it was that welcoming smile,
or maybe it was that charming Southern accent
that subconsciously planted the idea in our minds
that she was gullible,
which was a common movie trope,
because, man, she spent a bunch of the 90s
getting tricked by magic people!
1993! In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's Phil Conners
relives the same day over and over and over again,
stuck in a small Pennsylvania town,
covering the weather with his new producer, sweet Andie.
He uses his newfound immortality to,
among many things,
gradually learn everything there is to know
about Andie MacDowell,
which he then uses to establish a deep connection
that must seem like straight-up fate to her,
because in her reality,
they've only known each other for two days.
Throughout the film,
he uses this tactic to trick lots of women
into sleeping with him,
and I do think the movie wants us to know
that he wasn't just interested in sleeping
with Andie MacDowell and actually was in love with her,
and I like to play by the movie's rules
and believe that true love did, in fact, win the day,
but it's still definitely sleazy.
Because while Phil does tell Andie
about his powers in one of his magic days,
he doesn't in the timeline where they
actually end up together
and we finally get to move forward in time,
so she'll go through the rest of her life
with one story:
"When we first met, I thought he was an (beep),
but then we had this amazing day together
and it felt like we'd known each other forever
and there was such an instant, deep connection,
unlike anything I'd ever experienced."
And he'll go through his life with another story:
"I was an (beep) when we first met,
and then again for like 600 more days straight.
And then after I'd slept with like 90% of women
in Punxsutawney between 18 and 84,
I spent, I don't know, 10,000 hours
learning how to be the best at loving Andie MacDowell
and also piano.
It's never made explicit in the movie,
but I almost definitely sexually assaulted her
at some point, right?
You'd assume so, if I killed myself multiple times,
and stole a groundhog,
and knowingly let people die?
Surely, you'd have to conclude that I at least once
forced myself on Andie MacDowell
after I got sick of her rebuking my advances.
Using my time powers for rape
is still just extra-steps rape, right?
No reason to assume I wouldn't
occasionally downgrade to regular rape;
I'm clearly at rock-bottom in the mid-point of this movie."
Hard to think about, but it probably happened.
Two different stories,
and she will never ever truly know
what kind of person he is,
because she's missed years and years of his life
because of magic.
And that's not even the weirdest part of Groundhog Day.
Let's talk about Phil's body count.
(beatboxing)
It isn't? Oh.
We should do a Groundhog Day episode.
Oh! That's right.
1996. Multiplicity is another 90s movie
with Andie MacDowell as a cheerful and sweet
and amazing woman.
In this one, she's married to Michael Keaton,
in the role of a lifetime as four Michael Keatons.
See, in that movie, Michael Keaton's character
doesn't have enough time to do his job,
love his wife, raise his kids,
and make time for himself,
so instead of talking to his wife,
he clones himself. Twice.
So he can be in multiple places at once.
And then one of the clones makes a copy of a copy,
so there ends up being four Michael Keatons
running around and this is my favorite movie of all time.
By the end of the movie,
he decides not quite that he'd rather live
every minute of his life and not miss a moment,
but rather that keeping three clones a secret
is even more stressful than having a job
and a family and trying to find time to golf or whatever.
So he sends his clones away
and spends more time with his wife.
Of course, though, he never tells Andie MacDowell
that he cloned himself and then sent the clones away,
or that over the last few months,
she could have been talking to any one of his clones
instead of him,
and she'll never know which one,
and in fact,
he never tells her that all three of his clones
had one-at-a-time sex with her
in the same night.
And to be clear,
the movie makes it clear that once cloned,
the clones sort of develop their own personalities,
so they're definitely not OG Michael Keats anymore.
So Andie MacDowell is essentially having sex
with three convincing facsimiles
under the false pretext of them being her actual husband.
And she'll never find out.
Keaton just quietly learns a lesson and is like
"Andie MacDowell, things are different now.
Don't question anything that's been happening
for the last several months;
I'm better now."
And she's like, "Oh, alright",
in a soothing, South Carolina accent.
There's also a 1999 movie I've never heard of called
Just the Ticket,
starring Andies both MacDowell and Garcia
as a couple.
And Garcia is a ticket scalper,
and MacDowell hates it, so she leaves him.
And then he wins her back by doing a series of cons,
involving dressing up like a nun,
to score tickets to see the Pope.
Like, that's the plot of the movie.
He's trying to give up scalping and cons
and then the Pope shows up,
so he goes for the ultimate scalper con:
Scoring Pope tickets and flipping them.
That's the plot of a movie.
And that's not magic,
but there's a lot of flim-flamming going on
to trick and lie to Andie MacDowell,
and if you don't consider
the Pope suddenly showing up as a plot point
to be a convincing enough bit of divine intervention,
allow me to draw your attention to:
1996 again, my sweet little hearts!
Michael is a movie where John Travolta
plays an actual angel,
doing his last vacation on Earth,
which they're allowed to do.
But twist! This angel likes cigarettes and sugar
and just being a bro, you know?
He scratches his nutsack in front of people.
When word of an angel spreads,
Andie MacDowell, William Hurt, and Robert Pastorelli
and a dog, I guess,
are dispatched to cover him for their newspaper.
They decide to take the angel to Chicago
to really let loose for his last vacation.
And then we learn that Michael the angel's
actual purpose on Earth
was to magically get Andie MacDowell
and William Hurt's characters together romantically.
That's right, God sent a mean angel to Earth
to force a love connection on Andie MacDowell
with sex-icon William Hurt.
Now, I don't want to take up too much time,
because I know this episode is supposed to be
about magic in movies,
but I need to take us through a detour
with a brief but necessary aside
on how food works in the movie Michael.
When we first meet Michael,
he's staying at the house of some lonely old woman in Iowa,
and she is making breakfast for Michael and our heroes,
and she asks William Hurt:
how would he like his eggs?
And he says, "Over easy."
- How would you like your eggs, Mr. Quinley?
- Sparky's look good.
- Over easy!
- And then she gives him scrambled eggs
and it's never addressed.
- Gentlemen.
- They don't even like, zoom in on the eggs,
or make a joke about how she screwed up.
Andie MacDowell also asks for over easy eggs,
and also gets scrambled.
- And how would you like your eggs, Miss?
- Over easy would be just fine.
- He battled Lucifer and roared him out of Heaven.
- And again, she doesn't say "Hey, this is wrong!"
and doesn't shoot a knowing wink at William Hurt
as if to say, "This old woman is confused and crazy."
It's never addressed!
Then Robert Pastorelli asks for poached eggs
and I thought, "Poached, how are they gonna pull that off?
They won't look anything like scrambled eggs."
And then the old lady goes to the oven
to somehow poach eggs on a dry frying pan
and then instead, she just (beep) dies.
- [Old Lady] (coughing)
- She dies with an egg in her hand
in front of a dry frying pan, which is tragic,
but also not what you'd use to poach eggs.
Later in the film, at a dive bar,
William Hurt is biting into a lemon,
skin and all, as you or I would bite into an apple.
And Andie MacDowell is like,
"That's not how you eat a lemon."
And then she pours salt over it
and eats it that way.
- That's not how you eat a lemon.
- (laughs) How do you eat a lemon?
- Cut it in half, put salt on it--
- That is how you eat a lemon.
- ...that's how you eat a lemon.
- What is this, a rule?
- And because things come in threes,
Michael caps them all off by saying
"Neither of you know how to eat a lemon.
This is the right way."
Then he puts the lemon into a glass of water,
adds lots of sugar, and leaves.
- All you need is love. Hello, ladies!
- This never gets resolved.
We never learn the right way to eat a (beep) lemon,
after this sluggish parade of wrong ways,
and the viewer has no choice but to conclude
that everyone involved in the movie is an alien.
End of brief but necessary aside.
What am I trying to say about
the insanely specific trend
of Andie MacDowell being romantically tricked via magic
throughout the 90s?
Gun to my head? Nothing.
Two guns to my head, everything!
Whenever we needed someone to get duped
in a romantic comedy and feel good about it,
we specifically picked Andie MacDowell,
even though other actors existed
including Mary Steenburgen,
whom I often get confused with Andie MacDowell.
Like I wonder if there was a producer
during Multiplicity who was like,
"Are you sure you don't want Mary Steenburgen for this?
I don't think anyone will know."
And the director was like,
"No! It has to be Andie MacDowell!
She is the only one the audience will believe!"
Movies also have a hard time showing her being capable
with her jobs.
In Groundhog Day, she's a brand new producer,
first day on the job.
In The Muse, she is just starting to have a career.
In Multiplicity, she is asking to start a career.
In Just the Ticket, she is an aspiring chef.
Also, later in her actual career
and this is true, and no I don't know what to do with it,
Andie MacDowell briefly appears in Magic Mike: XXL,
the better of the two Magic Mike movies.
Don't @ me. Or, @ me, I'm not afraid of anyone,
and there's also some magic-related (beep) that goes on.
Even all the way forward in time in 2015.
There's a character in Magic Mike
nicknamed Big Dick Richie,
and his only problem in the movie
and in life is that his dick is so big
that he can't find anyone to have sex with,
because every woman he comes across is like,
"No, thank you!"
- That's unfortunate for you.
It's like a blessing and curse at the same time, huh?
- I haven't had actual sex in almost five months.
- Until he meets Andie MacDowell, who's like,
"I'm your Huckleberry."
And she takes that magic dick,
she takes it all the way home, buddy,
and they both feel great in the morning
and his arc is complete with like 40 minutes of movie left
and she disappears from the film.
Like I said, I don't know what to do about this.
Maybe it's some nice film- and decade-spanning
closure for Andie?
Like she spent the 90s getting duped and tricked
and bamboozled by guys who didn't respect her,
and then as the world got more aware,
we were all like, "Damn, poor Andie.
I hope she gets hers one day."
And then she does, in the form of a huge dick,
from a guy who obviously should have been named
Big Dick Rick.
Anyway, I got us off-topic.
This episode was supposed to be about Groundhog Day.
Right! Well, maybe this will be a bonus episode.
I had a lot of things to say about Andie MacDowell
and I think there's some compelling stuff all around here,
surrounded by bits and pieces of other things I've noticed.
We definitely shouldn't release this as a main video.
Like, it shouldn't be a Monday video, or whatever.
Can someone make a note of that?
Can we...
Christina? Can we make a note that we shouldn't
release this as a video?