Rewatchables Reference

• The toilet bomb scene – 'One of the great action movie scene premises of all time' (Bill's pick).
• The house on stilts being pulled down by Riggs's truck ($500K to build a replica).
• Gibson breaking into the South African office – 'Well well well, it's the master race'.
• Glover shoots the lead bad guy – 'It's just been revoked' (diplomatic immunity line).
• The straitjacket escape scene.
• 'They fuck you at the drive-through' (Pesci).
• The nail gun fight scene.
• Gibson's trailer getting shot up / escaping with Patsy Kensit.

• Joe Pesci's introduction as the 'microwave man off the bench' – injecting adrenaline and becoming a blueprint for 30+ years of action movie sidekicks.
• The condom/rubber plant subplot with Murtaugh's daughter – the whole cop station prank payoff.
• Nail guns as a weapon – first major on-screen appearance, later used iconically by Snoop in The Wire.
• Dean Norris appearing (before Breaking Bad fame).
• The South African villain accents and Joss Ackland's performance.
• Patsy Kensit – great job in the movie.
• Eric Clapton's guitar soundtrack, plus a George Harrison song.

• The reveal that the South Africans killed Riggs's wife – cheapens the original random tragedy of the car accident.
• Mel Gibson's real-life behavior ruining the movie's legacy.
• The 'nail them both' one-liner after the nail gun kill – cheesy 80s pun.
• Riggs's bullet avoidance strategy of diving/rolling to avoid machine gun fire.
• Classic cop propaganda – Riggs breaks every single rule about policing.

• Joe Pantoliano was the original choice to play Leo Getz – had a conflict doing The Last of the Finest.
• Danny DeVito was also considered for Leo but deemed 'too lovable'.

• Joss Ackland as the lead South African villain – 'really over-evils in a way that I liked and enjoyed'.
• Riggs in full vengeance mode – 'I'm not a cop tonight, Roger'.

• Joss Ackland – Bill didn't know his name but recognized him from Hunt for Red October.
• Mark Rolston ('Boggs from Shawshank') who gets shot early.
• Jack McGee – the construction worker on Murtaugh's house; 'in a hundred different things'.
• Jeanette Goldstein (Vasquez from Aliens, foster mother in T2) – the female cop on the diving board.

• Joe Pesci – Chris says 'he's eligible to the extent that I would almost change the name of the award'.
• Pesci went from a nobody to a phenomenon within six years of this movie.

Bill wouldn't touch this movie's casting – 'Maybe one of the South African bad guys should be somebody that we know, like the Ultimate Warrior'.

• Shane Black's original script 'Play Dirty' – much darker, Riggs dies, a plane of cocaine explodes over LA; considered Shane Black's best piece of writing by his own admission.
• Two endings were filmed: death and laughter; test audiences rejected the death ending.
• Richard Donner called it 'Lethal Weapon 1.5'.
• GTA 5 homages the house-on-stilts scene.

• Danny Glover – yes; but these movies aged him 30 years in the audience's subconscious even though he was only 43, trapping him in the 'feeble older cop' typecast.
• Richard Donner – yes, probably; owned a big chunk of the franchise and could do whatever he wanted.
• Evil South Africans as villains – 'It literally is apex mountain'; one and done, never used again.
• Ramses Condoms – yes; 'By the late 90s, Trojans overtook Ramses'.
• Bad things happening in houses on stilts – absolutely.
• Mel Gibson – still probably Braveheart.

• Why didn't they just kill Riggs instead of putting him in a straitjacket and throwing him in water?
• The toilet bomb scene: Murtaugh was sitting there 12-18 hours and nobody mentions the smell.
• After the bomb, they'd have concussions and hearing damage from C4 – never addressed.
• Riggs bringing his girlfriend back to her apartment after surviving a massive gunfight – she works for the villains, they know where she lives.
• Who is looking after Riggs's dog? He spends all his time at the Murtaughs', the trailer gets shot up.

• Is diplomatic immunity a real thing where you can just commit crimes? Bill Googled it and it doesn't seem real to the extent shown.
• Could you actually pull a house on stilts down with a pickup truck?

• The surfboard – keep the fake blood on it (Chris and Bill).
• The gold pen (Van's pick).

• Mel Gibson wins the movie but the title is 'vacated' due to real-life behavior (Bill's take).
• Chris: 'Gibson wins the movie, but Pesci makes the movie'.
• Van: Joe Pesci – using the Charles Woodson/Peyton Manning Heisman analogy.