Rewatchables Reference

• Elmo's Pele speech – 'It ain't the six minutes. It's what happens in the six minutes.' Bill puts it on the Mount Rushmore of sports movie speeches alongside the Pacino speech in 'Any Given Sunday' and Burt Reynolds in 'The Longest Yard'.
• Louden dropping to 178, beating Couch, and it immediately kicking into Journey's 'Only the Young.'
• Louden climbing the peg board wall to John Waite's 'Change' after everyone doubts him.
• Shute carrying the log up the stadium steps – he's like the shark in 'Jaws', just mysterious and circling.
• Carla showing up in the locker room before the final match after disappearing.
• The final match against Shute with the Lunatic Fringe needle drop.

• The soundtrack – Journey, Madonna, John Waite, REO Speedwagon, Foreigner, Sammy Hagar, Lunatic Fringe, Style Council, Berlin, Tangerine Dream. Probably the highest batting average of any mid-80s soundtrack.
• Elmo's Pele speech still holds up as one of the best versions of the 'inspirational speech before the big game' trope. It works because it actually feels in character, unlike many movie speeches.
• The Spokane setting – the off-the-grid, small-town feel is really important to the movie's identity.

• The Louden-Carla basement scene where he basically commits sexual assault. Even in the mid-80s it didn't sit right.
• Some weird undertones and gay panic stuff early in the movie. People have written pieces about the underlying themes.
• The panty-sniffing scene. Carla handles it well but it's still rough.

• Michael J. Fox as Shute – Bill's pick.
• Tom Crews (Cruise?) as Louden – interesting but Russillo doesn't think he pulls off the horny part.
• They couldn't find many casting what-ifs for this one. Chris said he actually likes all the actors as cast.

Harold Sylvester as Tanner – incredible 80s IMDb run: Fast Break, Inside Moves, 'An Officer and a Gentleman', Hill Street Blues, and 'Vision Quest'. The Omar Epps of his generation.

• Elmo the chef – the Pele story, the toilet paper on his face from shaving, the empty beer cans, calling in sick to watch Louden wrestle even though that's 25% of his paycheck.
• The wrestling coach who's perpetually wearing a singlet no matter what – Dion Waiters-level commitment.
• The Tai Chi guy – orders two slices of lemon meringue pie at 4:45, does martial arts in his hotel room, then has pure sugar and coffee before bed.

• Daphne Zuniga – so expressive and supportive, but in a great way.
• Shute's abusive dad – just slaps the hell out of him. 'Trying to slap the Native American out of him.'

• Modine on Madonna: 'She looked like Boy George. The producers were saying this girl was going to be such a big star but I remember people not really being impressed.'
• Michael Schoeffling (Shute) was a 215-pound bodybuilder who dropped to 189 in two and a half weeks before filming. Had to cut down multiple times during the shoot when he'd bulk back up between scenes.
• Schoeffling got the role through a wrestle-off audition against another actor in front of producers. He won the wrestle, he won the part.
• 25 years later, Modine told a Spokane newspaper: a guy literally stepped out of his moving car on Venice Beach to tell him 'Vision Quest' saved his life. The car smashed into a wall.
• There was talk of a remake in 2009 with Taylor Lautner as Louden.

• Matthew Modine – no, it's Full Metal Jacket.
• 1980s wrestling movies – yes, this is the peak.
• Spokane – yes, hard to imagine it ever getting better than this movie.
• Michael Schoeffling – no, it's Sixteen Candles. Bill's wife has him on her Mount Rushmore.
• The singlet – debatable. Could also be Saturday afternoon amateur wrestling on TV.
• John Waite – 1985 overall. Missing You might be the better song but this was his peak year.
• Linda Fiorentino – no, it's The Last Seduction or Men In Black.

• If Carla is from Trenton, NJ going to San Francisco, why is she in Spokane? Trenton to SF takes 31-33 hours and the most northern you'd go is maybe Cheyenne. It makes no geographic sense.
• Carla never wears the same outfit twice despite hitchhiking with just a duffel bag. She's got nine suitcases worth of vintage clothing.
• Modine doesn't demonstrably look like he loses weight during the movie. He's supposed to drop 20-30 pounds but never looks different.
• Some weird scoring in the Shute-Louden final match – extra points appear that we never see scored.
• What wrestling tournament ends with the 178 weight class? They usually go up to heavyweight.
• Madonna performing at a random Spokane sports bar – she should be at The Viper Room, not playing to rib-eating alcoholics.

• Could actually work as a 10-episode Netflix show. Wrestling is underused as a genre and there have only been two real wrestling movies.
• Could gender-flip it – make Louden female, since women's wrestling is now a real thing. Some weird outsider dude drifts through town instead.
• Bill suggested the idea of merging Madonna's character and Carla into one – she's a singer whose van breaks down, stays with Louden's dad.

• What happens to Louden after high school? Russillo thinks prison. Chris thinks he goes to Eastern Washington, wrestles, comes back as a teacher, then gets fired for getting involved with a student.
• How bad does Louden smell? All he does is sweat in a rubber suit and then go serve room service.
• Did Louden sell his body to the Tai Chi guy for those new red wrestling shoes? The close-up shot of the shoes was deliberate.
• Did Charlie Sheen steal Michael Schoeffling's career? Could Schoeffling have gotten the 'Wall Street', Platoon, Young Guns run?

• Chris: Linda Fiorentino. She's the reason to go back to this movie.
• Bill: Modine, because he's playing someone with a lot of unredeemable qualities and you're still rooting for him the whole time.
• Russillo: The atlas. If these people had Google Maps, this movie would have been very different.