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Kevin Bacon, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Daly, Paul Reiser, Ellen Barkin, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern

Files

Diner

Comments

Chris H.

This has got to be a request, sure... But also...holy crap it feels like you two are just raiding my list of favorite movies of all time, sometimes. Kudos to whomever requested this! I'm going to dive in shortly, and I really hope you guys love this flick as much as I do! For some of these guys -- Gutenberg, Rourke, Stern, Daly -- they'd be almost this good in some other stuff, but this is just an all-timer. Somehow Barry Levinson managed to coax everyone in the cast into just peak performance. And yeah, a decent amount of the dialogue here is improv, too. Can't wait to watch with you, and as Boogie says: "You don't have good dreams, you got nightmares."

Toc

Wow! I haven't seen this in decades and been meaning to revisit!

Jeff

I'm so glad you enjoyed this! I saw it when it first came out in the theater, and it was a real audience pleaser. And my friends and I immediately started hanging out at the local 24-hour restaurant, ordering French fries and gravy. If you still have the rental, go back and watch the end credits. There's a whole improvised diner conversation going on as the credits roll. Paul Reiser was a stand-up comic and wasn't originally planned to be a major part in the movie. But Levinson loved him so much that he let him do his thing and improvise quite a lot.

Chris H.

It should be called out, by the way, that the movie and popcorn scene has NOT aged well at all. We'd call out that "prank" as sexual assault today, and rightly so. And I think if Barry Levinson had the chance to figure out another way to do that scene or even rescript it, he probably would. I dunno. And so I want to make it 100% clear that I'm not condoning or giving that a pass of any kind whatsoever. But with that said, in the context of a period of teenage sex films in the early 1980s (which the trailers for the film made it seem like it was part of the pantheon of at the time, bitterly disappointing 6th grade me when I first watched it when this was all over cable circa 1984...), this is positively tame compared to Porkys or Revenge of the Nerds on the "This didn't age so well" scale of things.

Youtalkingtome

I'm gunna have to go back and watch that! I was literally craving French fries and gravy all day

Youtalkingtome

This indeed was a request, shout out to Jeff for his purchase. I loved this. The dialogue, the performances, the way it was shot. I could watch this over and over again

Youtalkingtome

For sure. Boogie really crossed the line A LOT, and the fact that he had a friend group laughing and encouraging him to keep going made it a really concerning look at this kind of group think. Definitely a look at how not to behave.

Jonathan

Thanks Jeff for requesting this. This was Barry Levinson‘s first film. Most of the cast was in their early 20s just starting out. The diner in the movie is a set made out of two airstream trailers. After filming it was shipped to a prop house in New Jersey. This movie blew up and people kept asking where the diner was. The city paid to have the set trucked back but it’s just tables there is no kitchen or appliances. A local charity that teaches street kids restaurant skills decided to use this to their advantage having the kids make food across the street and give it away to tourists in the diner for tips. Eventually the set became more of a problem as it decayed so it was eventually hauled away again. The other 2 Baltimore period pieces were Tin Men and Liberty Heights. He also did Bugsy and Good Morning Vietnam for other period pieces.