Martin Brest

They're very... competent they they push each other but they are they can both exist without each other and i think that's that's the thing that the buddy cop or you know maybe like sean of the dead i don't think sean could exist without ed and vice versa these guys could be their own they could be the lead of a beverly hills cop and not need anybody yet it's two of them so it makes the Well, I'm going to pull up a line from Keegan-Michael Key when we were talking about Keanu.

He's like, it's like the Marty Brest movies.

The jokes are funny, but the bullets are real.

So there's always a serious tone to it.

I had nine weeks, but two, I mean, if that's true, that's insane.

If it was two, if it was, but let's say it's just weeks before because Martin Brest was attached.

Steven Spielberg directed the hell out of it or developed the hell out of it.

Sidney Pollack was replaced Steven.

What's going on, Joe? And this is what happened.

And I go, Jerry, you know what? It's like they want to get Martin Brest, who I think did Beverly Hills Cop.

He did one of the big, big films of the 80s.

and um some like somebody like that and so i tried to reason with jerry i said jerry you know maybe someone's lying to me joe he got really upset but i was excited because you know with frank sinatra people say oh he had a temper oh he did this i never witnessed that you know with mr sinatra he was always a gentleman to me always very fatherly to me mr sinatra was And I always appreciated that.

I've never met John Battam.

My director was Marty Brest.

Marty Brest was the original director.

He worked for 12 days.

They looked at his dailies.

I want to sort of come at it from a different angle.

Gilly was a film that a director called Martin Brest wanted to make.

He created this sort of darker character kind of study and cast in it the two sort of A-list romanciers of the day, one Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez.

I've had the DVD on my shelf here because I'm such a fan of Jennifer Lopez from that period, but I haven't watched it in 23 years.

Martin Brest was all but taken off the film and Columbia Pictures, well actually Revolution Studios, were asked by Columbia Pictures to sort of hack it to pieces and recreate it as a romantic comedy.

It fails spectacularly in that regard, but I love these sort of messy Hollywood productions.

In the end, it's not a really bad film.

And, yeah, that's it.

So here we are talking with John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein about, yes, not only their new movie, Mayday, but, indeed, Martin Brest's total badness.

buddy comedy uh cross-country classic uh midnight run so that that's it for us enjoy the episode and uh we'll see you well no we won't see you next week uh because that'll be a a live episode but the week after that we'll be back in studio with the uh redux episode for the season so until then enjoy y'all we'll see you soon bye All right, y'all, we're super stoked to welcome in a couple of guys who've been entertaining us for a long while now.

You know them from writing and directing films like The Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Among Thieves flick from a few years back, as well as Game Night, which for my money, everybody is one of the funniest big box comedies in the last 10 years.

yes.

They, they talked about Robin Williams too.

And Martin Brest was like, no, I want it to be grown.

Cause he was the only one in the, in the chemistry read that like, did not seem in any way intimidated by it.

At least, at the very least, we've got a great cast going for us.

Yeah, and Martin Brest is notable.

I just don't have at the fingertips what he's...

Wasn't he

The Duke, as in John Mardukas, not Wayne, didn't actually end up on his list.

But with that episode, both Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark and Martin Brest's Midnight Run were enshrined forever, or forever-ish-

[laughs]

... as we're currently rethinking the pantheon's purpose, process, and picks.

Here's the opening to Exhibit A, which he began scribing a few hours after walking out of the theater.

"If it were merely a matter of script, direction, and technical credits, this formula cross-country chase comedy wouldn't be worth a minute of one's time, much less the price of a movie ticket.

Martin Brest, who launched his career a little over a decade ago by leaping from a forgettable $33,000 independent feature called Hot Tomorrows to a $5 million heist comedy called Going in Style, followed by Beverly Hills Cop, comes on like a competent, if faceless, TV director, scoring with all the desired effects of his mechanical mise-en-scene but leaving no discernible memory traces behind him.

The script by George Gallo, a newcomer whose only previously produced screenplay was for Wiseguys, is as formulaic as they come, even down to multiple and periodic plot twists that seem to come along before every invisible station break.

[laughs]

... not since, uh, not since, like, Martin Brest directed Gigli, right?

[laughs]

And then never made another fi-...