Airheads Review

You're listening to the decaf radio network of

podcast I can't take that tape from you if it's

unsolicited. I can't touch it. It's not easy

to break into the music business But these three

guys what's your secret code? I can't tell you

my code just found a way You guys are a unsigned

band and you broke into the radio station to

get your demo played on the air? I just feel

a little goofed at a water pistol. They don't

know it's a water pistol, they think it's real.

Whoops! Look, all I wanna do is be heard and

then we're outta here. Okay, who are you guys?

My name's Pip. The band. The band name. Sorry

about that. Oh man, look at this, the demo's

wasted! Well, what are we gonna do now? Run!

Hello, police. I'm surrounded. I don't want to

go to jail. I'm fragile. Everybody on the floor

right now. Do you mind if I sit in a chair? I

don't want to get all crowded. If she doesn't

sit on the floor, I don't know why I have to.

Sit down! Everybody else gets to sit in a chair

except for you. Is everybody okay in there? He

wants to know what your demands are for releasing

the hostages. What do you mean by hostages? It's

the inbreed. We asked for a whole bunch of weird

stuff. This way we complete insanity later. Number

13. Naked pictures of B. Arthur. Excuse me? I

think you're exceeding the maximum weight limit

for that belt. Yo! Everyone having a good time

tonight? What are you thinking about? Swimming

pools. He doesn't wear a helmet, does he? You

guys are crazy, man. You all are all woo -hoo.

A plastic gun! A plastic gun! Now what are you

gonna do about that? Chunk style? Improvised.

The Lone Rangers? What's wrong with that? Well,

there's three of you. You're not exactly lone.

No idea what you're saying right now. Airheads.

If I cut a deal with them, we gotta send one

person out. I'll go. One of the hostages do sorry

the music made them do it Hello and welcome to

the 65th episode of the M wire brought to you

by the EKS radio network I'm your host do you

like and joining me is Steve Megatron. Hello,

sir How are you? Doing pretty well. Yes. So you

will be continuing the Sandler spotlight volume

one with Airheads. Oh, God. All right, so to

set the stage here a little bit, first of all,

MWIRE has a new format. Actually, I stole it

from Kevin Thompson from another show that he

and I are going to be doing, which Steve will

also be doing this show sometime 65 years in

the future. So yeah, setting the stage here,

Airheads is a 1994 American heavy metal crime

comedy film. Wow, I don't think I've ever heard.

That kind of description for a film. Written

by Rich Wilkes and directed by Michael Lehman.

It stars Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler, and Steve

Buscemi as a group of loser musicians called

the Lone Rangers who take to a radio station

hostage so that their song would get played on

the radio. Joe Mantegna plays a radio station's

disc jockey. and Michael McKean plays the station's

manager. Although the film was a critical and

commercial failure, it has become something of

a cult classic among rock fans and metalheads.

When did you first see Airheads? A couple years

ago on Comedy Central, actually. Really? Yeah.

I had seen it a couple of times. I know that...

I don't have the DVD, but I had seen, like, I

don't know, I was at somebody's house, they had

it, and they put on the DVD at some point. This

was not something that I would have seen in theaters,

even when I was still going to movie theaters.

It's not a bad movie, per se, but it's not, like,

Sandler's best. And, of course, this really isn't

an all -Sandler -inspired film. It's not like

Wedding Singer, Waterboy, Happy Gilm, it's not

like any of those because really he only co -stars

in it. So Chaz, Rex, and Pip, oh god, that's

the name of his character, oh geez, are a Los

Angeles would -be rock band calling themselves

the Lone Rangers. The guys are continuously turned

down as they try to get their demo tape. Heard

by producers they finally decided to try to get

the local rock station kppx FM rebel radio 103

.6 to play it on the air first of all Radio station

dial does not use even numbers at all So 103

.6 that there's no way that that would be an

FM 8 .1 or 101 .5 or, you know, something like

that. Yeah, 105 .1, 106 .7, yes. They usually

end in .5 if they're gonna do a... .1 or .5 is

generally what they end in. Yeah. To play it

on air. And after they saw how Rebel Radio helped

another band, the Sons of Thunder, get a record

deal... Their first break -in attempt is using

Pip's ATM card and its pin. Then Rex tries to

short -circuit the electronic lock with Pip's

big gulp. Oh boy. They finally get in when a

station employee comes out and goes back in and

they keep the door from shutting. Oh God. Why

couldn't they have just done that in the fucking

first place? Because they're airheads? Yeah.

play on words. Yeah, yeah. Once inside, disc

jockey Ian the Shark, played by Joe Mantegna,

puts them on the air without them knowing. The

station's sleazy manager, Milo, played by Michael

McKeon, overhears them and intervenes after Milo

calls Rex Hollywood Boulevard trash, Chaz and

Rex shove water pistols that look like real uzis

loaded with hot pepper sauce in Milo's face and

demand airplay. After setting up the reel -to

-reel for the demo, the tape starts and is destroyed

when the reel runs out and catches fire in an

ashtray. The guys try to run, but Doug Beech,

played by Michael Richards, the station's accountant,

calls the police and the building is surrounded.

I completely forgot that Michael Richards was

in this film, and holy crap, it's pretty much

a live -action Kramer. It was like a comedy version

of Die Hard having somebody on the inside. I

know. It was so awesome. That part was just so

awesome. The whole time with Richards was just

great. They soon realized that they are armed

hostage takers and begin negotiations with the

police. During the crisis, it is learned that

Milo has signed a deal to change radio formats

which includes having to downsize Ian and most

of the other employees. Ian and the rest of the

employees take the side of Chaz and turn against

Milo. Eventually the record executive, who rejects

Chaz in the beginning of the film, comes to the

radio station, the band signs a record contract,

and goes out on stage to play, only to realize

that they are supposed to lip -sync the song

and fake playing the instruments. They refuse

to lip -sync while the music is playing and get

a round of cheers from the audience who rush

the stage. Afterwards, Ian becomes the band's

manager and we learn that the three were sent

to prison, but served only a short time and had

their album, Live in Prison, which was recorded

while the trio was imprisoned. Go triple platinum.

Go. Go triple platinum. Oh, go. Suffer and fuck

his ass. Suffer and fuck his ass. Fun of a bitch.

Fun of a bitch. There's a lot of comedy bits

in this. I can't even fucking talk. I've recorded

like fucking three, four, five different things

tonight, so I'm losing my mind. Which isn't saying

much for me. But there's a lot of great comedy

moments in this thing. Like Adam Sandler does...

Oh, I know what it was he um he screws one of

the radio station employees They go into Milo's

office and they use his couch But yeah Adam Sandler's

character played a complete airhead yeah Steve

Buscemi was more of an angry airhead Brendan

Fraser was pretty much the loser that held them

all together. Honestly I pretty much with any

of his films I'm not a big Brendan Fraser fan

whatsoever. For me I don't mind him and I don't

mind a lot of his films especially most of his

newer ones a lot of his older films before The

Mummy I didn't really care for. I don't really

care for the money films, so. Oh, I don't either.

I like the first one and then the next two are

kind of redundant. Yep, they are. The third one

is probably the worst one out of that franchise.

Yeah. So we're kind of talking about cast, so

let's go into the who's who of the movie. As

we said before, obviously, Frasier, Buscemi and

Sandler, Joe Mantegna, Michael McKeon. Michael

McKeon's done a bunch of stuff. He's really,

really, he's a really good actor. Let's see.

He's also, oh, he's from SNL. He did a bunch

of... Oh, you didn't remember him from that?

No. Dude, it's been so long since I've seen earlier

SNL stuff like 20 years ago. He was in let's

see he was in plane trains and automobiles. Holy

crap. I didn't know he was in that short circuit

to yay Just really really great character actor

And as we said, you know, he's done impersonations.

He impersonated Jeffrey Dahmer Howard Stern Adam

West Elvis Costello George F. Will Gary Busey.

Oh man That would have been so awesome. I wish

I could see that that would have been dig it

up on YouTube. Yeah, I probably will. Um, Chris

Barley's in this as Officer Wilson. Oh yeah,

that's right! He's the police officer that they

send out to go to the girlfriend's house to get

the other tape. Oh yeah, that's right. And he

ends up at the bar. He ends up at some bar, that's

right. Uh, let's see. The band Galactic Cowboys

perform in the... Oh, these are other cameos.

performing the film under the name Sons of Thunder.

Their sole musical contribution to the film,

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Beautiful, was strangely

omitted from the soundtrack and this is not available

anywhere. Even the band does not have a copy.

Oh wow, that's kind of sad. The track is highly

sought after by Galactic Cowboys fans. White

Zombie makes an appearance in the film where

they perform their song Feed the Gods. at whiskey

a go -go john melendez from tonight's show with

jay Leno and the howard stern show makes a cameo

when he admits that he used to masturbate constantly

oh god wow wow mike judge makes an appearance

uh voice only appearance as his characters beavis

and butt head oh that's cool calling kppx to

tell the lone rangers they suck An MTV journalist

Kurt Loder appears briefly as a news reporter

Harold Ramos appears as an undercover police

officer who tries to get into the radio station

posing as a record executive I remember that's

right I Remember that that was so hilarious because

they kicked his ass out quite literally they

kicked him in the ass and he went out the door

Wow Now we're gonna get into a segment which

a lot of this is gonna come into like later movies

that we review on MWIRE, but it's called The

Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Pretty much the

soundtrack is all I have on here. The soundtrack

had songs by Motorhead, Forn on Blondes, White

Zombie obviously, Degeneration, Primus, Anthrax,

Candlebox, oh wow, Candlebox, holy crap. Stuttering

John and were and the Ramones You know honestly

there really isn't that much and there wasn't

that much information on this film there was

no box office information Well the box office

information they have is very little because

It only made five million domestically and the

budget was 11 So Fox lost money, which is not

surprising because it's not that strong of a

movie. I mean, it was enjoyable for what it was,

but I can definitely see why it didn't make any

money. Yeah, and that's going to kind of play

into our next little subtopic here on Amwire.

The IGN replacement crew, the options for voting

here are... Number one, don't watch this even

if it's free. Number two, worth a watch if it's

free on TV. Number three, worth adding to the

Netflix list. Or number four, this one is a must

add to your DVD collection. Now obviously, if

you're a Sandler fan, or if you're a Buscemi

fan, or any of the actors that are in this film,

you should add it to your... Then you should

have it. Yeah. But... it's something that you've

seen on TV in passing and you kind of liked it

this is one of those movies where for me if it

shows up on TV like oh you know it because it's

so old at this point I mean it came out when

early just way early 90s let's see here airheads

yeah 94 yeah see this is over 10 years old and

it's right now for me it's it's a nostalgia point

really Me, I own it because we own pretty much

all the Adam Sandler films. However, it's not

one that I can watch all the time, so it's one

of those ones I'll pull out every once in a blue

moon. Just if I want some stupid comedy that's

funny. And pretty much, I don't even have to

pull it out because they've got it on the Netflix

instant view. So I could watch it on there. and

well DVD releases obviously it is on DVD I I

think 1994 was before they had all like special

editions and blah blah blah blah blah so I think

it's only on single disc DVD unless that there's

been some sort of anniversary for it which I

don't see why a film like this would get an anniversary

release I don't either no I don't either so My

honestly my final words on airheads like I said

before It's something that if it's on TV, and

I have time oh hey cool But it honestly it it

has its high points It has its low points, but

it's not something that I will pop in to a DVD

player or my computer Like just because I want

to want like it's not like I have this growing

urge to watch airheads So It's not exactly a

film I would recommend to really people and like

I said unless you're fans of any of the actors

that are in it Yeah, yeah So that's it Short

episode this week Or this this day actually Thank

you for joining us here on MWIRE Movie Week in

Review. There are some ways you can get in contact

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time when we will be wrapping up the Sandler

Spotlight Volume 1 with Big Daddy. Oh yay, Dylan

and Cole Sprouse's breakout role. Talk about

a sweet life. For now, I am TFG1Mike with...

Steve. Thank you for listening, until next time.

Hey butterball, I think you're exceeding the

maximum weight limit for that belt Get over here

I'm sending out a sweep of the sunset strip for

the girlfriend. I want you there to supervise

Whoa In Titan Black. Great. Grand. Wonderful.

I'm gonna need to take you in. Look, Chance says

you've got a tape. Please! Hey! Check out 45!

Don't you think you're out of your league, Chunk

Style? Look, I don't want to have to bring you

boys in on a 148. That's obstruction. Everybody

okay in there? You shitwitch, what the hell was

that bullshit? I'm gonna grease somebody in here,

I swear to Christ! Chad, Chad, Chad, don't do

anything crazy. Hey, what was all that firing

about? You tell me, buddy, you got these guys

coming in through the ceiling at me! Just calm

down, I swear to you, we don't have anybody trying

to break in. I wouldn't do that to you. Okay,

listen, if this bullshit happens again, I'm gonna

start blasting, so help me! You have my word.

Okay, now how long before you play your tape?

Uh, hold on. Uh, we're working on it, I know,

pretty soon. I have a record executive for you,

okay? He'll be here soon. Now, you know my rules.

Okay, now how about sending out another hostages?

Holy shit! In a world, there, I said it. Heavy.